155 Technology Disruption Pattern Recognition = Hundreds of Years of Consistent Signals AI Usage + Cost + Loss Growth = Unprecedented Technology disruption has a long-repeating rhythm: early euphoria, break-neck capital formation, bruising competition, and – eventually – clear-cut winners and losers. Alasdair Nairn’s ‘Engines That Move Markets’ (link here) distills two centuries of such cycles, and his observations are prescient for today’s AI boom. Highlights of his observations follow… There were several years of strong share-price growth when the railways were supplanting canals. The bubble of the 1840s deflated under the weight of overheated expectations and changing economic conditions… …Any technological advance which requires huge capital expenditure always runs a real risk of disappointing returns in the early years, even if it is ultimately successful... …Any technology that necessitates heavy capital expenditure and requires returns to be earned over an extended period is always going to be a high-risk undertaking – unless, that is, there is some form of protection against competition... …The winners of these competitive struggles are not always those who have the best technology, but those who can most clearly see the way that an industry or market is likely to develop… …One of the clearest lessons of corporate and investment history is that without some barrier to entry, first-mover advantage can be swiftly lost… …A theme that recurs throughout this research is that while identifying the winners from any new technology is often perilous and difficult, it is almost invariably simpler to identify who the ‘losers’ are going to be.