The understanding one gets from Halt and Catch Fire (great show btw) is that 1970s-80s tech was an incredibly cutthroat and precarious world because the state o

The understanding one gets from Halt and Catch Fire (great show btw) is that 1970s-80s tech was an incredibly cutthroat and precarious world because the state of the art was improving so fast. At any moment (or at least at next year's CES) one of your many competitors might release something that makes you irrelevant. It's not actually a sustainable profit if you have to out-innovate and out-execute every competitor, every release cycle, or you lose all of it immediately. It kind of explains why the industry converged around monopolies on the one hand and hyper-growth with quick exits on the other.