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January 30, 2006
Harry Dent, Again
Friedman doesn't mention Harry Dent, but he should. Dent is sometimes quoted (or discounted) because he predicted that the Dow will hit 35,000 to 40,000 by 2010. I, for one, don't want to discount that. (You know, 'Please, God, give me one more bubble. I promise I won't be such an idiot next time.') Probably shouldn't plan on it, though.
The reason I think Friedman should mention Dent appears in The Next Great Bubble Boom. Dent studies several centuries of technology and population trends and he states that technology always progresses in two phases. Phase I is characterized by irrational exuberance and the over-building of the new infrastructure. During Phase II, companies that have a legitimate need for that over-built infrastructure come along, buy it for pennies on the dollar, and leverage that technology to provide better value to their customers. (Dent, by the way, wrote all of this in the darkest days of the dot-com meltdown). He uses the examples of the railroads and of the automobile industry to support his claims.
Friedman mentions the overbuilding of optical fiber in his talk -- and how that overbuilt fiber is fueling international collaboration.
Posted by DavidK at January 30, 2006 08:09 AM | Permalink