Chapter 4 The Non‐Existent Highway and Its Non‐Convergent Industrial Origins

Abstract

Bill Gates, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft Corporation, holds that the Information Highway does not exist, and that it would not be available to most US homes for at least a decade. Where one of the most knowledgeable authorities on Information Technology (IT) fears to tread, wordsmiths rush in. Don Tapscott, for one, affirms that the dominant economic sector in the Digital Economy is being created by three converging industries and that convergence is becoming the basis of all sectors. Convergence in mathematics is the progressive approach of a function to a pre‐specified value(s). If a thousand coins are tossed, the number of heads in a single toss could vary from 0 head to 1,000 heads. If the coins are not loaded, the number of heads in each toss could be high or low, but in successive tosses, the fraction of heads will approach closer and closer to 0.5 (Converge( as n, the number of tosses, tends to infinity. Tapscott provides no measures of convergence — conceptual, theoretical, empirical, or operational — without which we would not know if convergence has indeed descended upon us; what is more, we have no idea if we are/are not progressing toward the consummation of convergence upon which Tapscott's Digital Economy is predicated. Even more damaging to the Tapscott thesis of “three converging industries … becoming the basis of all sectors” is the conspicuous absence of any movement toward convergence on the part of the leading firms in the three industries. On the contrary, we find that each of them is racing on its own Divergent path of high and higher tech. Both the CEOs of IBM and Microsoft believe that high‐speed, high‐bandwidth is the future; and both swear by the Internet. But they race toward the Information Super Highway in their own separate, individual tracks. Product and service differentiation are the rule of the day; not standardization. Open architecture is a distant dream. Turning from the giant of hardware (IBM) and of software (Microsoft) to the giant of communications (AT&T), what is the story of convergence? AT&T entered the field of computers under the MFJ [Modified Final Judgment] of 1982. It beat a decisive path of retreat from convergence five years later by breaking up on January 1, 1997, into three communications and computer companies. How can the 3Cs converge? Not by their own volition. It is clear from the strategies of IBM, Microsoft, and AT&T that each of them is racing on its own path of high and higher tech. There is little evidence of convergence by default. If we want to achieve convergence by design, we have to emulate Hannibal. Facing the European Alps with his army of elephants, Hannibal said: “I will either find a way or invent one.” We will have to invent an appropriate methodology of convergence.

Citation

(1997), "Chapter 4 The Non‐Existent Highway and Its Non‐Convergent Industrial Origins", Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Vol. 9 No. 1/2, pp. 61-71. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb010281