Consequences of the new internet

Here’s something I picked up on http://www.theooze.com/blog/ I’m not much of an intellectual, but I thought this was very interesting.

The economic, social and cultural consequences of the new Internet
Grant McCracken blogs about three ways of understanding the Internet's impact on culture. This is just a short summary but you should read the whole thing.  It's that good.

1. Disintermediation :: "The Internet is an efficiency machine. It removes the friction that stands between buyers and sellers. Now Dell can sell directly, from factories to consumers. Now Amazon can disintermediate the bookstore and someday the publisher. We are on the verge of being able to tell how much of the marketplace was about the accidents, not the essentials, of supply and demand. Markets will verge on maximal efficiency. "


2. Long Tail :: "The Internet is a profusion machine. It allows small cultural producers to find small cultural consumers, and as a result, all hell is breaking lose. Chris Anderson's long tail model (and my own plenitude model) says that the tiny acts of innovation, rebellion and refusal that used to die in obscurity can now, some of them, find just enough fellow travellers to sustain themselves. As a result, the gravitational power of the center is being made to creak like the mast of an 18th century man of war in a perfect storm. It might hold...or maybe this is the moment to throw ourselves overboard. "


3. Reformation :: "The Internet is a reformation machine. It will create new fundamentals of and for our world. It change the units of analysis and the relationships between them. This reformation model says, in other words, that the coming changes will deeply cultural...and not merely social (model 2) and economic (model 1)." He concludes by offering a fourth. And, he notes that the first three are telescoping: If you believe 3, you also believe 2 and 1.