Disruptive technologies

Some technologies can have very disruptive impacts on the status quo. For some simple examples, the car totally upset the transportation world (as did the locomotive, steam / diesel trains, and airplanes).

Today I'm going to look at a vary basic change - the Internet.

The internet has been very disruptive!!! (understatement!!)

Commerce - we used to shop at stores, now we shop on line (and frequently at the store website to see what they sell - and then go to the physical store). Amazon.com is an online only bookstore (and much more - see previous blog posting on Amazon).

Communication - where would we be without e-mail, instant messaging, and even texting without the internet? And ... if you want to talk about phone calls, look at Skype and others for FREE VIDEO calls!!!

News - newspapers are in trouble as more people get their news from RSS news feeds (or web searching)

Music - while not directly the internet, indirectly iTunes, Google's Music player, Pandora, and more (and ... indirectly, the digitization of music / movies)

In my next few posts, we'll look more at disruptive technologies.