Academics are really important to the commercial sector.
Their visions for how the future is going to unfold drives inventions and innovation. A huge part of the R&D that finds its way into the general marketplace has its initial genesis in the labs of the universities around the world.
Similarly the ideas that shape the legislative process invariably come into being in the philosophy, law, and arts faculties of universities.
So while some businesses may think that academia is out of touch, others realize that the memes that emerge from universities today are important predictors of what the societal vectors of tomorrow will look like. The force of change in the copyright industry is typified by Creative Commons licensing - regardless of the fact that Lawrence Lessig may be somewhat vague on some of his theories. The truth is that Lessig started the movement; he doesn't have to be both its architect and its builder.
Now at UCLA there is some radical thought in the area of social revolution. Have a read of the Digital Humanities Manifesto, authored with the university with some fairly heavy hitting names playing key roles:
Here are some quotes from the document if you don't have the inclination to click through to the site:
Digital
humanities is not a unified field but an array of convergent practices
that explore a universe in which print is no longer the exclusive or
the normative medium in which knowledge is produced and/or disseminated.
Like all media revolutions, the first wave of the
digital revolution looked backwards as it moved forward. It replicated
a world where print was primary and visuality was secondary, while
vastly accelerating search and retrieval. Now it must look forwards
into an immediate future in which the medium specific features of the
digital become its core.
The first wave was quantitative, mobilizing the
vertiginous search and retrieval powers of the database. The second
wave is qualitative, interpretive, experiential, even emotive. It
immerses the digital toolkit within what represents the very core
strength of the Humanities: complexity.
Interdisciplinarity/transdisciplinarity/multidisciplinarity
are empty words unless they imply changes in language, practice,
method, and output.
The digital is the realm of the open: open source,
open resources, open doors. Anything that attempts to close this space
should be recognized for what it is: the enemy.
Yes, there is something utopian at the core of
digital humanities: The open, the unfixed, the contingent, the
infinite, the expansive, the no place.
Copyright and IP standards must, accordingly, be
freed from the stranglehold of Capital. Pirate and pervert Disney
materials on such a massive scale that Disney will have to sue… your
entire neighborhood, school, or country. Practice digital anarchy by
creatively undermining copyright and mashing up media.
There is a lot more, but think about it for a moment....
If you buy my premise that what is being thought about at universities today becomes part of the broad base of society tomorrow, and you have a centre of thought suggesting that everyone in every neighbourhood should stand up to industrial copyright protection and practice digital anarchy, what does that tell you about the way the the copyright industries are going to have to work in the future....? Not, I might add, to mobilize the copyright police, but to put in place a much more inclusive and visionare business model that enables copyrights to do what they do quite naturally - to travel digitally with the minimum friction.
Future business models obviously need to reward copyright owners and creators. But they need to do so in such a way as to reduce financial and logistics friction.
There are many parallels in industries and industry sectors.
That is why you find that common branding across so many kinds of things. The customer for one product is the customer for another seemingly unrelated product. Once the customer builds trust in a brand they are likely to extend their consumption of the brand to other products. That is why you see Calvin Klein perfumes and Calvin Klein underwear – different genres of product, but similar customer profiles.
As with branding so too can the problems of one industry be seen in other industries. Equally you can see the struggle of management to solve problems crossing the boundaries from one economic culture to another.
Perhaps the biggest single problem in the world today is the global financial crisis. This is exemplified by what has happened in the banking sector in the US and the UK (and how it plays out in public can be seen in the riots in Greece and in Iceland).
The challenges for the banking sector are particularly multiplied by those things that have been responsible for the incredible growth during the last dozen or more years. That growth came about particularly because of globalization. Globalization was made possible by digitisation. It started with financial data being consolidated into small compressed files and sent round the world using digital telecommunications. It morphed into the development of highly complex algorithms to calculate risk in order to create derivatives - essentially bets on a particular industry sector behaving in a certain predetermined way.
One of the things that I find fascinating is the almost predictable regularity with which the powers that be (members of governments, CEOs of banks and industry, etc) when faced with a challenge that requires a bold response, make decisions that soon thereafter are found to be 180 degrees wrong. Not slightly wrong, but utterly and totally the wrong decision. (Look at this analysis on CNN of government response to the financial meltdown; written by Nobel prize winning economist Joe Stiglitz. It totally validates the point.)
I believe that the same holds true for many businesses – and in particular those industries that act together through industry associations.
It seems that when put in the position of being able to exert power authoritatively via an industry group there is a tendency to act in a conservative and low risk manner. That often means taking advice from legal counsel to ensure that a strategy is bullet-proof: i.e no one will sue, the organization will be protected, no one will be hurt, etc…. The amazing thing is that it seems that the ingredients of failure are directly proportional to the slavish desire to minimize risk.
At a macro level we only have to look at what is happening in Gaza. The current Israeli government is about to face an election. The leadership of the opposition is a hard line conservative (Netanyahu). The government has been losing ground. They take a hard line with the Palestinians who have been extremely provocative. The intention appeared to be a desire to produce a result of the population re-electing the incumbents for being tough operators. However, as a direct result of having used weapons like white phosphorous, the government, the IDF, and Israelis of all political persuasions are now having to deal with international condemnation of these policies, which takes up the incumbents time and distracts them from the forthcoming election. It could be seen as being a case of unforseen consequences, that no one could have expected. However, I believe that this scenario was actually totally foreseeable and predictable.
There is a similar aspect of predictability to the actions of the content industry over some years.
They have wanted to shut down illegal file sharing for years ago. As a result they developed an aggressive strategy to identify and sue ordinary folk who were proven to have offered content within P2P networks. The intent of the naming and shaming – and then suing strategy – was to discourage “pirates” in the strongest possible terms.
The industry particularly wanted to shut down Pirate Bay (one of the largest indexing sites in the world for P2P content). The results of the suing of consumers (in the US) was that there was a lot of media coverage of mothers and children who were on welfare being brought to court. It looked like the poor were being kicked by the rich, regardless of the wrongness of what they were doing.
And when stories in the media appeared of Pirate Bay being raided, a generation that was not aware of the brand name, suddenly knew where they could download content for free. Pirate Bay simply moved its servers to a new location. Then the data came out: P2P actually increased. Many people (including us) see the increase being a direct result of media coverage in which the most memorable thing was the Pirate Bay brand.
In other words, the more attention we give a meme, the stronger it becomes. Whether we vilify terrorism or p2p the reality is that they will become stronger as a direct and measurable result.
Think of the‘70’s – Who was I who said,“But I didnt inhale”….
In independent research, my colleague, Tom Koltai, has been interviewing people who offer content via P2P networks to try to identify trends in the sector. This research project has been underway for three months now and some of the early data that is being uncovered, we believe, will be of great interest to the content industry and to people generally. (We will be issuing a report once we have sufficient data to be able to deduce that the trends we are seeing are indicative of something important and not just random aberrant behaviour).
However, what we are also interested in is the proposition that in the era of digital communications, the decisions required to create beneficial outcomes for both business and community (what Stiglitz calls “social returns”) require a fundamental shift in thinking, and an understanding of how to qualify the problems rather than just quantifying them.
“Why is it Australia has to be the trend-setter in making life difficult
for business.”
This morning my colleague Chris Gilbey
and I had one of these heated philosophical discussions on the topic of who lobbied whom first for the
digital rights distribution of music.
I claimed that it was the music industry that clubbed Apple
into submission and Chris stated that it was Jobs who had the foresight and
vision to approach the music industry and give them a zero alternative offer.
After we concluded our phone call – I went a-hunting and
discovered in fact from articles about iTunes commercial practices and Jobs own
discussion of the DRM clauses in the contract that it was most likely Stephen Jobs
that forced the industry into allowing him to distribute DRM protected music.
The interesting part of this conclusion is that there are
pivotal points in humanities development that are often overlooked by
Historians.
So I thought to set the record straight, I would pinpoint a
few leading innovations in Technology that have permanently altered the way
live our lives – and presumably the Wayback machine will record this blog list for
posterity to be added to as needed.
So you think you know – lets see how many you get right…..
The inventor of the wheel – unknown inventor from Mesopotamia
in the 5th millennium BC
The Steam Engine or Aeolipile Heron of Alexandria
(ΉρωνοΑλεξανδρεύς) (c. 10–70 AD)
Flying Machine, Leonardo DaVinci - 1467
Round Planet, leading to accurate mapping and space travel,
Galileo - 1592
Electricity, William Gilbert 1600 in distinguishing the
difference between static and magnetic
Car, Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot – three wheeled converted
carriage 1769
Record Player - Édouard-LéonScott de Martinville1857.
Personal Computer, November
3, 1962, John W. Mauchly – Prediction – every child.
Cellphones 1964 - Star-Trek – Personal Communicators = Motorola
Business Classic
Internet - Louis Pouzin, 1972, datagram evolving into TCPIP via
Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn
Ipod, Kane Kramer 1979
iTunes, the commencement of the Digital Copyright
Distribution model, Steven Jobs/Apple 2001
“Why is it Australia has to be the trend-setter in making life difficult
for business.”
Youtube, Chad
Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, 2005, redefining entertainment content.
The clues as to what the next big thing is in the science
fiction programs you are now watching and the scifi books that you have most
probably already read.
There are many more inventions that have made our lives less
labour intensive, but I consider that the above list is exhaustive in giving
credit to the original and mainly unsung heroes of our modern lifestyles.
Feel free to leave a comment if you feel that I have left out any notable entrants.
The Music Industry’s future was pre-determined 300 years
ago.
Louis XIV and his ultimate beheading resulting from the
Revolution has curious parallels to today’s file sharing activity and the
P2Pvolution.
The peasants rose in revolt against the high taxes and lack
of bread.
(And maybe because the early Ipods were self powered, but
not very portable.)
The phonautograph was the earliest known invention of a sound transcription device. (20 years before Edison) It was invented by Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville and patented on March 25, 1857.
The French Revolution peasant uprising is to me reminiscent
of the milleniumites activities today.
I can hear the chant as they walk past my home from school:
"Down with the Music Industry, long live Kazaa……"
We all know what happened to the French revolution. It
failed. But the peasants learnt from their failure and their Russian cousins
were successful just a couple of hundred years later by declaring a “free” (UnitedSovietSocialistRepublic) proletariat nation.
EDonkey arose out of the ashes of the guillotined Kazaa and
sprouted several offspring processes.
Whether the bourgeois Music Industry likes it or not, we have
built a proletariat world with music to sooth the savage beast.
And we all know, with savage beasts, occasionally one gets
taken and torn to shreds.
It reminds me of the quote from the Life of Brian “Oooooo
did you see that ? Another one of those Christians just got eaten by that Lion
(MGM).”
Keep the faith, boys and girls – the second coming is nigh……
And the Antichrist (RIAA) will be cleansed from the earth
with a flood of angels (Iphones, Imoko) and a few others. But before you rejoice,
I need to tell you that the peasants' revolt ultimately failed because when they
stormed the bastions of the French aristocracy, they found that the cupboards
were quickly emptied and with no-one to replenish them (all the peasants were
busy having a revolution) hunger, despondency and plague devastated the nation.
We need to buy some music or there will be no
reason for anyoneto keep writing it.
At least I'm doing my patriotic duty. I have a secret weapon
that will continue to ensure my supply of music for many years to come: Aunty
Carol. And I know I can depend on Aunty Carol to buy those CD’s for everyone in
the family every Christmas for many years to come.
I hope that she doesn’t go insane when the CD’s are pulled
of the shelves because digital music sales have taken over.
What’s that? You will never pay for music, and nobody you
know will either ?
I think the die hards are wrong. We will very soon see
charging models based on free music and network costs only to pay for the
content on your phone.
Source: ARIA, RIAA, Tony Blair's Stats, BEA.
Please note the gradual rise between vinyl and casettes
followed by the meteoric rise of the CD’s and the almost vertical
rise of the digital media. Probably because of Ipod and MP3 player sales.
Worldwide Ipod Sales
(Excluding Ipods)
According to Forrester Researches Report last year entitled ‘End
of Music Industry as We Know It’
“Digital music sales will grow at a compound annual
growth rate of 23% over the next five years, reaching $4.8 billion in revenue
by 2012, but will fail to make up for the continuing steady decline in CD
sales, Forrester said. In 2012, CD sales will be reduced to just $3.8 billion,
according to its forecast.”
I have bad news for Forrester – We’re there already. Its all
in the way you do the numbers.
Wholesale or retail ? Corrections for distribution allowance
or no corrections.
What is a distribution allowance?
Basically the cost of shipping an $ 0.87 cent CD to the
retail store (About $3.20) including warehousing, logistics management,
shipping, freight forwarding, demurrage, customs, more freight, more
warehousing, couriers and retailer handling costs.
In other words, the music industry and Itunes might try to
convince you that a music track is worth $4.99. But you don’t need to go to
university for seven years to calculate that obviously its not. That was the
price of a single (one track) CD in 2002.
My guess is that we will pay for music on the basis of
minutes.
And it is you the consumer that will set the price.
That “Send” button, if judiciously used, will force the
different resellers to offer tiered pricing depending on the popularity of the
calalogue item. Exactly the same way that the Movie Industry bundles two old
movies with a new one on a single DVD for five bucks.
The more popular tracks will initially be $ 0.90 cents
reducing over time as they age in the catalogue.
It’s still free, you just pay a different way. Instead of
paying for DSL bandwidth, you pay AT&T/Vodaphone/Optus GPRS/WAP or minutes
for downloading your chosen music.
And why will people do it? Because it works. Because it’s
the EASY choice.
Just like today, File sharing is the easy choice.
So for the Music Industry – built on the premise that “But
we have to ship SOMETHING…..!” there will be some changes; some accountants
will move in over the next couple of years and whole lotta guys ‘n gals will be
leaving their distribution offices.
But for the geeks and the code writers, I see a bright
future in the Music Business.
You see there will need to be a music differentiator. HUH ?
Well, the Music Industry will finally realize that digital
is profitable.
So they will have to cut different quality recordings – 56
Kb 128 Kb, 192 Kb, 256 Kb and the really Rolls Royce stuff at 320 Kb. (In case
you missed it – the higher quality files take longer to download so cost more
minutes…..)
Is that it? Is that all they will do?
No… they will probably start to clean up the P2P file base
after all there’s realmoney in them
thar shared files..
After all – the shareholders of the music companies will
eventually work out that digital music sales are providing them with enormous
returns on their investments and it was all made possible by Napster popularity
suggesting a portable hardware device that Apple stole (err, borrowed)
the Ipod)
Now they will need some router jockeys to move their
listings up the search engines – and not necessarily Google – think: hum that tune - Gracenote. The technical job description is SEO but – here’s the
real twist. For the artificially intelligent search engine optimization
programs of the future that will run on your phone making sure that only songs
that you are likely to like will be offered to you….. – they will need access
to your computer music library. You know, the one that goes :/program files/Kazaa/my shared folder/
Extras.
Attached is an Excel spreadsheet with a table comparing the features
of 3 top selling phones in 2008 and a tab of links for further analysis.
One of the enduring scenes that I always loved to see in movies, as a kid, was the captain of the ship, who as the ship was sinking, stoically said, “I can’t get into the lifeboat. I have to go down with the ship”.
Of course it was a precondition of the situation, that after hitting the iceberg there was no last ditch possibility of Bruce Willis arriving to save the day and ensure that the ship would not sink.
In the case of America, one wonders whether Bush should have stayed aboard the sinking ship, or whether in jumping off and handing over the tiller to Obama, he is enabling change to ensure survival… not just survival of America, but the planet.
Now there are some cynical people saying that the only change to come to Washington is the name of the president, and that the lobbyists are so deeply entrenched that only the rhetoric will be different.
On the other hand there are those who think that people power is what put Obama in place and that he will be very respondent to what the people are thinking. That is presumably why he has such a visible presence on YouTube and on blogs… He understands the power of the digital network.
But, regardless, he is appointing some people who clearly have an agenda.
Look for instance at the guy who has just been appointed as the deputy AG. Here is what wikipedia has to say:
“On January 5th, 2009, president-elect Barack Obama appointed Tom Perrelli to the position of associate attorney general. Tom Perrelli represented the RIAA in a slew of cases, including a high-profile bid to unmask file sharers without the requirement of a judge reviewing the evidence first. Barack Obama's selection of Joe Biden as vice president showed that the presidential hopeful was comfortable with someone with firmly pro-RIAA views. Biden urged the criminal prosecutions of copyright-infringing peer-to-peer users and tried to create a new federal felony involving playing unauthorized music…”
We hope that the philosophy of the Obama administration is very much of the “Yes We Can” variety…. Yes, we can use P2P to create greater efficiency of information exchange; yes we can create a way to reduce carbon emissions from using P2P to shift information around; yes we can enable people all over the world to be entertained…. With the content industry being reasonably remunerated for the consumption of content, but without criminalizing the people who are the consumers of the entertainment that has made the content companies rich….
Article 1. - Consumers are the new Cart before the
Content Industry’s Donkey.
The challenge of Blogging is to sell an incredibly difficult
technical, economic, political or design concept in as few words as possible.
So I will attempt to explain why the Content industry should
stop screaming foul – unfairly and VERY prematurely.
Because it is a difficult complicated subject, I have
decided to break this article into a series.
This is the first in a series of Articles to show that Hollywood
and the Music Industry, far from losing money, have actually developed a new
business model – without realizing it themselves.
Man is a mammal. Deep within us is the urge to excel at
hunting and fishing to impress our mates and to perpetuate the species. This is imprinted in our DNA.
We idolize and place on a pedestal the leaders, movers and
shakers amongst our tribes. This is epitomized by our adulation for the stars of the little screen.
We have learned that TV creates role models. If the Fonz
said "haaaaaaaay" on TV – then all 14 year olds in the Tri-state counties went
around saying haaaaaay for six months.
TV is an educator. The West knows; the east is just
learning.
All technology has a beginning, a middle and an end. eg.: The
Steam Train.
The Economic Intelligentsia will tell you that Technology
arrives in waves.
Early Adopters- Geeks, Rich Kids
Mainline Addiction to Technology- The public get in on the act.
Late Adopters- Grandma and Grandpa because the kids brought them one – but they have
no idea how to use it.
Think of technology as the stairway to heaven. The more technology you have mastered, the closer to heaven you are – (metaphysically).
However, to continue on life’s path you must be ever vigilant for the next new
technology and master the last one before everyone else stops using it. The consumers
flocked there voluntarily and are slowly dragging the behemoth (too many middle
level managers scared of upsetting the applecart) content industry behind it.
Technology travels in waves of popularity – as each wave
dies – the next new thing takes over.
Electricity enables Radio and Television.
Advertising on Radio and Television enables consumerism.
Consumerism leads to sales for the advertisers.
However, sometimes political intervention slows down the
introduction of technology and technology triggers. We are all aware that Television
has been used as a Propaganda
tool by Politicians since 1936.
And studies show
that post “Wall”
Russians are being further westernized by television and MTV.
Although China
has had television since 1956, its content was restricted to appropriate
content dictated by Mao and the “Cultural Revolution”.
Many of us remember the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
It was a direct result of the worlds outcry in relation to these events that
Chinese television stations were allowed to broadcast “foreign” events of
significance to show the locals that china was not such a bad place after all.
In 1996, John Sie’s Encore International Inc was permitted
to broadcast Western Television content into China.
According to the LA Times
Article“China’s
top leaders have kept a tight grip on the media, particularly television,
fearing their airwaves will be flooded with subversive Western ideas controlled
by foreign interests.”
And all P2P’ers, judging from the number of Chinese IP
numbers, are aware that China now, in the space of just three years, has caught
up and almost passed the west in P2P file sharing, DVD copying and duplication
and CD pirating.
So let us examine the industrialization of the East through
the subtle use of western technology.
The sequence is predictable
A water well for the village, mobile phone for the village, projector for the village (the bigger villages get a generator, VHS and a
Television).
A café opens in the village, and someone buys a Radio/CD
player from the market in the big city.
The village now needs to buy CD’s. However is there content
in the local language? And – what is the likelihood that the village wants to
listen to Bruce Springsteen compared to their own traditional Tribal Chants?
For the switch to occur – there needs to be education – via the Television.
Once the village has been
“trained” in the ways of the west, Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, AC/DC, Kate
Bush and the Coors (Drums, Shouting, Crooning, Gentle) will get an avid group
of new groupies – swapping, begging, and in general doing what kids do the
world over when they want something – find a way to get it.
To understand what are available
as options to these newest groupies, one must analyze the retail cost of these
technologies.
Which countries can afford which technologies?
Can Somalians afford Ipods ? No –
but the village might just be able to pool together enough currency to buy a
Bruce Springsteen CD – And obviously they wont be ripping the CD - no computer……
Can Romanians afford LCD
Television ? No – so obviously they wont be buying HDMI Blue-Ray players.
Can they afford VCR’s ? Yes – just
– can they afford DVD players ? Some can.
Can they afford PC’s? Yes but
slower older models. Can they afford Ipods? Yes – older models, Can they
afford Iphones? No.!
And you all thought to
yourselves when I mentioned steam trains: "but there are some still running –
in India and
other poor countries".
Yep – that’s my argument.
Whilst many of us don’t consider
CD’s and DVD’s as a viable financial or suitable physical storage solution for
our favourite content, there are those countries (representing over four billion
people) that are just starting to enter that cycle in the technological supply
chain.
CD’s and DVD’s in some parts
of the world, are just coming into their own.
Let us consider the poorest
nation on earth (GDP per Capita), Burundi.
The average citizen has an income (on a notional GDP basis) of $120.00 per annum.
Can he afford to buy a CD Player? Possibly. Is he likely to?
The technology cycle for adoption
by the East to the consumerism of the west follows a well charted course.
Water
Sewing
Machine
School
Telephone
Television
VCR
CDROM
DVD
Computer
There appears to be a lot of life
left in the Music Industry yet… it just needs to address these new “currently
being educated markets”
There is some evidence that due
to the philanthropic activities of individuals – Soros & Negroponte to name
a couple; laptops and computers are turning up at the school stage – enabling a
leapfrog effect.
If the industry doesn’t hurry –
it may miss its opportunity.
The important question to answer for the industry - with only $2.00 per week to spend: Will the average Burundian care if the copyright is paid for or not? This is the content industry's biggest challenge.
The next article, Article 2. is
about the Music Train having left the station – Hallelujah shouts the Music
Industry.
Table of International Standard
of Living standards. Poorest to richest.
I would be interested in readers'
feedback as to their opinions about which country is up to what technology ?
John is a good friend from Los Angeles, who voted for Obama in the recent Presidential election.
He sent this to me earlier today. I thought it was too good to not share and John has agreed for me to publish it here. Seems to sum up so much how quickly the honeymoon can end if you are not absolutely in tune with the marketplace:
Open letter to Barack Obama & Co.
Hollywood, 1.17.08
Dear Barack and Michelle, and Joe and Jill and David,
and all of you who keep sending me e mails,
Stop already will ya ?
You got it. You got elected - you're about to be inaugurated - you're
in ! So could you just get on with it and stop with the urgent, solemn
and desperate sounding e mails asking me to organize, send money, help
re-define America, rebuild my neighborhood one neighborhood at a time,
and realize the dream.
First of all, nobody in my neighborhood wants to be rebuilt. The
orthodox jews who make up some 65% of my neighborhood would like me,
the non-orthodox jews and all the other goyam to take a hike as soon as
possible so they can buy up the rest of the real estate, convert the
classic 20's mediterranean homes into cheaply constructed temples and
finish off their vision of Hassidic nirvana tax free. Least they could
do is open more home made bagel places - but no. Plus, I don't think
they voted for you. They still have big issues with swartzas (of which
they clearly view you as one) and they had all these family value Yes
on Prop 8 signs in front of their houses - so I don't think they want
to "share the dream". I think they want to wipe out Hamas and take
back Gaza.
The wannabe actors and actresses in the neighborhood are preoccupied on
the cell phones with their publicists worried about the next audition
and getting invited to the Oscars to be seen with the right people.
The would be pop/alt/rock stars next door (who really suck) are busy
pining for an appearance on American Idol, trolling for 360 deals,
"going on tour" in Bakersfield, getting a new manager and building
bonfires in the back yard to create their own version of an after hours
"destination". The rest of us in the neighborhood, who mostly make
our living in the entertainment biz are bracing for the big drop in
production and post production that's coming later this year from the
studios and wondering where the jobs are coming from. And, a quick
word on the the collapsing major label music industry - please don't
give them a bail out. Let 'em merge with GM/Chrysler and sink with
good riddance into oblivion. They could not deserve it more.
Second, this continuing money hunt you direct at me is really all about
raising the dough to repay Hillary's campaign debt. Yeah, I know
that's the deal you made with her and all but c'mon, this woman has 100
million bucks. None of us here really care whether she spent 20
million of it in one of the most despicable displays of old school
scorched earth political campaigning in our lifetime. She's got plenty
of ways to pull it in. I'm not interested in giving her anything.
Let her get it from Bill. He's not paying for all that mile high club
sex he's having flying around on his billionaire buddies' luxury jets.
His pals pay his way - he's got low overhead so get it from him.
She's just trying to build the war chest for the "Senator" Chelsea
campaign that's coming up in a few years and I say let young Chels
raise her own dough just like you did.
Third, I'm a little annoyed that you picked a racist, homophobic,
anti-semite, evangelical christian, charlatan, snake oil peddler to do
your inaugural invocation. But, hey, I get it - you have to reach out
to the creeps who thought Palin was cool, Billy Graham is too old and
you have to continue a bad tradition. But enough of that after the
inauguration ok ? By the way, not now, but in, oh, say February -
please consider taxing the bejeezus out of these organized religions.
All of 'em. Especially Rick Warren. Can go a long way to fixing
those trillions in the deficit. They've got the dough. Reverend Ricky
has a car and driver and buku bucks - more than I can say for the poor
schmoos in his congregation he soaks to support that phoney mega church
of his. I'm for free speech for all and I have no problem with guys
like him continuing to spread their dangerous. manipulative blather,
own huge amounts of real estate and media empires - I just don't think
they should be able to do it tax free.
Now back to the "send more money" e mails. This is starting feel like
telemarketing and you're making me consider putting you on the "do not
contact" list. I was under no delusion that any of these robo
generated e mails coming from any of you during the campaign were
really coming from you - but I kind of liked it at the time. But,
enough now. I don't believe Jill is actually writing me an e mail to
ask for more dough to "continue the important work we have started."
The webmaster is. So don't insult me. I gave you money to get elected
- and plenty of it. Campaigned for you, stood in line for 4 hours to
vote for you. Sat emotionally with tears in my eyes while I watched
your acceptance speech like everyone else. Enough. You got it. Get
on with it now. The inauguration choo choo is very sweet and clever
and all that - but so is queuing up at Disneyland with the dumb Pluto
hat on or standing in line with elf ears on waiting to see Santa. Have
fun - but on Wednesday the 21st, I'd like you all to stop gobbling
around and start getting some stuff done so we don't fall off the edge
and end up reporting to the Chinese.
Send me e mails about the new puppy, or how you jailed and seized the
assets of all those Wall Street assholes who ruined so many people's
lives and who profited while they lost their clients' money - or posted
their photos, addresses and phone numbers on the web so lynch mobs can
easily be formed. Send e mails about the spanking line you created to
escort the Cheney's out of the VP mansion, or how you told Pelosi,
Feinstein and Reid they are obtuse and made them wear clown suits
during session - or how you laughed out loud when GM came back for even
more money - or you actually gave the porn industry some bail out money
just because they had the balls to ask for it. E mails with You Tube
links of you having a chili three way dog are good - but no more "we
need your help" e mails. You got my help - you have my support. Go
fix it now. Get it done.
I spend too much time online as it is, I'm starting to develop a
Facebook addiction and there are no support groups for that yet - so
don't give me more reasons to read useless stuff on my laptop.
Go on - go . . . do it. Leave me be - I have stuff to do.
Why is it that we love to speculate about what is going to happen to someone else’s industry, business, economy, (you name it) – but we are less enthusiastic about accepting the inevitability of change to that which we are directly involved in?
Is it because we are all infallible?
Is it because we think we are sufficiently knowledgeable about how change is unfolding that we will be able to adjust the levers sufficiently to ensure that we get through whatever is coming at us from the opposite direction? Or is it that we (ostriches) sometimes prefer to ignore those factors that could mark disaster for our industries, businesses, etc?
The fact is that technological change happens at a relatively stable rate. It is the lack of adaptation to technological change that causes the tsunami-like changes that affect industries, and they are largely predictable. The problem is that often we are so pre-occupied with trying to achieve quarterly profits that we neglect to change in such a way as to enable long term sustainability.
I was looking at 24 Things That Are About To Go Extinct on a news site in Canada . Below are a few of the entries that are being made extinct by convergence:
The interesting thing is that this data is all about the economic impact of the Internet.
It wasn’t very long ago that media stocks were hot. Now when you look at how media businesses are being disrupted you would have to wonder what anyone saw in them.
Meanwhile content continues to expand its revenue base in spite of the Internet and in spite of P2P. At Perceptric we have been wondering what new business models will enable the content industry to keep on growing in spite of P2P – or whether P2P is such a strong marketing force that the freedom of some content actually helps generate good old fashioned sales of the media from good old retail.
The content industry has been pretty adept at changing to ensure that it has been able to both meet the consumer’s needs and its own needs over the last ten years as the Internet has boomed.
But again, I wonder whether there is a real appreciation for the speed with which disruptive change can take place.
Here is an abbreviated list taking it to my Top Ten of “Things That Are About To Go Extinct”
No 10 Movie Rental Stores
While Netflix is looking up at the moment, Blockbuster keeps closing store locations by the hundreds. It still has about 6,000 left across the world, but those keep dwindling and the stock is down considerably in 2008, especially since the company gave up a quest of Circuit City. Movie Gallery, which owned the Hollywood Video brand, closed up shop earlier this year. Countless small video chains and mom-and-pop stores have given up the ghost already.
No 9 Dial-up Internet Access
Dial-up connections have fallen from 40% in 2001 to 10% in 2008. The combination of an infrastructure to accommodate affordable high speed Internet connections and the disappearing home phone have all but pounded the final nail in the coffin of dial-up Internet access.
No 8 Phone Landlines
According to a survey from the National Center for Health Statistics, at the end of 2007, nearly one in six homes was cell-only and, of those homes that had landlines, one in eight only received calls on their cells.
No 7 VCRs
For the better part of three decades, the VCR was a best-seller and staple in every American household until being completely decimated by the DVD, and now the Digital Video Recorder (DVR). In fact, the only remnants of the VHS age at your local Wal-Mart or Radio Shack are blank VHS tapes these days. Pre-recorded VHS tapes are largely gone and VHS decks are practically nowhere to be found. They served us so well.
No 6 Drive-in Theaters
During the peak in 1958, there were more than 4,000 drive-in theatres in this country, but in 2007 only 405 drive-ins were still operating. Exactly zero new drive-ins have been built since 2005. Only one reopened in 2005 and five reopened in 2006, so there isn’t much of a movement toward reviving the closed ones.
No 5 News Magazines and TV News
While the TV evening newscasts haven’t gone anywhere over the last several decades, their audiences have. In 1984, in a story about the diminishing returns of the evening news, the New York Times reported that all three network evening-news programs combined had only 40.9 million viewers. Fast forward to 2008, and what they have today is half that.
No 4 Classified Ads
The Internet has made so many things obsolete that newspaper classified ads might sound like just another trivial item on a long list. But this is one of those harbingers of the future that could signal the end of civilization as we know it. The argument is that if newspaper classifieds are replaced by free online listings at sites like Craigslist.org and Google Base, then newspapers are not far behind them.
No 3 Analog TV
According to the Consumer Electronics Association, 85% of homes in the U.S. get their television programming through cable or satellite providers. For the remaining 15% — or 13 million individuals — who are using rabbit ears or a large outdoor antenna to get their local stations, change is in the air. If you are one of these people you’ll need to get a new TV or a converter box in order to get the new stations which will only be broadcast in digital.
No 2 Answering Machines
The increasing disappearance of answering machines is directly tied to No 20 our list — the decline of landlines. According to USA Today, the number of homes that only use cell phones jumped 159% between 2004 and 2007. It has been particularly bad in New York; since 2000, landline usage has dropped 55%. It’s logical that as cell phones rise, many of them replacing traditional landlines, that there will be fewer answering machines.
No1 Incandescent Bulbs
Before a few years ago, the standard 60-watt (or, yikes,100-watt) bulb was the mainstay of every U.S. home. With the green movement and all-things-sustainable-energy crowd, the Compact Fluorescent Light bulb(CFL) is largely replacing the older, Edison-era incandescent bulb. The EPA reports that 2007 sales for Energy Star CFLs nearly doubled from 2006, and these sales accounted for approximately 20 percent of the U.S. light bulb market. And according to USA Today, a new energy bill plans to phase out incandescent bulbs in the next four to 12 years.
Not listed but perhaps more disruptive: The decline of the shiny silver disc as a means to convey media to consumers.... As consumers embrace P2P we will start to see the decline and disappearance of the CD. It will take a few years, but this will be one of the major disruptors of our age.
Say What !?! Did I say Economically stable – what about the
$1.40 per litre (1/4 gal) petrol price ?
What about much maligned, overworked and under funded
Healthcare system ?
For years, we believed the Accountants, Lawyers, Bank
Managers and Real Estate Salesman. Real Wealth is Bricks and Mortar on a piece
of Land.
Well the results are in. They were wrong. What can we believe
in now for our (Australia’s)
future survival.
At a time when globally governments are re-appraising the
potential of renewed tariff barriers and increased “Buy Homegrown product
campaigns to create more jobs” Australia
is sitting on the edges smirking quietly.
Australia is arguably the only country in the world
that is – or rather, could be, self sufficient.
Australia
as a nation has nothing to prove.
So what if we are under-populated ?.
So what if we cant manufacture a decent Ford Capri ?
The point is, the rest of the world is lucky that we want to
play with them.
We grow Wheat. Barley, Corn, Sugar cane and all of the other
staple food groups; we have Coal,we
have Oil, We have Diamonds, Platinum, Silver, Magnesium, Zeolite, in fact
except for a couple of elements of the Periodic table that are made in Bern and
Los Alamos; our natural resources include everything we could possibly need.
We could almost shut the borders tomorrow, disconnect our
dollar and survive.
What’s that ? Ipods – no we don’t have any Ipod Mines.
Therein lies our deficit. Consumer desires – not needs;
WANTS.
Little Johnny WANTS a new Harddisk to store his growing
movie collection.
Little Jenny needs a new car to get to Uni, she WANTS a BMW.
Little Barry, bless his heart WANTS a new Iphone with the 32
Mb SSD disk.
And what about Channel No. 5 ?
My answer to that is EBAY.
Consumers that want – can buy from Ebay.
But what will happen to our Electronic Superstores ?
Don’t need them.
But if we did shut the borders – then someone somewhere
would find a way to license Ipod manufacture in Australia.
Most electronic white-goods and computer equipment would initially
go up in price, as would channel no.5 and BMW cars.
What the public mostly doesn’t realize is that we are
already paying a 100% overhead on many of these products regardless of our open
trade policies.
The overhead is due in a large part to this country’s
reliance on the US Dollar as its trade currency.
If we started settling all our foreign debt with Euros and
insisting that all sales be recalculated into Euros, then very quickly all of
those trade goods would reduce by between 33% and 28%.
(For those slow at mathematics – that’s $100,000 discount
on the BMW 745iL Just for buying it from Germany
with Euros….)
That is the estimated overvaluation of the US dollar by the US
Federal Reserve recent issuing of self securitized (Junk) Bonds.
There are other additional advantages
Our oil would last an additional forty years (until 2075) –
if we stopped exporting it tomorrow and
our coal would last an additional 70 years.(until 2134).
AND…
We would learn how to be an industrialized nation again.
Australia
is a truly cosmopolitan country with an impressive line-up of talent.
We have, Americans, Armenians, Austrians, Basques, Chileans
and lots of other nations, all of whom are highly qualified technical people.
If we let these people work in the industry they were
trained in instead of forcing Surgeons to be Registered Nurses (Croatian),
Lawyers to be taxi drivers (Armenian) and Hydroponic Biologists to be lab
assistants (Afghanistanian), then we could accelerate our return to the
Australia that was the 50’s and 60’s.
Closing the gates for just five years would raise our dollar
to levels we have never before seen and introduce a new period of bullish economic
certainty and almost duplicate the economic growth of Japan
in the fifties.
Lets talk about our Mineral Industry again.
We mine it – thousand of tons every year.
Unfortunately, we don’t smelt it, beat it, form it, mold it
or do anything else to it (very much) except to load it all in ships and send
it overseas and say – gee that was a good year.
In economics, a business that behaves in this manner is never
given a twelve year business plan – we just draft a five year plan and suggest
they show the shareholders the three year plan.
The term is referred to as the Theory of diminishing economic
returns. To maintain the Purchase Price Parity of our dollar, as our population
grows we have to export more raw materials to achieve the same GDP balancing
act result.
Is there something wrong with our labour force.
Do we lack people that want jobs ?
No – we just have politicians that listen to their lobbyist
advisors who are on the payroll of the corporations that want the fast returns
because their Directors want the bonuses this year because by the year after
next, when they put themselves up for re-election, they may not get voted in
again.
Foreign Trade is a complicated business. Between a healthy
happy country and poverty “are only a few that prevent the rest of us
from getting so much”.
The idea of raping the resources to provide an immediate
shareholder profit is not a long term winner.
Real Wealth can never be created by reselling at a set
margin someone else’s produce.
That methodology merely intercepts and adds GST to a fiscal
opportunity.
Real wealth can only be created by manufacturing.
That lady at the markets that makes her own candles is
contributing more to the wealth of the country than any shop assistant in a
wholesale to retail arbitrage position.
Australia
should look at its own tarrif protectionism methods by considering legislating
AGAINST raw materials being exported.
We could phase the process in gradually.
As an example, Let us examine BHP exporting copper to China.
It appears to be an annually renewable contract - therefore
it would appear that we could say that;
By 2010 – 50% of all copper exports have to be in ingot
form, not raw minerals/pellets.
By 2012 – 50% of all copper export have to be in rolls of
wire or copper tubing.
By 2015- 50% in finished products and fifty percent in
ingots.
The resulting boost in energy consumption and jobs would add
an estimated 230 billion to the Australian economy by 2012.
As a sop to the consumer junkies I offer the following: China and India will continue to buy Copper from Australia to the extent of our current reserves for thirty years. This will provide 80% of chineses and indian homes with copper pipes for water and copper wire for electricity. (With our much higher currency value - we could elect to pay cash - or offset the trade with some Tax incentives payable to BHP - after all they just doubled our GDP.)
The important thing for Shareholders in Australia
to consider is this. Is your and the Directors desire to earn a higher dividend
now stuffing up the future potential dividends for our retirement and our
children.
If the answer is yes, then we’re stuffed.
Then again, the Government could mandate these things to
happen – and they will come to pass.
Labour has been historically quite adept at nationalizing business
for the good of the constituents.
Whist I am not an advocate for nationalized industry, I am
also starting to think that without legislative oversight guided by sound
economic LONG TERM advice, our industry may sell the Gold coast without us
knowing about it until its too late – claiming they did it for the benefit of the
shareholders.
Is
it time to think about community co-operatives – no, things are not that bad
yet – comrade
According to Wikipedia a perceptron is a type of artificial neural network.
“Perceptric” is made-up word to describe a person who creates or uses a neural network.
The Perceptric Blog is where business partners and associates in Perceptric Pty Limited post thoughts, ideas, and links to stimulate thought and accelerate the transfer of ideas.
Perceptric offers consulting services on matters relating to the commercialization of Intellectual Property and the impact of disruptive technologies on business. Our group of consulting professionals includes leading people in the legal, technology, HR and business fields.
If your business is not disrupting someone else, it is probably being disrupted by others.
The Perceptric mission is to help companies and people exceed their expectations.
If you want to contact Perceptric to brief us on a problem or to find out which of our people would most suit your needs, please send an email to: chris at perceptric dot com
