From: John Marlow (johnmarlow@gmx.net)
Date: Fri Jan 19 2001 - 23:13:57 MST
Now, while there is the definite opportunity for fraud--what's really
interesting is that something which WOULD have beentrue vaporware, by
attracting investment through perhaps misleading newsbreaks, could
actually become viable.
Not that this would be the norm, mind you.
jm
On 19 Jan 2001, at 23:21, Randy Smith wrote:
>
>
>
> >From: "John Marlow" <johnmarlow@gmx.net>
> >Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org
> >To: extropians@extropy.org
> >Subject: Re: "Printing" a $15 Computer
> >Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 20:42:20 -0800
> >
> >Always possible, of course. And I don't mean to lessen the importance
> >of the issues discussed here--but most of the tech discussed here is,
> >in a sense, "vaporware" in the sense that you seem to be using that
> >term--i.e., it does not yet exist in practical form for widespread
> >use. This as opposed to the other sense in which I've seen the term
> >used--to refer to stuff that never did and likely never will exist in
> >ANY form...
> >
> >
>
> It's not that I think it will NEVER exist, just that I strongly suspect that
> whatever "studies" or "experiments" that purportedly were conducted to show
> the feasibility of these devices/products/tech-science breakthroughs, were
> actually massaged to a fare-thee-well, all in the name of generating venture
> capital or stock gains.
>
> Indeed, I suspect that 90% of all these science news stories are of this
> ilk. They are not properly vaporware, in that there are hardworking
> scientists or engineers & their managers, who just happened to be overly
> optimistic, and that the product will be late, or will never appear because
> funding for further dried up, or the market for the product goes away, but
> that the products and/or revolutionary breakthroughs are nothing more than
> the unhealthy confluence of greed and a new species of yellow journalism
> that I might call "technofraud journalism."
>
> It brings the eyeballs to the media stories, and that is all the media cares
> about. It brings the VC moeny and/or stock gains, and that is all the
> insiders care about.
>
> But I guess they all forgot about the boy who cried wolf.
>
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>
John Marlow
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