Seasons in the slump

Unseasonal events in IT have led to massive upheaval, says Paul Briggs.

For many years, scientists have warned that one of the side effects of mass consumption and industrialisation is the depletion of the ozone layer. The Earth's delicately balanced ecosystem of polar ice caps and rainforests is becoming unstable, leading to climatic change.

Some areas are becoming warmer, others cooler. Flooding, hurricanes and other freak acts of nature will increase, the boffins say, and diseases will become prevalent where the climate previously kept them out.

Seasonal changes that we are accustomed to in the UK, such as rain in summer, rain in winter and a few hot days where the entire population flocks to the seaside, may be lost forever.

It appears that in some ways the unparalleled expansion and growth of the IT industry over the past few years has had a similarly negative impact on the ecosystem of global economics, which had previously been relatively stable.

Some continents basked in superheated economies that seemed to follow a seasonal pattern. After a reasonable first quarter, IT sales would steadily rise until a hiatus in the summer when successful executives felt it was time to swap their PCs for a set of golf clubs.

By September, ramping up would occur. By the eve of the fourth quarter, the feeding frenzy of a Christmas spike would send production lines into overdrive and put food into the mouths of investors.

So confident were product managers at distributors and resellers that they could predict monthly totals almost to the penny.

But, like the acts of nature plaguing the globe, unseasonal events in IT - such as Y2K, the dotcom bubble, fraud and terrorism - have led to massive upheaval.

Who would have imagined that an August could do better than a September, or that an October could beat a September? Above all, who would have thought that there would be no concrete evidence of a good fourth-quarter spike? Have the scientists neglected to tell us something?