Product Speed and Capacity

In the past, economic growth has been driven by the need to develop new products with new features. In the last decade people and companies have demanded computers with more capacity and we have gradually been induced to upgrade mobile phones for better, smaller and cheaper phones. Companies have invested in new, faster and less expensive production and packaging technologies, and new information systems and related processes have been installed in order to speed up administration. Many people assume that there will be a continuing need for computers with more capacity, and for new production technologies and computer software with more features and more capacity. I have already argued that mobile phones may be close to the limits of what can be achieved in terms of functionality. In many areas, production technologies have arrived at a situation where several production steps are integrated and where so much non-value-added time and cost have been taken away that there is little time and cost remaining in the process. Few people seem to have paid any attention to the issue of whether capacity and features can be developed indefinitely or if there are limits to the need to develop these things.