Alec Hogg: Don't bet on change's winners

Key topics:AI is disrupting industries like the Internet once didInvestors can spot losers easier than winners in tech shiftsBizNews to explore AI impact in next Share Portfolio webinar.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.The auditorium doors will open for BNIC#2 on 10 September 2025 in Hermanus. For more information and tickets, click here..By Alec Hogg.Jeanette insists on sitting near me at dinner parties. Not for the reason you might think, but so she can intervene should a shin-kick be required.Like all important aspects of a happy marriage, this quirky rule has a history.During the brief few years when we farmed thoroughbreds near Mooi River, one of the greatest joys was looking out from my studio onto the paddocks (above). The other was hosting dinners with friends—often visitors from the city.As hosts, the two of us sat at opposite ends of the table, with out-of-towners always facing the big window that looked across the paddock toward the spectacular sunset view of Giant’s Castle.One evening a good friend from up north entertained us with his objections to my assertion that the Internet was going to change everything. My dearly beloved believes a good host should always exercise decorum, but she was too far away to intervene. Henceforth, the shin-kicking distance rule was born.While after-dinner debates are calmer in our new surroundings, the principles behind the most memorable ones remain as close as ever—especially now, as we face a second massive disruption in a little over a generation..Read more:.Age-gating the internet: Protecting kids or invading privacy? - Ivo Vegter.Artificial Intelligence is already changing everything (again), and experts tell us it’s only just beginning. A growing chorus of commentators is forecasting the implosion of entire industries. In our sector, websites are odds-on to follow newspapers into obsolescence.So what to do about it?For one thing, it’s not just those threatened shin-kicks that have tamed my exuberance when debating the future. After having a front row seat to watching the Internet confound all forecasters, I dived into Alasdair Nairn’s Engines That Move Markets—a masterful analysis of technological transformations over the past two centuries, from the railways onwards.Nairn’s major conclusion: it is incredibly difficult for investors to pick the winners, but finding the losers is easier.In other words, working out who will be hurt by structural change can be obvious; identifying the winners, not so much. Right now, investors tell us Nvidia and Palantir have the inside track. But remember the seemingly impregnable Netscape and Skype?We’ll be discussing all this in the next BizNews Share Portfolio webinar on Tuesday. As a Premium member, you’re entitled to attend—but you do need to register in advance. Click here.

Alec Hogg: Don't bet on change's winners

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