The Economist, on the one hundred birthday of IBM, offered an interesting article attempting to identify factors that determine longevity in the tech sector and speculating regarding which present companies offer these characteristics. Before you look, make your own predictions.
It is an interesting topic and one that we might examine from our own personal experiences. No one reading this post has a one hundred year view, but we all have certain watched as popular tech products and the companies that back them have come and gone. We can see the end on the horizon for certain products – e.g., the harddrive, the keyboard, but this is not the same as predicting that the companies offering these products will end with them.
What about predictions regarding education? Will textbooks go away? Some are even describing a “higher education bubble”. If that commonly offered example of someone from the distant past visiting an operation room and a classroom holds true, it might be predicted that the practice of education and the systems that provide it are resistant to change.
The Economist article ends by speculating whether the Economist will survive.
