Dear mojito74,
To understand the condition of the computer industry, its effect on the
national economy, and the influence of broader economic circumstances
upon it, we do best to peruse materials relating to the question from
all sides. To begin with, publications devoted to a study of economics in
general devote considerable column inches, indeed more and more with the
passage of time, to doings in the computer industry in particular. This is
not only because computer hardware, software, and services in themselves
have tremendous market value, but because they act as the underpinnings
of financial and commercial infrastructure the world over. Where this
is not yet true, it will be so, and where it is already true, it will
become increasingly the case that the performance of a company or a whole
industrial sector is intimately intertwined -- to the point that it is
difficult to consider separately -- with the maturity and health of its
systems for processing, transferring, and analyzing digital information.
This pervasive influence owes much to the historical, probably
irreversible drift in the developed world away from the traditional
economic sectors of agriculture and manufacturing toward the tertiary
sector of services. Services, in turn, rely much more heavily on the
unfettered flow of information and its enabling technologies than do the
primary and secondary sectors. For these reasons, it is easy to find in
the general-interest economics periodicals, including those pedigreed
titles the Financial Times, Forbes, and The Economist, stories on current
events and longer-term trends in the computer industry.
In Forbes magazine's Technology section, a recent story on the twenty-five
fastest-growing technology companies gives valuable insight into products
and strategies that have demonstrated the capacity to make a splash in
the marketplace.
Forbes: Technology: The Twenty-Five Fastest-Growing Tech Companies
http://www.forbes.com/maserati/fastechland04_xyz.html
The Financial Times also devotes a whole section to studying
advances in technology, in which information-related applications are
predominant. Recent stories include a report on revenues expected from
Texas Instruments, which is a major manufacturer of semiconductors, and
a preview of Intel microprocessor introductions slated for next year,
exposing trends in the chip market as a whole.
Financial Times: Technology
The Economist has perhaps the widest range of coverage of any popular
economics periodical, delving into every field of production and exploring
the farthest corners of the earth. Yet even here, computer technology
figures prominently in the news coverage and editorial commentary. A
recent piece discusses the much-hyped but eventually underwhelming Initial
Public Auction (IPO) of Google, a pure tech company that emerged from
the Internet boom-and-bust as one of the prime movers in the IT world
and an indispensable test bed for the profitability of companies that
deal solely in information.
The Economist: Finance and Economics: Playboys? Google's disappointing auction
http://economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3113077
There is at least one daily newspaper, the San Jose Mercury News, whose
so-called news coverage is devoted mainly to computers and money and the
money that there is to be made in computers. This is because San Jose is a
city in the heart of Silicon Valley, the epicenter of America's computer
industry. Economics coverage in the Mercury News is self-interested but
frank and detailed.
San Jose Mercury News: Business
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/
There also exist more specialized journals, paper, and newsletters
devoted exclusively to the economic concerns of information technology,
without a single mention of pork-barrel futures or treasury-bill
rates. Illustrious examples are mainstream publications The Register,
Computer World, and InfoWorld. At least as worthwhile are the trio of
dot-com refugees Business 2.0, Red Herring, and The Industry Standard,
which were very fat and glossy magazines with hundreds of ad pages at
the end of the nineties but are today much slimmer and more serious
financial-commercial-technological surveys of the computer industry.
The Register
http://www.theregister.co.uk/
Computer World
http://www.computerworld.com/
InfoWorld
http://www.infoworld.com/
Business 2.0
http://www.business2.com/b2/
Red Herring
http://www.redherring.com/
The Industry Standard
http://www.thestandard.com/
We should not forget to mention that a number of economic consultancies
specialize in researching the computer industry, selling much of
their findings in the form of exorbitantly priced, limited-circulation
newsletters that are sold mostly to institutions, but also offering some
tidbits for free to the public. An interesting example is Directions
on Microsoft, which devotes all its energy to studying a certain
company headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Its data and commentary
on the dominant player in home-desktop operating systems offer valuable
perspective on the burgeoning competitors, most especially Linux, that
hope to displace it.
Directions on Microsoft
http://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/index.html
A consultancy that takes a broad view of the computer industry is Computer
Economics, but it, too, sells its information for handsome fees. The
frugal way to access these and other consultancies' newsletters is to
visit a university library's periodical division.
Computer Economics
http://www.computereconomics.com/
If you feel that my answer is incomplete or inaccurate in any way, please
post a clarification request so that I have a chance to meet your needs
before you assign a rating.
Regards,
leapinglizard
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