Monetize – The Technology Schism
If I had a nickel for every time the word monetize is used… well, the word would still be grating on me more each day. I like making money, and lots of it, as much as anyone, but this place wouldn’t exist as we know it if it was only about money, any more than my home and personal world is only about money. (end rant)
To the point, a penny for every page load would shoot you right through the Forbes list radar. If you subscribe to the belief that we’re barely over the threshold of a huge population explosion on the internet, projecting those numbers can make your head spin.
I propose that the major paradigm shift of technology has long been underway, but that our conceptualization of the future we’re entering is barely a glimmer.
In terms of monetization, the age old human model was based on 2 plus 2 equals 4. Very simple. Make or buy it for 2 and sell it for 4. Keep your overhead at 1 (per piece) and you’re making a solid profit.
Next came the economies of scale that became more widely understood via industrialization. Buy 100 times the inventory and you can make a deal to pay 1 per piece. Your profit climbs from 25% to 50%. Increase your volume sufficiently that your overhead per piece starts falling to a fractional percentage. At the next stage of growth, you could very well get that profit margin up to 100%.
So far, technology has added two minor revisions to this basic model.
The first is a drastic reduction of overhead. Early eBay Powersellers often pinched themselves in amazement at being able to realize fantastical profits with virtually no overhead. Any individual can make a darn good living while they sleep by packaging some info or advice and mastering the basic tools. It has been a gift from heaven to old fashioned entrepreneurs on a grass roots level.
The fact that it hasn’t translated that way for big companies so far is partly because the web is nothing but a peripheral venue tacked on to their old fashioned business models. If there was a way to translate those physical commerce models directly into a virtual version, then it would already be a reality. They’ve got the bucks to corral enough brilliant programmers to their service.
The second minor revision to the model is more interesting.
It started with the power of media. In the 70s and 80s, business people learned the concept that 2 plus 2 can equal 5 …maybe even 7. We called it many things, including synergy. Bean counters started paying more attention to the value of ‘good will’ and a new segment of consultancy that specialized in branding sprang to life. Billions of dollars are spent in the world of media and advertising in the quest to capture this elusive magical profit. Little guys can get a piece of magic profit too, because we once again (start with reading Machiavelli) understand that knowledge is power and people will pay for information.
The wizards of magical profit, including media barons and money players led by venture capitalists, are astoundingly overrepresented in the business community on the web. The best of them are very successful financially and therefore entitled to this oracular position they’ve staked out. They take full advantage of the human tradition where oracles talk in riddles. Why wouldn’t they? The big problem here, for the entrepreneurial panners for gold who pore over this oracular wisdom, is that you don’t often hear an oracle admitting in public that none of them really know for sure where the next motherlodes will be found. The straight shooters among them will readily admit that in person, but hey, if you’re standing in the spotlight and the crowds are applauding your brilliance, what’s a guy to do besides take a bow and bask, with or without modesty.
End of human knowledge overview.
Investors and entrepreneurs and a growing audience are now all either waiting breathlessly, or doggedly digging, or furiously networking the in crowd, to discover the next secrets of monetizing technology.
Some are standing a little further back, observing the huge surge in traffic concentrated in enabling services such as Google or doggedly developing meme type concepts such as Wikipedia. Some but not all of this group are focused on future monetization.
Then there’s the growing and huge core population of internet developers, coders, etc., including the people who built this darned thing in the first place, who don’t believe that the internet is essentially about monetization. They aren’t all idealists, and they’re the opposite of stupid. Every one of them has to pay the rent and feed their families and they tend to be very logical, practical people, and can often be highly motivated by money although not by greed.
The schism between those focused exclusively on money, aggressively competing for a position that will give afford them a piece of the growing pie, and the political, ideological, and sheer mass of humanity grown accustomed to free everything is as broad and stark as an epic sci fi image.
This new cosmos we’re creating …this network that’s making the world ‘flat’ and supporting the web that reinvents the three or more dimensions… is not a commercial creation in itself any more than the discoveries of science and technology that preceded it. We’d be wise to focus less on the specifics of powerful copyright holders vs users whose stakes are negligible individually and more on the process and direction of change.
Instead of analyzing how we use the web today and how to fine tune that experience, we should turn our attention to concepts such as ‘collective intelligence’. More in the mainstream popular jargon is the ‘wisdom of crowds’ which notion applies beautifully to real teamwork but also disregards the converse ‘power of the mob’ and its pitfalls. In either perspective, we are creating power for the masses, a situation in history that on the surface lends itself to anarchy but in practice more often results in fascism.
Again, we’re barely over the threshold of population explosion now. Even this term has to be viewed in a completely new way. It isn’t simply a matter of counting how many eyeballs own how much hardware now compared to how many will in 10 years. The biggest difference will be the actual use and power of this medium by the controlling few vs the millions/billions.
There’s a silent battle being waged within the next wave of this development. The more of us responsibly and deliberately gather between the polar extremes of sheer greed for money and the awesome power to manipulate based on political or ideological agendas, the greater our chances of building a world we will be proud to inhabit rather than wish to flee from.
I’ve never been one to sit on a fence. My definition of this middle ground we should be staking could as easily be expressed in military as in moral terms. There is success and money and power accruing to future leaders. Defending the very definitions of common sense, liberty (including capitalistic free enterprise), and higher civilizations is the price, and the investment, for me. This is where I believe the forefront of our brave excursion into the future should be directed.
