[ih] GOSIP & compliance

[Clem Cole]

On Sat, Mar 19, 2022 at 5:29 PM Dave Crocker <dhc at dcrocker.net> wrote:

> On 3/19/2022 1:52 PM, Clem Cole via Internet-history wrote:
> >   There was not a new user base and the old user base
> > valued what it had.
>
>
> Please forgive my disagreeing again, but there was an enormous,
> potential user base.  Pretty much the entire world.  The established
> user base for TCP/IP was relatively small.
>
Fair enough and you do have a good point.   But I counter that a
>>potential user base<< is not a user base.
Again read Christensen's first book - he is (was) much more eloquent than I
(and includes a lot of data and graphics from studying this issue).

My point with OSI is that if they had satisfied that new user base, and it
grew at a faster rate than the established one,
Christensen says they could have succeeded.  In fact, Christensen's theory
talks about the disruptive technology
being  a 'lessor' technology when it first is introduced, but the new user
base values it while the old user base does not.
But because the new user base is growing so fast, the money is there to
improve the new and it will over take the old.

A nice example is how SMS texting took off -- it sucked compared to email
that you and I grew up with.  But the new user base at the time
(teens born in the late 80's/early 90s ) had access and didn't care that
keyboarding was hard or the limit to size of the messages.
It took off with them - it was something >>they<< valued and that new user
base took over the old one.
And as the user base got bigger, it got better -- the devices that could be
created improved and the issues were less and less a problem.
Now those devices can do both [although I personally hate sending much
email from my phone].

My own 20-30 yo kids grew up with it.   Getting my son to read email is
just not going to happen - if I want to communicate, the best
I can do is get him to use Signal.  My daughter went to college the same
way as he did,  but being a computer
scientist ( and working at Google for a few years),  I think she discovered
why texting is not as good
[although she sends Signal style txts to her mom].   That said, she also
traditionally uses SMS for her non-techie friends.

So to me, the problem is that while the >>potential<< was there as you
correctly point out.
The OSI development community did not deliver something that new users
valued.  They found the old scheme
(and it worked) so it grew.