05.13.07

5 Enemies of the Future

Posted in crowd sourcing, digital sharecropping, fear/uncertainty/doubt at 11:21 pm by Matthew Reinbold

Last week on Valleywag Nick Douglas had a fabulous piece entitled ‘The Future’s Five Enemies‘. In it he outlines the biggest threats facing anyone working to make technology better. Those enemies listed are:

• Baby Boomers – No, its not because this rapidly aging generation is going to soak up billions in health care, cause decreases in labor pools, and render social security for later generations insolvent. With any generation growing age brings a fear of change. And since these are the folks who write the laws (see ‘the government’, below) hampering change is a form of fear management.
• The Government – remember how Digg is in hot water because its users posted a certain number to it? Thank the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. We have a political body made up of almost entirely lawyers attempting to make technology policy. Of course they don’t try and come up with this on their own – that’s what lobbyists from well funded corporate players are for (see IP industry below).
• The Movie/Music/IP Industries – Something happened in the 20th century. Toward the end major intellectual property owners realized that the real money wasn’t in creating something great and selling lots of it. Instead, they realized profits could be extracted infinitum by owning a few great ‘brands’ (i.e. Mickey Mouse) and merchandising till the universe implodes. Congress has successfully been lobbied to extend copyright 11 times in the past 40 years. It’s things like this that make singing ‘Happy Birthday’ without paying royalties a crime.
• Cell Phone Providers – It’s hard to think of a better example of a ‘consumer-lock-in’ than the cell phone industry. While number portability laws help most people wanting to jump to a new innovative service face draconian ‘early contract termination’ fees. And can you explain to me why I should be charged 10 times (or more) for data traffic than voice? It’s going out over the same line, right? Until that’s fixed we’ll never have mass adoption of a mobile-friendly web set of applications (different, I should point out, than Twitter, which might be an interesting application platform built on SMS).
• Web 2.0 – While Nick laments web 2.0 what he is actually driving at is the ‘crowd sourcing’ (or digital sharecropping) of labor by this class of applications. It’s where people are empowered by technology – to make money for big corporate interests. Whether it is YouTube, or MySpace, or Flickr, etc. users provide the content, ad networks provide the revenue stream, and the central repository profits. The big (Google, News Corp, Yahoo) get bigger while those providing the labor do so for free.

How correct is this list? What are your biggest concerns for the future?

Permalink