
149
17
Infrastructure
and Growth
Zooming In on the
Micro Level
Our earlier discussion about the future of mobile devices in general and
e-books in particular had a number of hidden assumptions. That is, we
assumed that digital displays, memory, network bandwidth, and proces-
sors would become exponentially faster, cheaper, and more abundant. These
expectations have proved to be true for at least the past forty years. This
amazing track record of the information technology (IT) industry to deliver
higher and higher levels of performance at lower prices can be illustrated by
an old joke attributed to Bill Gates, “If GM had kept up with technology l ...