OPINION:
The Reagan days brought a small change to the world of work by allowing companies to off-load retirement planning onto the individual with the proliferation of 401ks. That left the field wide open to dissolve companies without pension accounting in perpetuity and would never have happened without the infant personal computer technology. The economy boomed as new companies could get into and out of changing markets without creating pension plans.
COVID-19 has similarly changed the world of work. Without the need to buy space and create a workplace, businesses will be flexible. The wear and tear occupants produce in office buildings has been off-loaded to the residential landlord without time to raise residential rents. That will come. This is not new. Freelance careers have been on the rise for two decades and we are back to the Age of Darwin, when the educated and farmers worked from the house and only the blue-collar workers — factory and shop helpers — worked “away.”
Both changes have downsides. As the end of the baby boom retires, savers face pending inflation with incredulity. Pre-retirees remember the hardship inflation caused our parents in paying for our college or just food. With every stimulus and debt increase from Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, we create new gold bugs. Most are gray-haired, but the younger generations are trying e-money like Bitcoin as an inflation and possibly a tax hedge.
Spenders have never totally funded their 401ks, ignored the catch-up programs and are hoping Social Security will cover their needs. It won’t; Social Security will not keep up with inflation — that’s the plan.
More change is coming: The 1980 businessman would swear that monolithic Ma Bell and IBM were forever companies. When the government forced Ma Bell to break up, it splintered into a thousand shards, only some who innovated. IBM shrunk as names like Microsoft and Apple created new technologies. I was present when Microsoft launched Windows and still have the free software wrapped in cellophane. It was momentous.
AOL was king of the Internet … and I was a minority stockholder vote against the merger with Time Warner where Steve Case said he would launch the AOL news site. The stock plummeted. Likewise, SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS yearly subscription software is supposed to save behemoths from the programming that creates one-time purchases of complicated software.
Investors are delighted to see consumers pushed into buying software yearly. Consumers not so much. Consumers do not pay top dollar unless they have to: They seek value. So Office365 and other SaaS programs are trying to limit the alternatives. But we are no dummies: We know minimal programming with limited functionality. Our option is Outlook for free — with ads — and even less functionality.
AOL is on a similar track. Bought by Verizon, AOL claims increased security with “two-step verification” that consumers find time-consuming and hate. As of last week, AOL no longer works with Outlook 2016. Follow all the steps and you are simply blocked from signing in. The Internet is full of frustrated people looking for a back door after wasting their Saturdays.
The AOL Android cell phone app works like a tired lady with Alzheimer’s and dehydration. Verizon is betting that consumers will tire of ads and pay $16.99/month for a subscription. Read the fine print on AOL alternatives and like Facebook, your emails and content belong to the company.
But innovations seldom support old platforms. Cnet, Sofpedia, Brothersoft and a host of other free software download web sites exist. The younger generations are perfectly willing to flit back and forth between small free companies or forgo email like they do snail mail and voice mail. The stodgy generations will hang onto their software until they purchase from an array of totally new software. Consumers who have used AOL since it came in a free metal boxes are leaving, not paying.
As liberals tout Bill Gates as the next Warren Buffet, a long-term hold, the world changes. Home-based employers won’t provide email, but they won’t pay employees to read ads, either. Software that hops jobs, works across cellphones, laptops and computers, is secure and keeps sensitive data private will rise to the top of the heap. Cobbling will not work — and the opportunities will create booming companies that destroy the old guard. Until then, it’s the Wild West.
• Donna Wiesner Keene built computers as a National Science Foundation Fellow at 13-years-old and was programming in CU1 as an engineering student at Cornell University by 17. She has worked for the U.S. House of Representatives and for a Virginia legislator.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.