IN TODAY鈥橲 world, technology is the single biggest driver of economic growth. So how come the 鈥淭鈥� word has got such a bad reputation. With stocks in high-tech companies at an all-time low, technology is being blamed for annihilating companies, wiping out people鈥檚 savings and destroying their pensions.
But this is grossly unfair. It鈥檚 not technology that has failed to deliver; it鈥檚 our attempts to commercialise it. The technology often works superbly, but companies have been unable to profit from it. Take the Internet and mobile phones. Millions of people worldwide would be lost without them. Yet companies continue to founder in these areas because they lack the ingenuity to make money from them.
Commercial nous is lacking from other areas too. Many companies have over-hyped their products. Two years ago, telecoms companies trumpeted the benefits of 3G phones. Yet in Europe at least, few consumers have even seen a 3G phone. Raising false hopes merely increases the public鈥檚 sense that technology is failing. And who wants a 3G phone now anyway? The mobile phones we have today are fine for talking, while for people who want to surf the Net while on the run, it鈥檚 a fair bet they鈥檇 prefer to use a high-capacity wireless link to a laptop than a tiny mobile.
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The features in this issue show that ingenious ideas are emerging from labs as quickly as they ever did. So don鈥檛 blame the technology for a lack of commercial success. It鈥檚 up to the business whizz-kids to mould these ideas into products that people want.