TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Inflection Point

Inflection Point

Monty Solomon (monty@roscom.com)
Mon, 16 May 2005 23:41:43 -0400

This Week Changed the World of High Tech Forever, Though Most of Us
Still Don't Know It

By Robert X. Cringely

It's an expression made popular in Silicon Valley years ago by Andy
Grove of Intel: "inflection point." It's that abrupt elbow in a graph
of growth or decline when the new technology or paradigm truly kicks
in, and suddenly there is no going back. From that moment, the new
stuff takes off and the old stuff goes into rapid decline, whether it
is a new standard of modem, a new video game, a new microprocessor
family, or just a new idea. I think we've just hit such an inflection
point and -- though most of us still don't realize it -- the personal
computer, video game, and electronic entertainment businesses will
never be the same.

There are three pieces to this puzzle.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050512.html

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