At 10:05 PM 5/13/96 -0500, Donovan White  wrote:
>Sorry, pal. You're talking to a guy who used to live on a commune called
>PeaceGate. If the only tangible result of the '60s was the destruction of an
>educational system, you can't look for much from a generation of X slackers.
>They're no match for Time Warner or Sony. Despite the opportunity for new
>paradigms, the momentum lies with the larger companies, their existing
>relationships, and the near-term extensions of those relationships. That is
>what will determine the direction of online development. It's not
>necessarily the monolithic status that give these companies their dominant
>influence. It's their relationships that will enable them to chart the
>course of online publishing. They have the relationships with the developers
>of technology, with the advertisers who will bankroll the market, and with
>the mass market itself.

Major companies will determine where the people go? Change depends upon a
unique property of any particular generation?

Don't look now, but those major media companies are today jumping headlong
onto the Internet only because between 10 million and 25 million consumers
are already there. The major companies are jumping en masse like lemmings,
without any clear ideas how they will make money online, only because the
people are already there. No media company invented the Internet as a
medium; no telecommunication company wired it as a form of public
communication; Madison Ave. didn't market it nor create the demand for it;
and the proprietary online services all initially fought the Internet. No,
the popularity of the Internet was due to the public itself. Major media
companies aren't directing the course of online; they are being swept away
by it. (The two companies you offer as champions are ironic examples. Short
of a emblematic website, Sony is MIA online. And discretion prevents us from
talking about how lost in the online jungle Time Warner's Pathfinder has
become.)

As indicated in my previous posting, major media companies will now try to
catch up to the people; identify the people's trend; and 'lead' this trend
in the idiosyncratic way that such companies, particularly the consumer
magazine industry and Madison Ave., do so well. These companies will now
attempt to brake or divert trend if the people proceeds in any ways
different from how those companies have always done business (i.e, the
companies' clamor 'we can't continue to have people accessing online content
for free'). It is here that major companies can use their considerable
marketing and lobbying power. They will probably win some early battles, yet
not the war.

Flower Power, Generation X, nor Genghis Khan's yurtmates, no particular
human generation is uniquely an agent of change. Only ideas are. Popular and
efficient ideas are inexorable forces. Like the idea of democracy once
introduced, the Internet model will eventually overwhelm the ancien regimes'
feudal and proprietary models. For generations, business schools taught that
proprietary business models would win; they now suddenly teach that open
models win. The proofs that open systems today win are self-evident in our
online industry: unix, Netscape, java, Worldnet, etc. So are indications
that the ancien regimes are quaking: Congress legislates CDA; the giant
telcos appeal for court actions against tiny Internet telephony companies;
News Corp.'s online efforts, AT&T Interchange's, Sears/IBM Prodigy's, and
Time Warner Pathfinder's crumble; the world's largest advertiser states that
it will no longer pay for the time-honored business model of advertising
impressions; etc. 

Will any generation that has experienced the ability to access content
worldwide without significant cost, to communicate without regard to
distances, and to select from all possible sources, ever go or be forced
back to the old proprietary model?

Generation X has experienced that idea and those services. It's the idea
that will effect the change, not uniquely that generation. You're right that
major companies have momentum -- inertial momentum. And those companies have
plenty of relationships with other vendors of self-same interests. They have
the power to win some initial battles. Yet, they all depend upon the
consumers' money, consumers who in reality are leading, not following, this
trend. What will happen over ten years when Generation X is *the* incomed
generation? Will those major companies be able to force these consumers to
go back to the feudal, proprietary estates? Everything we've seen to date in
the online and computer industries cries no.

There is nothing new under the Sun except ideas.

_________________________________________________
Vin Crosbie         FreeMark Communications, Inc.
vin@corp.freemark.com     125 CambridgePark Drive
(617) 492-6600 x211       Cambridge, MA 02140 USA
(617) 492-6622 fax        http://www.freemark.com
- -------------------------------------------------


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