Closed Systems Acting as Catalysts

Quite a few companies has been very successful with their proprietary closed systems. Some examples that come to mind are Microsoft (Windows, Office), Apple (Itunes), and Amazon (Kindle). A general fear with these very successful products is that they have a potential to become (natural) monopolies and damage consumer choice.

On the other hand, one can argue that these products bring a fresh approach to the market, heavily invest for take-off and disrupt the industry. They basically act like a catalyst.

According to the related wikipedia article, the term economic catalyst is used to describe entrepreneurs or companies who precipate a fundamental change in business or technology. We like catalysts as they bring innovation, change and freshness, but we don't like closed systems as they limit our choice. If these two clashing characteristics is combined in some products, can the final outcome be positive for the consumers or an industry overall?

Let's start with Microsoft and Windows. Windows has a market share of 90-95% and Microsoft is being widely criticised on some of their practices (I obviously won't comment on any to let you make your own judgement). Let's forget about these for a while and think about what the existence of Windows actually did for the computing industry: since its initial launch in early 80s, windows made it easier for end users to use PCs. Arguably, the industry would have been smaller if people didn't have Windows' easy interface in the early days [1].

One can make a similar point about Apple and Itunes. As cute as they are, Apple's products are pretty closed systems. It's typically hard (and in some cases illegal) to use software/media not purchased from Apple. The internet is full of documents explaining how to hack your own devices.

Before we say how bad this is, let's look at what Apple has done to the digital music industry:

• Share of (legal) digital music within total music shipments in the US was 10% in 2005, almost all of it sold through Apple [2]. In 2007 it was ~20% with the lion share (~17%) from Apple [2]. 
• In first half of 2009, the share of digital reached 35% with Apple shipping 25% of total US music alone [2]. 
• Total music shipments increased by almost 50% between 2005 and 2008 [3].

So all in all, Apple acted as a catalyst and arguably they disrupted an industry. More consumers enjoyed and paid for music. It became easier to buy music. Moreover, in this case with consumer pressure things became less closed over time, improving consumer choice.

Nowadays we are seeing a similar move in the e-readers. Amazon came up with Kindle in late 2007. You guessed it: Kindle was and still is a closed system. It in a way locks consumers to its platform, offering little or no choice other than buying books from Amazon itself. But then look at this data on US ebook sales revenues [4]:

Q1'02: $1.5m
Q4'07: $8m (this is when Kindle launched)
Q3'09: $46.5m

The growth in last 2 years is larger (both nominally and percentage) than in the 5 years ending in 2007. It's impossible to correlate this growth to Kindle only (or to any one factor), but stagnated growth before and aggressive growth after Kindle's launch date, combined with all the PR around Kindle, seem to be too much of a coincidence. I want to remind you that Sony Reader, which is mostly an open system, was in place a few years before the Kindle but failed to have Kindle's impact on ebook market.

All these products were closed systems. Do we like them closed? Not really, we want more choices to use them as consumers. But as long as these companies don't use monopolistic powers to prevent competition later on [1], closed systems might initially be beneficial to consumers by creating disruption in some industries.

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Photo credit: JenniPenni
Also, this post is more or less a data supported documentation of my recent discussion with a friend.



[1] The unfortunate practices that Microsoft adapted after their success, that resulted in a US Department of Justice action, raise the question of where to draw the line between cashing in on being a catalyst and becoming an abuser of power. I'll pass this topic for now.
[2] Apple Itunes Market share of US Retail music sales, Emarketer, and US physical and online music revenues, Emarketer (Subscription required)
[3] US Digital and Physical Music shipments, 2005-2008, Emarketer (Subscription required)
[4] International Digital Publishing Forum

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Humanity's Pace of Development, a Good Visualization

I was reading Tim Harford's Logic of Life. It's a great book from a smart economist and has a few very interesting revelations about daily life. I was particularly impressed by one visualization it had in its closing chapter, 'a million years of logic', and I thought I'd share.

It is really hard for us to see how fast things are developing lately. Let's do this together; assume all of last million years has happened in one year. Using that scale, we learnt how to control fire sometime in spring and Homo Sapiens appeared in mid-November.

Circa 19 December was when we have seen cave paintings. Egyptian Paraohs' time was around 30 December. 31st December have witnessed the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.

Columbus discovered Americas roughly at 7:30 PM. First world war began 11:10 PM. We invented the internet at 11:50 PM. Google at 11:55, Facebook around 11:58 and iPhone around 11:59. Quite amazing eh?

We always say things are developing very fast lately and we know they'll only get faster. I found this as a smart way of putting things into perspective and show 'how fast'.

Now stop and think for a second about this pace. Then move on with your fast life :)

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Augmented Reality: Can it be Monetized?

Augmented Reality refers to combination of real world information and computer generated data. The idea is to add information on top of what you see to make more information available to you. The image on the side is one basic implementation of augmented reality.

A few years back, this sort of technology could only be seen in hollywood productions (remember how terminator saw the world, with lots of text and numbers beside images?), now it is on its way to hit the mass market. Let's see some of it's uses.

I'll start with a cool demo on star trek. First let's watch the video:

The great thing is, this is live today. Anyone with a PC that has a camera can test this. Check it out here.

Also, the CNN hologram interview in November 2008 was another use of augmented reality. I have to say this was a bit cheeky though, as people in the room didn't see anything, but the hologram appeared only on TV. Still a good step in the right direction.

Besides the geeky implications of this technology, there are two monetization opportunities that can be captured rather soon: Gaming and Apparel.

The opportunity in gaming is pretty obvious, I've covered what's coming here. The market is already there, if we keep in mind that [$ = user x $/user], better technology implementation will both 1) make the current customer base happier with more gaming applications [higher $/user] and 2) make gaming more usable by a larger audience [more users] so the $ pie will grow by both sides of the equation.

The opportunity in apparel is also interesting. Augmented reality can be used to improve user experience in online apparel sales, which is rather weak now. According to emarketer, consumers in the UK spent 57 pounds to online and 136 pounds to electronics (and 67 pounds to beer and spirits) on average [1]. In real world, apparel spend per capita is obviously not half of electronics for the majority so there clearly is some opportunity there.

I don't have data for this, but chances are, the reason why people don't buy clothing online is because they don't feel comfortable with what they're buying: will it fit, how will it really look etc. I don't think people are fond of going to crowded stores to browse thousands of irrelevant stuff in order to pick a few (my wife can always prove me wrong though ;-) ).

Below is a video of an example technology from Zugara to illustrate what I mean by improving user experience. The application is very basic for now, and in my humble opinion not 'there' yet, but gives you the idea of what is ahead of us.

Who knows, perhaps the infamous boo.com was only 10 years ahead of its time.

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Picture credit: HowStuffWorks

[1] December 2008 data. Full info is here, but you'll need subscription.

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Recent Step Changes in Technology that Accelerated Pace of Innovation

I was just going over my shared items in friendfeed and noticed an interesting trend: A noticeable amount of news that have given me some sort of excitement are around touch screens and motion controls.

I have two products to thank for this :) Apple iPhone and Nintendo Wii.

Wii: Nintendo somehow decided to go against the common wisdom (at the time) that the success in gaming platforms were dependent on better and faster graphics. They introduced an ultimately simple to play platform that doesn't require advanced controlling skills.

Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata recently said the following about motion control devices becoming industry standard: "It's a good thing because we believed that we were doing the right and now others have validated that". Now that's a very humble way of expressing the fact that they have changed an entire industry. Look at the videos below to see what Microsoft and Sony are producing or envisioning to exceed Nintendo.

Here's the Sony PS3 Motion Controller demo video:

And here's the Project Natal (visionary) video from Microsoft for XBox:

Although I'm not hardcore gamer these are still quite exciting technologies. All thanks to Nintendo's initial blue ocean strategy.

iPhone: Before Apple launched iPhone in June 2007, the mobile phone area had become a bit boring. Yes Blackberry was there, yes phone producers were launching new phones but in my opinion most players were milking the market without really introducing any decent improvements to consumer experience. I realize that's a bold statement but think about this: how many non-geeks that you knew were browsing from their mobile before 2007?

Then came iPhone and created a sense of rush in the market. Here's what happened within 2 short years:

- the mobile user interfaces improved significantly

- there is a mobile software ecosystem now (mobile software are being sold significantly more)

- smartphone market grew substantially

- laptops are focusing on touch screens. Notice how this hints to a future convergence between mobile devices and computers. Compare that to the past talks of a potential handheld and mobile phone convergence.

Nowadays the pace of innovation and improvement is only accelerating. Here're some of the latest news around the topic:

It’s Gonna Be A Summer Of SmartPhone Love

A Flood Of Android Phones Coming This Year

Whether you like iPhone or not, I think we should all be thankful to Apple for pushing significant change in an important industry.

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Asking Users to Pay: Still a Taboo

It's not a secret: social networking sites have a monetization problem. To the best of my knowledge all major ones including facebook, myspace, bebo, hi5, friendster etc are trying to make money from advertising. None of them have been a success story so far.

The problem is that none of these networks have made an innovation in advertising. They have huge pageviews and are using brute force to monetize: 

very high pageviews X very low CPMs = unsatisfactory revenues

On the other hand, there are some not-so-mainstream players, like SecondLife, GaiaOnline, Chinese Tencent, and some Japanese ones, which successfully overcame a taboo: they're able to charge their users for value added services.

The idea is to offer users some value added services, such as a decoration to include in your homepage (that everybody knows is a paid item) or offer a paid gift to send to someone else etc. This is almost impossible to accept for some people, but there are some people who are willing to pay for these services.

Why would people pay for these? There might be many reasons (status building, time saving, visual appreciation etc) but does 'why' really matter? At the end of the day people attribute some value and do pay to these stuff. Why do some people buy anything branded when a very cheap chinese version is available at a fraction of the cost? Same story here.

Some smarter networks went beyond just offering paid content to their users: they created an economy where suppliers can be formed within their system and these suppliers can sell directly to the users. The notable example is SecondLife and its Linden Dollar based economy. Think about it: users are happy to have a choice and pay for services/e-goods, suppliers are happy and innovating more and more, the social network is happy, investors are happy...

I struggle to understand why no major social network is putting a significant effort behind this. Especially when we know there are success stories around it. I fully agree that membership should be free. But why not giving the users a choice and providing them with additional services?

Maybe the old days where charging users was a taboo have a stronger impact to today. Maybe it has to do with US culture - don't forget that Europe was significantly ahead of the game in mobile network monetization on entertainment front. 

Mobile entertainment market (estimated to be $65B in 2012) was monetized much earlier and arguably better in Europe. As the two mainstream players in social setworking are US based, let us hope that social networks' fate will be different than mobile networks' in monetization.

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Further reading: On the same topic, I found the following article on how to monetize a social network very interesting too, you might want to check it out.

Photo credit: blentley

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Waste, Efficiency and Innovation

Being able to waste plays an important part in evolution. Females prefer the males that can waste, in theory. Waste here means ownership of something not required for survival, a longer than necessary tail in birds for instance.

Anders Møller found out that male swallows with artificially lenghtened tails were preferred more by female swallows [1]. There are theories to explain this, generally around the following lines: if you can survive AND afford to waste, you must be good. This doesn't apply to human females of course, no expensive diamonds or champagne can sway their minds ;)

Companies always try to avoid waste, probably rightly so. In Innovator's Dilemma however, Clayton M. Christensen pointed out that our very successful companies have a tendency to focus on their most successful products, direct most resources to these and thus risk losing their ability to innovate. This effect makes them efficient companies but sometimes make them dinosaurs.

Waste is bad, there is no question about it. On the other hand, if I somehow combine the above two paragraphs, I come to the conclusion that maybe if directed wisely, waste can accelerate technological innovation. Let's think how credible this argument is. A good starting point is the rules of economic efficiency:

- No one can be made better off without making someone else worse off.

- More output cannot be obtained without increasing the amount of inputs.

- Production proceeds at the lowest possible per-unit cost.

These are all valid points when processes and technologies used in production are all stable, and thus production operates within the limitations of status-quo. This is all good, but there is a theoretical limit that a company will hit by making stuff more efficient. To reach beyond that point, innovation will be needed.

Arguably, investing in innovation will lead to some waste in the system. That is because randomness seems to play part in innovation process. You can read more in The Randomness of Corporate Innovation, here's a quick finding:

“The most effective innovations are the result of formal product development teams in less than 50 percent of cases. The rest of the time, effective innovations stem from rogue inventors or “under the radar” skunk works.”. This obviously doesn't mean innovation is fully random, but there is some randomness factor in it. You can read more on this topic in The Rules of Innovation.

Some companies realize this and have official schemes trying to boost innovation at the risk of creating some waste. Google's famous 20 percent time to engineers is one of them. W.L. Gore is another company which implements such schemes. One can argue, these are all waste because engineers could be working on defined projects for current products during the time freed for them. On the other hand, that would make the companies more efficient, but maybe less innovative.

So there is an interesting relation between innovation, efficiency and waste. This probably is a result of randomness, or the partly random nature of innovation. Well, maybe female swallows weren't irrational after all: ability to waste could be an important asset.

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Photo credit: cdbtx

[1] Møller, 1988

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Technological Singularity: Economic Impact

I was watching Sarah Connor Chronicles and heard the term "singularity" in one of the episodes. I had no clue about what it meant and did a quick research. Wikipedia defined technological singularity as a theoretical future point of unprecedented technological progress.

The concept was a bit too theoretical for my taste but just as I was about to close the page I've noticed an interesting article by Robin Hanson: Economics Of The Singularity.

Well it seems we have experienced singularities in the past and they had a huge impact on our civilization. Here's some interesting data from the article:

- 2 million years ago there were 10.000 humans (or rather protohumans) on earth. On 10.000 BC, this figure went up to 4 million humans. Assuming the economic activities at that time were around food and shelter, we can say there was an almost perfect correlation between population and economy. Thus, in line with the population, the world economy doubled every 250.000 years or so.

- Once these 4 million humans settled down and started the farming revolution. This resulted in more stability and better conditions for human survival, thus the world economy started to double every 900 years. The farming revolution was a singularity and resulted in exponential growth (~250 times faster than before) [1].

- Then came the industrial revolution, which introduced machine based production to our lives. According to Hanson's article, in the last few centuries the world economy doubled every 15 years or so (~60 times faster than the previous 900 years). Guess what, industrial revolution was another singularity.

Singularity is an interesting concept and it definitely exists. The 1 million dollar question is: what is the next singularity? There is a fair bit amount of thinking in this space and a popular theory I noticed is the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).

I've included some further reading below if you're interested in the topic. A caveat: there is a general tendency to forecast the end of human civilization with the rise of AI - so these could be interesting information but not for everyone's taste.

Anyway let's see if we'll be lucky (or unlucky) enough to experience a singularity moment within our lifetimes :)

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5-Minute Singularity Intro

Artificial Intelligence Will Kill Our Grandchildren (Singularity)

Why the future doesn't need us

Photo Credit: Justin Gaurav Murgai

[1] Bradford DeLong, Estimating World GDP, One Million B.C. - Present

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Evolution of Cloud Computing: What Does it Offer

Evolution starts with a mutation, which is a permanent change in the structure (of the DNA). If it's a useful change females favor individuals that has this mutation and in the next generations the whole species evolves into a new structure.

In the above paragraph, swap the words mutation with innovation, females with users, individuals with companies, and species with industry. And there you go, you have the anatomy of any industry.

One of the mutations we have seen in the technology is the rise of cloud computing. The term cloud computing means that you receive IT processing as a service rather than as a product or software. The easiest way to visualize this is to compare to electricity: local computing is comparable to everyone owning a mechanical generator to produce their own electricity. Cloud computing is about centralizing the computing activity, similar to producing electricity in power plants and distributing it via grids.

One of the first companies to operate in cloud computing arena was salesforce.com. They offered a CRM solution to companies and hosted the application in their servers allowing access through web browsers. Thus, salesforce.com took out the need to install and maintain software on companies' site. This system is very appropriately called Software as a Service (SaaS).

The system has proven to be favored by the users over time and we now have many other players in the arena. A famous one is Google Apps, which offers email, calendar, document editing and more in the cloud. Even Microsoft, which arguably benefited most from local computing, is increasing its focus on cloud computing services now.

Going back to our evolution example, if some users are preferring cloud computing over the current way of doing things, it should be offering some advantages. Here's what I believe the main advantages that this innovation (or mutation) provides to users:

- Access to latest technology: In many cases per user cost of offering cloud services doesn't materially change by the client's user base. This means small businesses now have access to latest technologies with meaningful costs. Arguably, up-front setup costs are also lower thanks to standardized setup processes. The most exciting point here is that literally all internet enabled companies have access to latest technologies - this is particularly good news for emerging markets and smaller cities in developed markets.

- Easier remote access to your data: A cloud is high up in the atmosphere and it's visible from a wide area. Cloud computing is similar to that. Because the whole system is designed in such a way that everywhere is remote to the data, in theory it doesn't matter if you access it from different locations (such as home or work). Obviously companies might restrict this access to specific locations for various reasons.

- Greater collaboration possibilities: In the cloud, no specific user "hosts" a file or a data. This allows multiple people to work on the same files or tasks at the same time, offering a greater collaborating option.

- Outsource a significant chunk of IT: Many companies don't have advanced IT capabilities and they shouldn't be required to. Cloud computing moves the bulk of IT management to the provider's shoulders. To visualize, think about this: the current structure is similar to every company producing their own electricity. This requires a higher need for electricians on board, especially if your electricity use is high. With power plants, you won't really need a full scale staff on board.

These advantages lead to a higher adaptation of cloud applications like software as a service and the conversion trend is accelerating. Here are some stats about cloud computing [1]:

56% of internet users use webmail services such as Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo! Mail.

34% store personal photos online.

29% use online applications such as Google Documents or Adobe Photoshop Express.

7% store personal videos online.

5% pay to store computer files online.

5% back up hard drive to an online site.

The figures are proving the user demand, which is forming a strong base for demand from the corporate world. After all, it's easier for companies to move to the cloud if their employees are already used to it. However, it's obviously not possible to say that companies in general moved to the cloud (yet).

As there are strong advantages on offer, cloud computing will arguably become a standard but this might take some more time. How much time, tough to guesstimate. Do you have an idea?

I'll speculate about the future of cloud computing later on.

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If you liked this post, you might also like my earlier post about the endless circle of personal vs cloud computing.

[1] Data from Pew / Internet Data Memo

Photo credit: alkhodarev

I was inspired by the following articles, you might find them interesting as well:

Cloud Computing: The Evolution of Software-as-a-Service

Is the enterprise ready for cloud computing?

What is the State of Cloud Computing?

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RIAA is Suffering: Possible Learnings from Suing Your Customers

RIAA stands for "Recording Industry Association of America". This is the group that sued Napster and Grokster and put draconian controls over the use of digital music.

These 'victories' were encouraging for them. But somehow people still continued to download music online. As trying to convince users to pay for digital music was not even an option RIAA (and similar organizations) started to sue the individual users. Read the last sentence again. These smart folks actually sued their potential customers.

Once you're in this game, it's very difficult to turn back until you collapse. You have to put more power behind your failing strategy because your reputation as an organization or an executive is on the line. That's exactly what happened.

Next came the push of DRM, or Digital Rights Management, which is one of these technologies that doesn't work smoothly - to say the least. The idea is to restrict the capability of transfering music from one device to another because most users are cheaters and without DRM the sales numbers will plummet. It has been a bad user experience overall. The worst thing is that people who want to cheat somehow go around it anyways.

These developments meant RIAA (and similar organizations) created a near monopoly buyer with their own hands: itunes. Apple satisfied the music labels to some extent and with the combined iPod lock-in effect the huge demand flowed to itunes.

What's the P&L of all this circus?

- Did people stop downloading illegal music?

No! There are many new file sharing sites. One of them, 'pirate bay', has another very famous trial now.

- Did the music industry benefit from this potential sales channel to the maximum extent?

No! It's quite sad that there still is so much money left on the table. There is a huge demand that could be further monetized with the right approach.

- Has RIAA proven its value?

No! Last I checked music industry was shrinking. RIAA laid off a massive number of people last week. Chances are, organizations supporting RIAA are decreasing the funding because they couldn't see the upside. Surprisingly, suing your customers turned out to be an unsustainable business practice :) Or should we blame it all on the pirates once again?

What can we learn from all this circus:

1- When industry dynamics change, you might need to adapt your business: It's really not easy to change. What's more difficult is not to feel threatened by the possibility of change - it's a basic human survival learning: change can destroy you fast. However, in some cases, if you don't change you'll become obsolete.

In this case, if the music industry continues to act like it has been, we'll see the rise of more companies that let users discover their long-tail bands, at a fraction of the current costs. If in the next 10 years these companies become mass market the hits will be created organically and the music labels might be cut out of the equation.

2- Accept your mistakes and avoid the 'Easter Island' effect at all costs: In his great book 'Collapse', Jared Diamond talks about the mystery of the Easter Island. In this island, there are huge statues (pictured at the top) but no trees or tools that would help the islanders to erect these statues. What happened is that the islanders cut their trees in order to build these large statues and they went on building them until they cut the last tree. Next thing you know their civilization collapsed after the disappearance of trees. How unexpected.

What do you think the guy who cut the last tree was thinking? What do you think RIAA was thinking when suing their customers? It's OK to make mistakes but there are many points when you can go back to the right track - don't go psycho and accept that you're mistaken. Sway by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman might be your book.

3- Look at the bright side and use the opportunity with technology: This is easier said than done. If music industry had seen digital as a potential rather than a threat, things could have been significantly different today. On the minimum they would have many more suppliers and thus more revenues.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to claim that letting piracy is the right approach. I definitely believe in compensating the efforts of creative professionals. My point is that there are better approaches than turning aggressive towards the entire world. Trying to use new technologies for monetization is one of them.

Nowadays, we're seeing a similar story in the publishing industry. The surge of ebook readers (like kindle 2) is the best thing that could happen to book publishers, if you look from the right angle.

I don't even want to talk about the video industry: These guys had originally thought that beta, VHS or DVDs would kill their business completely at the time. Guess what, these turned out to be very profitable businesses with the right approach.

So what do you think now? Will publishing and video industries be able to avoid the mistakes of the music industry?

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Photo credit: wikimedia

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The Cheesy Robots vs Humans War Scenario's Required Symptoms

In my last post I shared my quick research on robots can do today. I am quite excited to see the developments as I strongly believe that robots can improve our life quality and civilization overall. Actually I'm just dreaming about the day when a robot can do all housework for us :)

On the other hand, there is quite negative press on how the development of robots might mean the end of human civilization. I believe these scenarios are mostly paranoid, but I took the liberty of laying down one possible path of robots reaching the level of potential threats described in these scenarios [1].

Below phases are obviously fictitious but note that I'm copying some characteristics of living organisms, or their success factors with the framework of evolution.

Phase 1: Will to Survive

I'm pretty sure humans will 'order' robots to survive at some point, when it makes sense. This is pretty straight-forward: one of the more interesting problems with our machines today is that you make a mistake in setting it up and the machine breaks down. Or you let a machine run by itself and when you're back it might be broken for one reason or another.

Any living organism has a survival instinct. Assuming the living organisms are the ultimate (also maybe impossible) success level robotics aim, our robots will need to have the will to survive. This is us simply copying the nature as chances are nature has a better design ready for us.

It is not trivial to create a survival instinct in robots without endangering human survival. Lions for example could be very scary to humans when they are trying to survive; same story here. To give you an idea of the challenges, have a look at the Three Laws of Robotics of Isaac Asimov:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.


2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.


3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

This is pretty controversial and challenging to execute, but we humans will find a way of making sure our robots want to survive.

Phase 2: Self Repair

It will prove to be pretty boring to take a robot to repair in every break-down. Just think about your simple machines today, wouldn't it be nice if they could repair themselves? Advanced living organisms have such immune systems.

Acquiring self repair capabilities will have phases in its own. For example, robots will first be able to replace their broken parts with already produced ones (exactly like a car replacing its own tire) but eventually they'll be able to assemble parts on their own like living organisms can do to some extent.

Phase 3: Reproduction

Let me be clear from the start: I don't think we're going to see robots giving birth to robots (it might not be necessary anyway). However, we'll definitely have robots producing robots. It's very likely that humans will ask them to do so as we'll need more and more skilled workforce with time.

In the beginning it'll be machines producing robots with a lot of human intervention like any production line we have today. Once robots get enough processing power, the will to survive and the ability to repair themselves they will be able to produce new robots on their own as they'll know how to do so.

And there you go, once we have all these three phases finished we will have the basic setup ready for the typical cheesy robot vs human war scenario. I don't think the war will ever realize but in case you are part of the group which expects a war you can wait for these symptoms before you're even afraid of a war.

Also, if you don't believe that we're likely to see life patterns in technology think about viruses. At the end of the day, computer viruses are human invention and our systems could do perfectly well without them. However, life has a pattern which repeats itself in different areas, and viruses are just one example of it. They emerged in the first setup that made its existence possible.

Similar to connected computers leading to the emergence of viruses, I believe improvements in robot technology will lead to the 3 phased pattern above. Whether this will result in a war between robots and humans or not is something you should make your own decision on :)

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[1] Two remarks about the topic: 1) As you saw in my last post, we're still trying to solve simple logistical issues like balance, sensing around, moving smoothly etc. Arguably we're 1-2 decades away from any significant robot interaction. 2) Not all of machines are robots. There are plethora of things which can go wrong with our machines today (including the military ones). My aim here is to stay at the macro level and touch the evolution rather than day to day operation.

Photo credit: Pierre J.

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