Contents -- Preface -- What is here -- How to write an essay about the economics of technology -- How did this start? -- Acknowledgments -- Part I. Musings -- 1. Diamonds are Forever, Computers are Not -- Markets and changing quality -- Several phases -- The long view -- Down on one knee -- 2. A Birthday Even a Curmudgeon Could Love -- Why they're (almost) right -- Why they miss the mark -- So, what's to remember? -- 3. It has Bugs, but the Games are out of This World -- Innovative for its time -- Clocks and toys -- Designers' motives -- Parting thoughts -- 4. The Biology of Technology -- Technologists love the life cycle -- What do buyers see? -- The sellers see it differently -- Parting observations -- 5. Virulent Word of Mouse -- A background story -- Get behind the strategy -- One key condition -- Another key condition -- It depends on the web -- 6. An Earful about Zvi's E-mail -- Seeds of change -- Parallels -- Diffusion becomes personal -- Epilogue -- Part II. Observations, Fleeting and Otherwise -- 7. Repetitive Stress Injuries -- The basics of insurance and RSIs -- Handling unknown risks -- Potential resolutions -- Muddling through -- 8. To Have and to Have Not -- What is a techno-have and why is it important? -- Does any of this matter? -- Are these divisions entirely bad? -- Looking forward -- 9. Uncertainty, Prediction, and the Unexpected -- Competitive environments -- The difference between prediction and inevitability -- Ideas from unexpected corners -- Survival and planning -- 10. When Technologies Converge -- Convergence and markets -- System and market levels -- Ultrasound revealed -- More than technological determinism -- 11. Forecasting Commercial Change -- Waves of IT advances -- Why forecasting is difficult -- Epilogue -- 12. The Tape Story Tapestry: Historical Research with Inaccessible Digital Information Technologies.

The unwinding of the tape story -- Serendipity in the archives -- Searching for electronic records -- Private incentives to keep historical data -- The title held promise -- The search focuses on IBM -- Unlocking the archives at IBM -- After information is stored will anyone be able to retrieve it? -- References -- Part III. Developing the Digital World -- 13. The Salad Days of On-line Shopping -- Now we get to the interesting economics -- 14. Don't Call it a Highway! -- Highway economics -- What is the right metaphor? -- 15. Commercializing the Internet -- TCP/IP origins -- Commercialization of the Internet -- Why commercialization was so explosive -- 16. Building the Virtual World -- Vertical chain -- Creation of value -- Same opportunity, different strategy -- Adaptiveness -- 17. A Revolution? How Do You Know? -- Pervasive and rapid change -- Pervasive and unsettled characteristics -- Business experimentation moving forward -- 18. PCs, the Internet, and You -- Asymmetric treatment of access -- The end of common-carrier regulation -- The end of universal service -- Part IV. Internet Boom and Bust -- 19. An Era of Impatience -- The source of impatience -- Trade-offs everywhere -- Carpe diem and all that -- 20. Shortfalls, Downturns and Recessions -- Official definition -- High-tech downturn -- Why downturns are bad -- 21. Explaining Booms, Busts and Errors -- Adoption behavior -- Operational requirements -- Expectations -- 22. An Inside Scoop on the High-Tech Stock Market Bust -- Just the facts -- Explaining the decline -- Interest rates -- Deregulation -- Internet diffusion -- Y2K -- Attitudes -- What happened? -- It all came down -- 23. The Crash in Competitive Telephony -- The setting -- Economics of local carrying capacity -- Economics of geographic scope -- Economics of differentiated service -- Economics of the local regulatory environment.

Too much speculative entry -- 24. Too Much Internet Backbone? -- Features of the Internet backbone -- Geographic dispersion of capacity -- Coordination or crazy building? -- Where are we today? -- Part V. Prices, Productivity and Growth -- 25. Debunking the Productivity Paradox -- The party line -- A little intellectual history -- What's wrong with the paradox -- Keeping the paradox in its cage -- Improving the party line -- 26. Banking on the Information Age -- IT as critical infrastructure -- Technical change feeds on itself -- How IT benefits society -- 27. Measure for Measure in the New Economy -- Why IT's improvements are hard to measure -- New economic phenomena require new statistics -- It's easier to look where the light is brightest -- There's no typical experience -- 28. Pricing Internet Access -- Market structure and pricing -- Two myths about prices -- Hourly limitations -- Contracts for use prices -- 29. E-Business Infrastructure -- What do they do? -- What is infrastructure? -- What should be left to markets? -- 30. The Price is Not Right -- Counting accurately but wisely? -- Doing new things with speed -- The list goes on and on -- Changing communities -- Epilogue -- Part VI. Enterprise Computing -- 31. Client-Server Demand and Legacy Systems -- Enterprise computing and operations -- Some specific lessons -- Competition between old and new -- 32. Upgrading, Catching up and Shooting for Par -- Upgrading grudgingly -- Best versus average practice -- Narrowing the gap…a little -- 33. How Co-Invention Shapes our Market -- Large-scale computing -- Patterns of behavior -- Why co-invention matters -- Some implications -- 34. Which Industries Use the Internet? -- Definitions -- Participation -- Enhancement -- Comparisons -- Broader perspective -- 35. Where Did the Internet Go? -- An arising global village -- An unrelenting tyranny.

Rural view -- Industrial location -- Global village 1, urban tyranny 1: Who's winning? -- Part VII. Microsoft, from the Sublime to the Serious -- 36. Not a Young and Restless Market -- The software salesman -- The chip builder -- The lawyer -- The specter -- The nightmare -- The cure -- Closing credits -- 37. Return of the Jaded -- Soft Wars -- Return of the jaded -- The Umpire Strikes Back -- Lessons learned -- 38. Bill, Act Like a Mensch! -- What is a mensch? -- The political economy of computing -- Basic lessons in being a mensch -- Act like one too -- Managing like a mensch -- The future -- 39. Aggressive Business Tactics: Are There Limits? -- Traditional antitrust norms -- Dominant firms -- Twisting arms -- 40. Hung up on AT&T -- There is precedence -- Stock value in the long run -- Competition in the long run -- 41. Falling Through the Cracks at Microsoft -- Vertical contracting -- Another framework -- Two frameworks and a specific firm -- Part VIII. Platforms and Standards -- 42. Markets, Standards and Information Infrastructure -- Approaching the standardization process -- Definitions and distinctions -- Short-run analysis -- Many decision-makers and too many cooks -- Dueling locks-in users -- A single chef makes a menu of favorite recipes -- Long-run analysis: changing the basic recipe -- Technological innovation and industry evolution -- Standardization and the evolution of the information infrastructure -- Lock-in and control of technical options -- Organizational innovation or innovation by organizations -- Standards development organizations -- Appropriate standards? -- 43. Industrial Economics and Strategy: Computing Platforms -- Forces for inertia -- Platforms -- Concentration -- Standardization -- Focus on the platform, not the firm -- Forces for change -- New platforms -- Mobility of platforms -- Potential entry and the future.

Vertical disintegration -- Competitive crashes -- Diffusion of client-server platforms -- Formulating strategy when platforms are fluid -- Emergence of dominance after the competitive crash -- Persistence of incumbents -- On predicting the direction of technical change -- Communications in vertical relationships -- Firm contact in vertically disintegrated markets -- Competition check on vertical relationships -- Use of structural reform as a policy instrument -- Growing new platforms for today's systems -- Parting words -- Index.