The nature of business and government has been to build a surplus and self-perpetuate, but the Internet fosters and rewards smaller, more fluid organizations.
Esther DysonRead
It may not always be profitable at first for businesses to be online, but it is certainly going to be unprofitable not to be online.
Interpretation
Having an online presence may not yield immediate profits, but lacking one will lead to long-term losses.
Esther Dyson's quote emphasizes the importance of establishing an online presence for businesses in the modern digital age. Although the initial costs and efforts may not lead to immediate financial benefits, the consequences of not having an online presence can be severe, potentially driving businesses to failure in a competitive and increasingly digital marketplace.
In practice
In a presentation on the importance of e-commerce, you might say, 'As Esther Dyson noted, it may not always be profitable at first for businesses to be online.'
The nature of business and government has been to build a surplus and self-perpetuate, but the Internet fosters and rewards smaller, more fluid organizations.
Encryption...is a powerful defensive weapon for free people. It offers a technical guarantee of privacy, regardless of who is running the government... It's hard to think of a more powerful, less dangerous tool for liberty.
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Our whole goal in life is to give you something you didn’t know you wanted and then once you get it, you can’t imagine your life without it… and you can count on apple doing that.
Today many people are switching to free software for purely practical reasons. That is good, as far as it goes, but that isn't all we need to do! Attracting users to free software is not the whole job, just the first step.
It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.
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