[FRIAM] ** this Wednesday** Lecture May 31 12:30p - Carlos Gershenson: A General Methodology for Designing Self-Organizing Systems

[Bill Eldridge]

There are several issues particularly relevant when evaluating the "new 
economy".
You can run out of oil or titanium, and you can run out of new ideas, 
but they mean slightly different things.
People sometimes equate offshoring manufacturing with offshoring IT, but 
you can create a useful, sellable
program in a coffee shop, while it's hard to produce a car without a 
factory.
It's difficult to increase production of steel, but I can sell the same 
version of Excel a billion times once it's produced once.
But software inherently creates obsolescence if done right - my car will 
fall apart, but a 1995 version of Excel will
pretty much do everything I've ever needed a spreadsheet to do, and may 
last me the rest of my life.
But software is not necessarily interchangeable. I can buy 10 pieces of 
software and still have room for #11 if it does
something different, but my ability to accomodate manufactured goods is 
much less.

And Financial Services is even more bizarre than the software field.

Carlos Gershenson wrote:
> I forgot from whom I heard the following argument:
> The problem with understanding economics is that commodities are not a 
> conserved quantity (such as energy), but it can always increase... 
> Thus, it would be difficult to reach a point where we "ran out" of 
> money, simply because the market generates new niches and 
> opportunities that generate more money...
>
> Best regards,
>
>     Carlos Gershenson...
>     Centrum Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
>     Krijgskundestraat 33. B-1160 Brussels, Belgium
>     http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~cgershen/ 
> <http://homepages.vub.ac.be/%7Ecgershen/>
>
>   “Tendencies tend to change...”
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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