Chris Anderson :科技的長尾

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講者：Chris Anderson《連線》總編輯
2004年2月演講，2007年4月在TED上線
MyOOPS開放式課程
譯者：朱學恒
編輯：馬景文
字幕後期製作：朱學恒
字幕影片後製：謝旻均
2009年7月在OOPS上線
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Chris Anderson：科技的長尾
今天我的主題是科技趨勢。相信在座的各位也都會持續關切科技趨勢，但我們關切趨勢的原因是職責所在。
科技趨勢，對我們這樣的科技雜誌來說，是我們必須報導和瞭解的關鍵，但對我們這樣的月刊來說，壓力尤其大。你不但必須住在未來，還必須看的比人更遠。我們必須要在很多個月前規劃主題，必須預測六個月後的大眾口味，有時甚至得長達九個月。這根本就是一項預測未來的工作。
我們的產品，就像是許多公司一樣，都必須要以科技趨勢為根據。在這個例子中，我們的主要產品是點子和資訊，如果運氣好，還會有點娛樂，但基本上的概念是相同的。所以我們必須要瞭解的事情，不只是科技為何重要，趨勢為何；更重要的是：何時開始？時間才是一切的關鍵。
有趣的是當你觀察這些預測時，在90年代電子商務被大力吹捧時，其他被吹捧的還有網路流量、寬頻使用、網路廣告。這些趨勢都是正確的，只是時機不對。幾乎每一個都在幾年之後成真，但對股市來說，幾年的時間差就很嚴重，也因此時機才是關鍵。
你過去可能看過類似的案例。這就是典型的Gartner過高預期循環，也就是科技發展的起伏圖形。我們把幾種科技放上去，還蠻有趣的，說明他們是不是正在經歷第一個高峰；或者正準備下墜，進入美夢破碎低潮期；或者是爬回恍然大悟的斜坡等等。這就是一種進行科技預測的方法：先瞭解目前這項科技的進展，然後預期第二個高峰。
我們所報導的通常是我們認為足夠重要的科技，而我們通常會報導兩次。第一次是為了搶先，這個拔得頭籌是為了讓沈迷趨勢的阿宅們能夠享受。所以，我們在科技觸發點時就會報導。
1997年，我們就在封面報導Linux。但一段時間之後，它又會捲土重來，而且這些強力科技將會變成主流而爆發出來，也就是我們第二次報導的時候，2003年。這就是我們試著規劃科技趨勢時機點的方式。
所以我想要分享觀察科技趨勢的一種方式，我稱呼為這是我的大統一未來預測理論。不過，實際上是個縮小的統一未來預測理論。這理論是基於我的假設或說是觀察：所有的重要科技都會經歷四個階段；精確一點說，至少經歷四者之一，有時則是四個階段都經歷，這每一個階段都像是一次碰撞一樣，和其他事物的碰撞。
舉例來說，臨界價格線不但可以改變這項科技，而且還可以改變它對世界的影響力，也就是一個反曲點。而這些轉捩點透露的訊息將可以告訴你這科技下一個階段是什麼，甚至是你該如何利用它。
第一階段是臨界價格，科技進展的第一階段就是它終究會落到臨界價格以下；而如果它落到臨界價格以下，又足夠成功的話，就足以升到臨界質量以上，也就是穿透率。許多科技在這個階段會取代另一個科技，而這是另一個關鍵點。
最後，大部分的科技將會商品化。在產品壽命的末期，則會傾向免費。每一個階段都是我們可以利用的契機，也是科技本身改變的契機。即使你錯過了，就像是Wi-Fi的第一個階段，Wi-Fi歷經了臨界價格，臨界質量，但還沒有進入取代期，也沒有進入免費期，機會還多的是呢。
我想要舉個例子來說明這個理論，就用DVD這個例子吧。這個科技經歷了全部的四個階段。90年代中期DVD開始出現，當時相當昂貴，但直到1998年它終於落到400美金這個心理障礙以下，然後這科技才真正起飛，趨勢到來，隱藏的轉捩點到了，它真正熱門了起來。一年之後，它進入了下一個階段：臨界質量。對家庭擁有率來說，20%通常是個合理的臨界質量。
更有趣的是還有另一個產品跟著一起熱賣：家庭劇院組。因為你房間突然有了一台DVD播放器，你有了高畫質的數位影片，你就有理由要有大螢幕電視，你就有理由要有杜比5.1環繞音效。然後你當然要把它們連結在一起，甚至再接上其他的各種娛樂。
更有趣的是，請注意網路租片商NetFlix成立於1999年，Reed Hastings就在這。很顯然他看到了那時機，這是個他可以利用的轉捩點。下一個階段則是取代期。你可以看到，在2001年他的銷售量終於比錄影帶要多了。在這裡，你也可以看到這對全世界的意義。
NetFlix沒錯。它們的模式正好可以利用DVD的這股潮流，正好是其他的租片店作不到的。DVD的特點就是它很小，你可以輕易將它裝進信封，便宜的寄出。這就是所謂的優勢，但這也代表一件事情：科技的崛起並非每個人都能觀察到。
最後，DVD已經了接近最後一個階段：免費。有家叫做Apex的默默無聞中國公司，在2003年的銷售量上多次排名第一；不但DVD播放機銷售第一，2003年平均價格是48美金。各位應該很清楚發生在Wal-Mart的騷動，因為大家都想買30美金的DVD播放器。
因為價格變得非常非常便宜，仔細觀察背後的暗示：隨著它們價格降低，高階品牌如Sony等市佔率就降低，而像是Apex一樣的無名廠牌就會取而代之。這就是商品化達到極致的結果：當價格越來越低時，市場競爭就無比激烈。（眾人笑）
這就是科技的四個切入點，科技壽命的四個階段。
我想討論一下其他的技術，也就是運用這理論來觀察我們注意到的科技，用這四個方法來跟你分析這個科技在哪一個階段。他們並非是市場上最先進的十大科技，只是我們所挑選的例子。他們正好在這不同的階段，但我認為有趣之處在於它們正接近這些轉捩點。
先談談基因排序吧。各位應該知道，基因排序整體而言，因為它都是用電腦進行，所以價格大幅下降，降幅就像是摩爾定律一樣。現在將有可能，或說未來將有可能，（如果Craig Venter今天能到場，他就能告訴各位），今年底人類基因排序將可以降價到四千萬美金，幾年前還需要十幾億美金。我們獲得造物主能力的時機已經越來越接近了。
更有趣的是，我們所發現的基因數(性狀)也正在快速增加當中。這每個基因都代表一個診斷測試的可能。終有一天，你可以用非常便宜的價格完成數萬種測試；只要你想知道，你就可以瞭解自己的每塊拼圖。這是另一個接近臨界價格的科技。
另外WHO的一個有趣研究也提到了：抗反轉錄病毒的基因藥品和混成製劑。2000年一月，價格是一萬美金，或每天27美金，然後學名藥先在巴西出現，擴展到其他國家。這對價格造成極大衝擊，今天則是每天低於5毛美金。如果你分析價格彈性，觀察這兩者之間的關連。隨著反轉錄病毒藥價下降，所治療的人數大幅上升。Clinton基金會與WHO相信它們到2005年時可以在全球治療三百萬人，其中兩百萬人在撒哈拉沙漠以南。這一切都是藥品價格下降的結果。
Linux 則是另外一個好例子。我們來談談臨界質量。這些科技則是逼近臨界質量的科技。你看這邊，紅線是Linux，而它達到了20%。有趣的是，在之前它就有過交叉點，但並非是重要的交叉，真正關鍵的交叉點是和藍線的交叉。但你看的出來兩條線的趨勢。20%就代表一切開始變得主流，不再只是阿宅的玩具了。這是我想像微軟總部Redmond的人半夜驚醒時想的東西。 (眾人笑)
另一個在我們身邊的科技則是油電混合動力車。我不知道是不是每個人都有買Prius2004，但它們真棒。如果你看看這個趨勢，到了2008年時，我並不認為這預測很誇張，它們將會佔據車輛2%的銷售量。雖然2%並非20%，但在汽車產業中，對這個緩慢的產業來說這已經極為巨大，趨勢已經產生。2%就代表你會在路上到處看到它們。而當油電混合動力車佔據市場時，也就代表將電能引擎帶入汽車產業。這是百年間汽車產業最大的變革。當你有了電能引擎之後，你就可以作任何事；你可以任意改變汽車架構；你可以有反饋煞車、線控駕駛；汽車可以換殼。這一切都從油電混合動力車開始，但卻讓我們走向汽車的全新年代。
VOIP則是各位可能都聽過的。同樣的，這也幾乎是憑空出現，現在還比較難使用。Kazaa創辦人新創了一家公司叫Skype。看看這些數字，它在2003年8月上線，已經有了四百萬註冊用戶。這就是臨界質量，而規格也因此受到影響。你們看到的是IP規格超越傳統的電信規格，這就是轉捩點。
如果《引爆趨勢》作者Malcom在這，請見諒。而這將會改變經濟，傳輸速度和產業巨頭們。就會變成這樣…最後，免費。
免費是件非常非常有趣的事情，免費是和數位息息相關的。再製成本幾乎是零，這和IP技術有關。因為這協定很有效率；也和光纖有關、因為我們擁有超多的寬頻。事實上，免費是矽谷給全世界的禮物。這既是經濟力量，也是科技力量。如果處理的不好，這會變成通貨緊縮的力量。和稀有物品相比，這是大量出現的。免費可能是最有趣的趨勢。
這裡則是歌曲的儲存量。一顆硬碟可以儲存多少首歌曲，要拿來計算影片也是可以。但是基本上，到了2008年的時候，一顆400美金的硬碟就可以儲存人類歷史上所有的歌曲。這考量到技術的進展、歌曲的數量。各位也看到了這些數字。各位都知道，音樂產業正在自我毀滅。我們正親眼看著這趨勢，而好萊塢也很擔心。它們所面對的力量是前所未見的，而它們的反應不但遲緩，更是毫無必要，甚至根本無法讓它們逃離這命運。
最後，我再給各位另一個免費的例子。這可能是最強大的例子；我們剛剛提到光纖，它們無止盡的寬頻通常會讓產品變得免費。這是印度長途電話每分鐘的價格。有趣的是，不過在1990年時，當價格是每分鐘兩美金時，印度和美國一樣都擁有一個管制的電話系統：毫無創意，反應極度緩慢。但接著就是大量出現的光纖。你無法阻擋！看看這價格降低的多快：在很多狀況是一分鐘只要七分錢帶來的就是便宜的電話費，甚至免費打到印度。然後就是那些氣壞了的程式設計師和外包。這多半是全球化中最劇烈的變化，也是最強而有力的經濟工具，也是我們世界上目前最強的工具。中國和印度，以及任何其他國家的力量都可以進入我們的市場。因為通訊變得免費，因此可以和我們的公司合作。
這只是一切的開始而已，我認為這可能是我們目前所知最重要的科技趨勢。謝謝各位。
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以下為系統擷取之英文原文
About this talk
Chris Anderson, the editor of WIRED, explores the four key stages of any viable technology: setting the right price, gaining market share, displacing an established technology and, finally, becoming ubiquitous.
About Chris Anderson (Wired)
As editor of WIRED, Chris Anderson is an authority on emerging technologies and the cultures that surround them.

Full bio and more links

Transcript
I'd like to speak about technology trends, which is something that many of you follow -- but we also follow, for related reasons. Obviously, being a technology magazine, technology trends are something that we write about and need to know about.

But also it's part of being any monthly magazine -- you live in the future. And we have a long lead time. We have to plan issues many months in advance, we have to guess at what public appetites are going to be six months, nine months down the road. So we're in the forecasting business.

We also, like a lot of companies, create a product that's based on technology trends. In this case, ours is about ideas and information, and, if we're lucky, some entertainment. But the concept's quite the same. And so we have to understand not only why tech's important, where it's going, but also, very importantly, when -- the timing is everything.

And it's interesting, when you look at the predictions made during the peak of the boom in the 1990s, about e-commerce, or internet traffic, or broadband adoption, or internet advertising, they were all right -- they were just wrong in time. Almost every one of those has come true just a few years later. But the difference of a few years on stock-market valuations is obviously extreme. And that's why timing is everything.

You've probably seen something like this before. This is the classic Gartner Hype Curve, which talks about kind of the trajectory of a technology's lifespan. And just for fun, we put a bunch of technologies on it, to show whether they were kind of rising for the first high peak, or whether they were about to crash into the trough of disillusionment, or rise back in the slope of enlightenment, or -- et cetera. And this is one way to do technology forecasting; get a sense of where technology is, and then anticipate the next upturn.

We tend to do any technology that we think is sufficiently important, we'll typically do it twice. Once, we want to do it first. We want to be the first to do it, for the geeks who appreciate that, we'll catch it right there at the technology-trigger. You can see in 1997, we put Linux on the cover. But then it comes back. And sufficiently big technologies are going to hit the mainstream, and they're going to burst out. And then it's time to do it again. Last year. And that's one way that we try to time technology trends.

I'd like to talk about a way of thinking about technology trends that I call my grand unified theory of predicting the future, but it's closer to a petite unified theory of predicting the future. It's based on the presumption, the observation even, that all important technologies go through four stages in their life -- at least one of the four stages, sometimes all four of the stages. And at each one of these stages, can be seen as a collision -- a collision with something else -- for example, a critical price-line that changes both the technology and also changes its effect on the world. It's an inflection point. And these are the inflection points that tell you what the next chapter in that technology's life is going to be, and maybe how you can do something about it.

The first is the critical price. The first stage in a technology's advance is that it'll fall below a critical price. After it falls below a critical price, it will tend, if it's successful, to rise above a critical mass, a penetration. Many technologies, at that point, displace another technology, and that's another important point. And then finally, a lot of technologies commoditize. Towards the end of their life, they become nearly free.

Each one of those is an opportunity to do something about it; it's an opportunity for the technology to change. And even if you missed, you know, the first boom of Wi-Fi -- you know, Wi-Fi did the critical price, it did the critical mass, but hasn't done displacement yet, and hasn't done free yet -- there's still more opportunity in that.

I'd like to demonstrate what I mean by this by telling the story of the DVD, which is a technology which has done all of these. The DVD, as you know, was introduced in the mid-1990s and it was quite expensive. But you can see that by 1998, it had fallen below $400, and $400 was a psychological threshold. And it started to take off. And you can see that the units started to trend up, the hidden inflection point, it was taking off.

The next thing it hit, a year later, was critical mass. In this case, 20 percent is often a good proxy for critical mass in a household. And what's interesting here is that something else took off along with it -- home-theater units. Suddenly you have a DVD in the house, you've got high-quality digital video, you have a reason to have a big-screen television, you have a reason for Dolby 5.1 surround-sound. And maybe you have reasons for starting to connect them, and bring the rest of your entertainment in. What's interesting also, is note that Netflix was founded in 1999. Reed Hastings is here. He clearly saw that that was a moment, that was an inflection point, that he could do something with.

The next phase it hit was displacement. You can see around 2001, it finally out-sold the VCR. And here too, you can see the implications in the world at large. Netflix was right -- the Netflix model could capitalize on the DVD in a way that the video-rental stores couldn't. Among the DVD's many assets is that it's very small, you can stick it in the mailer, and post it cheaply. That gave an advantage; that was an implication of the technology's rise that wasn't obvious to everybody.

And then finally, DVDs are approaching free. There's a company called Apex, a no-name Chinese firm, who has, several times in the past year, been the number-one DVD seller in America. Their average price, for last year, was 48 dollars. You're aware of the perhaps apocryphal Wal-Mart stampede over the 30-dollar DVD. But they're getting very, very cheap, and look at the interesting implication of it. As they get cheaper, the premium brands, the Sonys and such, are losing market share, and the no-names, the Apexes, are gaining them. They're being commodified, and that's what happens when things go to zero. It's a tough market out there. (Laughter)

Now they've introduced these four ways of looking at technology; these four stages of technology's life. I'd like to talk about some other technologies out there, just technologies on our radar -- and I'll use this lens, these four, as a way to kind of tell you where each one of those technologies is in its development. They're not necessarily the top-10 technologies out there -- they're just examples of technologies that are in each one of these periods. But I think that the implications of them approaching these crossovers, these intersections, is interesting to think about.

Start with gene sequencing. As you probably know, gene sequencing -- in a large part, because it's built on computers -- is falling in price at a kind of a Moore's Law-like level. It is now possible -- will be possible, and if Craig Venter indeed comes today, he may tell you something about this -- to sequence the human genome for 40 million dollars by the end of this year. That's as opposed to billions just a few years ago. You know, our ability to capture the tools of creation are getting closer and closer.

What's interesting is that at the same time, the number of genes that we're discovering are rising very quickly. Each one of these genes has potential diagnostic test. There will come a day when you can have hundreds of thousands of tests done, very cheaply, if you want to know. You can learn about your own mosaic.

Here's another technology that's approaching a critical price. This is a fascinating research from WHO that shows the effect of generic drugs on anti-retroviral drug compounds and cocktails. In January 2000, the price was 10,000 dollars, or 27 dollars a day. The generics came in, first in Brazil and elsewhere, and the effect was just dramatic on pricing. Today it's less than 50 cents a day. And what's interesting is if you look at the price elasticity, if you look at the correlation between these two, as the anti-retrovirals come down, the number of people you can treat goes radically up. And the Clinton Foundation and WHO believe that they can treat three million people worldwide by 2005 -- two million in sub-Saharan Africa. And the falling price of drugs has a lot to do with that.

Linux is another good example. Now we've switched to critical mass. These are now technologies that are hitting critical mass. If you look here, here's Linux in red, and it's hit 20 percent. Interestingly, it's done a crossover before, but not the crossovers that matter. The crossover that's going to matter is the one with the blue. But you can look and see the direction those lines are going, you can see that at the 20 percent, it's now taken seriously. It's not just for the geeks any more. That is, I imagine, what people in Redmond wake up in the middle of the night thinking about. (Laughter)

Another technology that we see all around us out here is hybrid cars. I don't know whether anybody has a Prius 2004, but they're fantastic. And if you look at the trends here, by about 2008 -- and I don't think this is a crazy forecast -- they'll be two percent of auto sales. Two percent isn't 20 percent, but in the car business, which is slow moving, that's huge; that's arrival. At two percent, you start seeing them on the roads everywhere.

And what's interesting about the hybrids taking off is you've now introduced electric motors to the automobile industry. It's the first radical change in automobile technology in 100 years. And once you have electric motors, you can do anything: you can change the structure of the car in any way you want. You can have regenerative braking, you can have drive-by-wire, you can have replaceable body shapes -- it's a little thing that starts with a hybrid, but it can lead to a whole new era of the car.

Voice Over IP is something you may have heard something about. Again, it's kind of coming out of nowhere, it's a little hard to use right now. There's a company created by the Kazaa founders called Skype. Look at these numbers. They launched it in August of last year; they already have nearly four million registered users -- that's critical mass. And the same thing's happening on the carrier side. You're looking at IP taking over from some of the traditional telecom standards. This is a tipping point -- if Malcolm's here, forgive me -- and it's going to change the economics, and the speed, and the players in the industry; it's going to look a little bit like that.

And finally, free. Free is really, really interesting. Free is something that comes with digital, because the reproduction costs are essentially free. It comes with IP, because it's such an efficient protocol. It comes with fiber-optics, because there's so much bandwidth. Free is really, you know, the gift of Silicon Valley to the world. It's an economic force, it's a technical force. It's a deflationary force, if not handled right. It is abundance, as opposed to scarcity. Free is probably the most interesting thing.

And here you have just the number of songs can be stored on a hard drive. You know, there could be a film's [unclear] there, but it's basically, every song ever made could be stored on 400 dollars worth of storage by 2008. It takes that entire element, the physical element, of songs off the table. And you've seen the numbers. I mean, you know, the music industry is imploding in front of our very eyes, and Hollywood's worried as well. They're facing a force that they haven't faced before. And their response is draconian, and not necessarily the one that's going to get them out of this.

And finally, I'll give you one last example of free -- perhaps the most powerful of all. I mentioned fiber optics: their abundancy tends to make things free. This is the price of a phone call to India per minute. And what's interesting is that it was just 1990 when it was more than two dollars a minute. India still has a regulated phone system and so did we. It was surprisingly non-innovative, moved very slowly, but then there was just so much fiber out there, you couldn't hold back, and look how quickly the price fell. It's seven cents a minute, in many cases.

And the consequence of cheap phone calling, free phone calling, to India, is the pissed-off programmer, is the outsourcing. It is probably one of the most dramatic shifts in globalization, and one of the most powerful economic tools that we're seeing in our world today. The force of India, and then China, and any other country that can contact our markets and will work with our companies -- because the communications are free -- is just beginning to be felt. And I think that's probably one of the most important technology trends that we're looking at today.
Thank you.
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