There can be few places as full of interesting things to see and do as London. With its lengthy history, amazing plethora of buildings and museums, as well as a huge range of things to do—often for free—Samuel Johnson's adage ("when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life") remains even more true today as it was when he coined it.
For Father's Day (yesterday) my kids took me to see the Cutty Sark. One of the fastest tea clippers in its time, this ancient ship has seen much of "those twin imposters", Triumph and Disaster since it was built in 1869. Sailing between England and China, with stops in Australia, the Cutty Sark was widely regarded as a marvel of its time with a hull made from Muntz metal (a brass-like alloy, of 60% copper and 40% zinc). Although not the fastest of the tea clippers, the Cutty Sark was still able to sail from Shanghai to London in 110 days, with a cargo of 600,000 kilograms of tea; enough for more than 200 million cups!
In 1870 the Cutty Sark was one of 50 British sailing ships bringing tea back from China. Within seven years she was one of nine, as steamships and the opening of the Suez Canal (which was not passable by sailing ships) made the clippers less competitive. By 1883 her tea shipping voyages were over, but there was still life in the old girl as she turned to bringing wool from Australia to England until 1895, as well as other products from that far side of the world. In 1895 Cutty Sark was sold to a Lisbon-based company who rebranded her the Ferreira, playing her trade between Portugal and its African colonies and Brazil. However, by the end of World War I her days as a sea-going vessel were numbered, as the costs of maintaining her exceeded her ability to generate revenues.
A technological marvel in 1869 was essentially an anachronism within a few decades. Her competitive advantage having been eliminated by the constant flow of newer technologies.
This simple lesson was brought home to me further this past week. I watched Branagh's film version of Shakespeare's Henry V. The small band of Englishmen who defeated vastly superior numbers of French at Agincourt and Crecy were able to do so because they possessed superior technology in the form of the longbow. Yet again, within a few decades this superiority was eliminated as this technology was adopted by other nations, and ultimately by the invention of firearms.
Living in the 21st century with an almost-constant flow of technology, particularly in the form of smartphones, laptop computers and tablets such as the iPad, we ought to be more aware of the speed with which a product's competitive advantage can be eliminated. But because so much of today's technical change is evolutionary rather than revolutionary we remain more blasé and unaware. We know that next year there will be a new smartphone/laptop/tablet brought out, but there is little to distinguish it from its predecessor other than faster speed, brighter and better displays, and more applications which it can run. The wow! factor which accompanied the first personal computers has become diminished. The first iPad had a strong element of wow! as did the first iPod and iPhone, but with each successive generation that factor has been strongly reduced. It is only with some apparently entirely new product that wow! returns.
The morale of this tale is apparent: companies which do not continue to revolutionise their products will fall foul of the competition. Cutty Sark was able to continue its life beyond that of a tea clipper for several decades by shipping other products from the far side of the world back to England. Will we be able to find new uses for our older smartphones, laptops and iPads as they become obsolete with greater rapidity? Or do we lack that kind of ingenuity? Tempus fugit—time flies. Will we ever be able to keep pace with it, or must each generation fall by the wayside unable to compete with the next generation?
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