[debate] throwing a few ideas out there

[Alan Light]

Well, thanks everyone for your kind comments.

Some topics to choose from:

Chaim wanted to debate music - and that's fine by me, but I'm not sure what about music we are supposed to debate.  Metal versus Punk?  Chinese court music versus Chinese folk music?  Emo versus Barbershop Quartet?  Please let us know, Chaim.

I like all of Rob's ideas:

Of course Apple (or at least, Steve Wozniak) changed the world.

Whether the Kindle will replace paper - well, we didn't know it would be called the Kindle, but I was party to some debates on this topic in the late '90s, and the consensus was:  Yes, electronic readers will replace paper . . . for the most part.  Naturally, some specialty uses for paper will remain, but looking at the state of the technology at the time, we predicted that the first successful electronic book reader would become available some time between 2005 and 2010 - and it looks like we nailed it - though that did not keep some people complaining in 2001 that our prediction had turned out wrong.  More to the point, the prediction was that for such a device to succeed it would have to have a reflective display technology with 150 dpi resolution or greater, and would have to allow users to read ordinary non-encrypted files such as web pages or text files.  (Those who complained in 2001 had not met ANY of these conditions.)

As for "green" cars - I have seen an argument for why the Hummer is greener than the Prius, when accounting for such things as the environmental costs of developing the new technology, but it didn't really hold water.  That said, while early adopters are necessary for the development of this technology, I expect that many of them will not get a reasonable return on their investment as individuals.



Alan


      
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