Elevations

Change happens. And it keeps on happening. Everything is always in a state of flux. From the cells in our body to our relationships with one another to the state of the art in technology. There is no endpoint or plateau. There is only progression, instantiation, elevation, transformation.

One of the things that kind of baffles me is how little people seem to think about what's coming next. We kind of take it for granted in some ways. We know that every four or five years there will be a new generation of video game consoles (starting this Christmas with Microsoft's Xbox 360), which will demonstrate awesome new capabilities that were never before available. These consoles won't cost considerably more than their past generation counterparts, despite their huge advantage in memory, processing speed, and dozens of new hardware features for drawing gorgeous graphics and handling ridiculous physics calculations on the fly, at 60 frames per second. Moore's Law in action -- the consumer version, at least. Better, faster, cheaper.

But it is not just horsepower that is progressing. Long-standing paradigms are changing, too. As Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said in an interview at E3 earlier this month: "we really feel that we need to create something that is very unique and different from today's gaming -- something that can stimulate interest from those who are not playing today's games...What Nintendo is trying to do, therefore, is to create a new interface and new theme of gaming that can really address the needs of the current non-gamers." Interfaces. Themes. Paradigms. All subject to the force of nature called progress.

I find it humorous when people say things like, 'by definition, the future never arrives' as an effort to try to discourage someone from looking forward when making an investment decision. Perhaps this is semantically accurate. But, tell that to someone who held DELL, MSFT, ORCL, or QCOM shares through the early 90s to today. It is easy to see that the future has indeed arrived, for each of them.

We all know that change happens. The question for growth investors in technology is, what is that change going to look like? How will the world of 2, 5, or 10 years from now look different from what we experience today? How will my life be changed? What kinds of new devices, new interfaces, new themes in technology will I, and hundreds of millions of other people interact with everyday? The good news for those trying to divine the answers: the seeds are already planted.

Cell phones already come with GPS navigation systems.

Billions of dollars are being plowed in to investments in cellular data networks, for transmission of mobile video and internet multimedia.

Apple's iPod music player has sold over 15 million units and demand is soaring.

Nokia is now the world's #1 digital camera manufacturer.

Current trends clearly indicate that the small screen size, low resolution and high power consumption of current cell phones needs to be addressed before the industry can make good on its investments in broader mobile data networks. These multi-billion dollar companies are not afraid of change and paradigm shifts. These are the forces that brought them to prominence in the first place. Their mission is to capture the power of that change and transform their product offerings to catch new market share and bring compelling new products and services to market, so that their profits keep growing and the shareholders keep smiling. They look for catalysts to bring about changes that few people see coming. They look for ways to quietly resolve even the most challenging of barriers that are standing between their companies and massive new revenue streams.

I've written a lot about location-based services and augmented reality software as the next wave in mobile technology. These will drive demand for head-up displays beyond what anyone is imagining right now. But even the obvious stuff like mobile TV, megapixel digital cameras in cell phones are signposts of what is to come.

Everything's moving the same way. There's no countervaling wind. Just acceleration. Transformations. Elevations.