Its prose is sometimes turgid and its art old-fashioned, but
The Economist rarely misses when it decides to weigh in on a Big Trend. That's the case this week when the British-based weekly
ran a piece by Andreas Kluth about the transformational powers of high-speed broadband, saying its advent represents a true revolution in the way the people of our planet communicate. Kluth's main
point is that, unlike previous eras in the annals of communication, in which power resided with owners of the machinery, the Web era is quickly becoming all about its participants. "This has
profound implications for traditional business models in the media industry, which are based on aggregating large passive audiences and holding them captive during advertising interruptions," Kluth
wries. "In the new-media era, audiences will occasionally be large, but often small, and usually tiny. Instead of a few large capital-rich media giants competing with one another for these
audiences, it will be small firms and individuals competing or, more often, collaborating. Some will be making money from the content they create; others will not and will not mind, because they
have other motives. 'People creating stuff to build their own reputations' are at one end of this spectrum, says Philip Evans at Boston Consulting Group, and one-man superbrands such as Steven
Spielberg at the other." This is a fascinating (to some industrialists, no doubt disturbing) and altogether worthwhile summary of a hugely important trend
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