After reading and viewing the articles and documentaries, I feel surer of what I thought the future was headed towards, a economy based only upon what people want, and by people I mean everyone, and by what I mean whatever they could possibly want.
The documentary Download: The True Story of the Internet, part 3 The Bubble, showed the beginnings of Ecommerce. I learned how the great ideas of Amazon and Ebay came out of garages and turned into the giants they are today.
The trending themes between the two companies seem to be revolving around how they interact with their users. For Amazon it’s give the costumers MORE of what they’re asking for. For Ebay, let the users take the technology and run. Overall the two are trending toward more and more user interaction with business and instead of it being a lecture it’s becoming more like a conversation.
In Chris Anderson’s article in Wired magazine, The Long Tail, he describes how markets of entertainment are no long being controlled by the big producers and production companies. Instead it’s fanning out to cover every single form of entertainment that an individual might find entertaining.
I’ve seen this happening a lot as I used to work for Barns and Noble. Our biggest problem was our physical limitations, only so much space on the shelves. Amazon never had this problem and so the costs of inventory don’t exist for them.
Amazon’s ability to refer people to things that Amazon had a good idea they would buy, turned out to be their biggest pay off. This allows the “whatever they could possibly want” part to come in. Now the most obscure of films, music, video games or whatever has an equal shot at being purchased as the post popular of the same genre. It’s now possible for distributors to, as Anderson called it, “embrace the niche!”
We can’t compete with this in a physical world with physical limitations.
I liked how Anderson described it as we are moving from “a world of scarcity to a world of abundance.”
I think it’s just a matter of when ever someone builds a transporter and can beam me anything that I could physically need to my home. When this happens all business will be like ordering from an online catalog and then just hitting the send button.
I also enjoyed Anderson’s article titled Free. It showed that one day in the future the best way to do online and maybe even offline business is at 100% off. Businesses like Google and Craig’s List don’t charge their costumers a cent for the use of their products. Advertising is how those two make their money.
I see a difference in things that have physical products. I can’t just give away my wigits for free when they cost me X amount of money to manufacture and distribute. I’d never make a cent that way. However, I seem to always find someone who is willing to give me something that he or she made for free as a friend. They do this because they know that what ever I make for a hobby, they are more than welcome to choose one for themselves in return.
This is already taking form in the music industry as bands start to make their music available for download free of charge.
I think the idea of a free economy isn’t too far fetched to say it’s impossible. I think that one day everyone will be giving what they make away simply because they love making them and they will all be free to take what others make in return.
Maybe my vision of the world’s future economy is a bit idealistic to the point of being down right crazy but who really knows anymore. The old economic rules have been turned on their heads.
