经济萧条期必将死掉的10大事物

西西

The government says we've been in a recession for the past year. Experts say it'll be at least another year before it's over. And everybody says it's the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
Nice sound bite. What does that mean?
Who knows? We can be sure that this downturn will be totally differerent from the Depression, and that it will be different from the many recessions we've suffered every decade or every other decade since the '30s. I'm not an economist or a historian, but it seems to me that this recession will be something unprecedented.
One reason is that that there was no Internet or mobile technology in the 1930s. That means individual people and companies today have very-low-cost, high-efficiency alternatives for doing a wide range of activities. That will accelerate the demise of those things fated to be replaced anyway.
Here are 10 things that I believe won't survive the recession:
1. Free tech support
The practice still employed by some companies of paying humans to answer phones and solve consumers' problems with hardware or software will become a thing of the past. PCs, laptops and hardware peripherals, as well as application software will be purchased like airline tickets, with price becoming the sole criteria for many buyers. In order to compete on price, companies that now offer real tech support will replace it with message boards (users helping users), wikis, wizards, software-based troubleshooting tools and other unsatisfying alternatives.
2. Wi-Fi you have to pay for
Everyone is going to share the cost of public Wi-Fi because the penny-pinching public will gravitate to places that offer "free" Wi-Fi. Companies that charge extra for Wi-Fi will see their iPhone, BlackBerry and netbook-toting customers -- i.e., everybody -- taking their business elsewhere. The only place you'll pay for Wi-Fi will be on an airplane.
3. Landline phones
Digital phone bundles for homes (where TV service, Internet connections and landline phone service are offered in a total package) will keep the landline idea alive for a while, but as millions of households drop their cable TV service and as consumers look to cut all needless costs, the trend toward dropping landline service in favor of cell phone service only will accelerate until it's totally mainstream, and only grandma still has a landline phone.
4. Movie rental stores
The idea of retail operations where you drive to a store, pick a movie, stand in line and then drive home with the movie will become a quaint relic of the new fin de siècle (look it up!). The new old way to get movies will be discs by mail, and the new, new way will be downloading.
5. Web 2.0 companies without a business plan
The era when Web-based companies could emerge and grow on venture capital, collecting eyeballs and members at a rapid clip and deferring the business plan until later are dead and gone. Yeah, I'm talking to you, Twitter. Sand Hill Road-style venture capital is shrinking toward nothing, and investors in general will be hard to come by. Those few remaining investors will want to see real, solid business plans before the first dollar is wired to any start-up's bank.
6. Most companies in Silicon Valley
Tech company failures and mergers will leave the industry with a low two-digit percentage (maybe 25%) of the total number of companies now in existence. Like the automobile industry, which had more than 200 car makers in the 1920s and emerged from the Depression with just a few, Silicon Valley is in for some serious contraction. The difference is that the auto industry ended up with the Big Three, whereas the number of tech companies will grow dramatically again during the next boom.
7. Palm Inc.
Elevation Partners, which has among its principals U2's Bono, pumped a whopping $100 million into the failing Palm Inc. this week.
The idea is to give the company time to release its forthcoming Nova operating system, which will take the cell-phone world by storm and give Apple a run for its money. It would have been far more efficient, however, to just flush that money down the toilet. With the iPhone setting the handset interface agenda, BlackBerry-maker RIM kicking butt in the businesses market, and Google stirring up trouble with its Android platform, this is no time for a clueless company like Palm to be introducing a new operating system. By this time next year, Palm will be gone. And so might Elevation Partners.
8. Yahoo
Yahoo Inc. is another company that can't seem to do anything right. Or, at least, can't compete with Google. Yahoo will be acquired by someone, and its brand will become an empty shell -- used for some inane set of services but appreciated only by armchair historians (joining the ranks of Netscape, Napster and Commodore).
9. Half of all retail stores
Many retail stores are obsolete and will be replaced by online competitors. Entire malls will become ghost towns. By this time next year, most video game stores, book stores and toy stores -- as well as brick-and-mortar shops in many other categories -- will simply vanish. Amazon.com will grow and grow.
10. Satellite Radio
I'm sorry, Howard Stern. It's over. The newly merged Sirius XM Radio simply cannot sustain its losses. The company is already deeply in debt and would need to dramatically increase subscribers over the next six months in order to meet its debt obligations. Unfortunately, new car sales, which account for a huge percentage of satellite radio sales, are in the gutter and stand-alone subscriptions are way down.
Change is hard. But efficiency is good. While boom years gives us radical innovation and improve consumer choice, recessions help us focus on what's really important and accelerate the demise of technologies and companies that are already obsolete.
So say good-bye to these 10 things, and say hello (eventually) to a new economy, a new boom and a new way of doing things.



政府宣布，自从去年，我们就已经处于经济萧条期。专家预测，经济萧条期至少要持续到明年才能结束。人们一致认为，这是自1929年经济大萧条以来最严峻的经济萎靡时期。
说的好！说的是什么意思呢？
鬼才知道！但我们能确信的是，这次经济衰退和1929年的经济大萧条将是完全不同的，并且他与自20世纪30年代以来我们每十年或每二十年所经历的多次经济萧条也将是完全不同的。我不是经济学家，也不是历史学家，但在我看来，这次经济危机将是史无前例的。
原因之一是在20世纪30年代还没有互联网和移动通信技术。那就意味着，今天的个人和公司就有了超低成本、高效率的替代产品来完成各项工作。这将加速那些注定要被淘汰事物的消亡。
我认为，以下10种事物在经济萧条期将是无法生存的：
1. 免费的技术支持
实习生被一些公益型公司雇佣使用硬件或软件来解答和解决消费者的问题将成为历史。随着价格成为众多消费者购买产品的唯一标准，台式电脑、笔记本、硬件外围设备以及应用软件如飞机票一样都是要花钱购买的。为了获得价格上的竞争优势，现在那些提供实质技术支持的公司将采用留言板（用户帮助用户）、wiki协作软件、wizards向导、基于软件的故障维修工具和其他不太令人满意的替代产品将其取代。
2. 需要付费的Wi-Fi
人人都在准备分享公共Wi-Fi节约成本，因为小气的公众将会被吸引到能提供“免费”Wi-Fi的各个场所。那些对Wi-Fi服务额外收费的公司，将会看到他们的iPhone、黑莓和手提电脑消费者们——也就是每个人——都转移到其他免费场所处理事务。唯一要为Wi-Fi服务买单的场所就是——飞机上。
3. 固定电话
捆绑入户（电视服务、网络连接、固定电话服务完全都是打包提供的）的数字电话虽然能让继续使用固定电话这种观念还存在一段时间，但是随着千家万户取消了他们的有线电视服务，并且诸多消费者也有意节流开支，手机服务取代固定电话服务的趋势将会明显加速，并最终成为主流，只剩下奶奶辈的人仍然留用固定电话。
4.影碟租赁店
开车去一家影碟租赁店，挑选影片，排队，然后驾车回家，这种零售店的经营理念将成为新世纪古怪的遗物。看电影比较新潮点的做法就是邮递光盘，未来最新潮的方法将是下载电影。
5. 无商业计划的Web 2.0公司
通过获得风投，快速聚集眼球和会员，迟迟不推出商业计划，网络公司能脱颖而出并迅速成长的时代已经消逝。真的，我说的就是你——Twitter。Sand Hill风格的风险投资正在收缩殆尽，并且投资商一般很难碰到。那少许残存的投资商在其第一张钞票打入任何启动储蓄之前，将更情愿看到真实可靠的商业计划。
6. 硅谷的大多数公司
科技公司的破产和合并，将会使这该行业现有公司总数的较低两位数百分比例（可能是25%）的公司残存。像汽车制造业，20世纪20年代有200多家汽车制造商，而能在经济大萧条期脱颖而出的仅有寥寥几个。硅谷现在就正处于相当严重的萧条时期。不同之处是汽车制造业以通用、福特和克莱斯勒三巨头幸存而告终，而在下一次经济繁荣期，科技公司的数量将会再次出现剧增。
7. Palm公司
本周，著名摇滚乐团U2主唱Bono参股的美国风险投资公司Elevation Partners已向摇摇欲坠的Palm公司注入了1亿美元的巨资。
此举给Palm公司发布即将问世的Nova操作系统提供了时机，该系统将强攻整个手机市场，并将与苹果公司展开激烈竞争。它原本可以收效颇丰，然而，广种薄收，钱财都付之东流。随着iPhone设定手机界面日程，BlackBerry-maker RIM在商业市场中大展拳脚，以及Google Android平台兴风作浪，像Palm这种无能的公司根本没有时间推出他的新操作系统。到明年这个时候，Palm将会死掉，Elevation Partners也难免遭此厄运。
8. Yahoo
Yahoo是另一家看起来经营漏洞百出的公司。或者说，至少与Google无法抗衡。Yahoo将被人收购，他的品牌也将变成一具空壳——对一些空洞的服务有用但仅能得到脱离实际的历史学家们赏识（步Netscape，Napster和Commodore的后尘）。
9. 半数的零售店
好多零售店已经过时，将被网店取代。所有的大型商场都将变得门可罗雀。到明年这个时候，大部分视频游戏厅、书店和玩具店——还有很多其他领域的实体商店——将会完全消失。而Amazon.com的发展势头将会一浪高过一浪。
10. 卫星广播
霍华德·斯特恩（Howard Stern，美国著名无线广播和电视节目主持人），真对不住您，一切都结束了。最新合并的卫星广播供应商Sirius XM Radio已经难以为继。这家公司已经负债累累，在接下来的六个月中，必须急剧增加订购商以填补其债务漏洞。不幸的是，占据卫星广播广告销售巨大份额的新车销售陷入困境，单车订购量也一路下滑。
结局已经很难改变。但效果仍是好的。经济繁荣期给我们带来了激进的改革，同时改善了消费者的选择；经济萧条期则帮助我们把精力集中在最重要的事情上，同时加速了已经过时了的技术和公司的灭亡。
最后，向这10大事物道别，同时（最终）向新经济、新繁荣和新的做事方法问好。