So it will be with the evolution of digital communication technologies, including the Internet.

Yes I know. This may seem like an insane statement to make when Internet years are measured on similar time lines as mosquito lives. And yes, there is a lot going on. But, don't be fooled by the ever-changing tides on the surface and forget to consider the steady depths below. Just maybe, the saying, "the more things change the more they stay the same," is relevant even when applied to the express locomotive-digital-engine of the Internet.

This point can be best illustrated by a cartoon which shows two milk trucks delivering milk to homes. One is a 1920's version of a then common milk truck, while the other is the same type of vehicle but with spiffier hubcaps, sleeker body lines, and www.milk.com written on its sides.

Consider the story about a well known contemporary automobile company. At the turn of the century, they were not sure what kind of market size to anticipate for this new technology called the car. At that point, it was a stinky, unreliable, rich person's toy, and the company wanted to know how much capital investment would be required to serve the developing industry. Their forecasters came back and said, "There will never be more than a million cars in the world." They figured that each of these vehicles required a chauffeur. They looked at the world's total wealth and came to their conclusions.

While we can debate numbers, the more important issue is to look at what happens around them, as exemplified with core automotive technology. Suburbs, malls, mobility and many other social impacts brought about massive changes. Again, the car is basically the same as it was at its introduction, but its impact was the biggie.

Similarly with Internet technologies. The numbers and growth rates are debatable, and certainly this stinky, unreliable, Web stuff will get better and better. Just as crank-starting by hand and heating bricks to stay warm were replaced with turnkey ignitions and climate controls in cars, many Internet improvements will also take place.

Yet Internet technology will always be a user medium. We decide when to log on, where to go, what to click on, when to unveil our identities, and so on. Just an aside, the term "end-user," while very popular, kind of bugs me. There's only one other industry that I know of that refers to their customers as users, and it's a predatory industry that plays on human weakness. Accordingly, I'd like to propose we substitute the term "user" for "humex," which is short for human experience - end of segway.

The peripheral impacts from Internet technology are profound on two fronts. First, discretionary time costs, and second the Jeffersonian flattening of hierarchies.

A mentor once asked me, "When you come home from work and want to watch TV, whether there are 500 channels or 5000 channels, how are you going to decide what to watch?" His question was meant to illustrate that discretionary time was the commodity we must compete for in a digital world.

We can see this with contemporary search engines. Search on a keyword or a particular category and thousands and thousands of listings pop up. Who has time to surf on all of them, to sift through to find the gems versus the useless ones?

Which leads us into flattening hierarchies, like broadcast media. Until recently, all forms of mass communication have been top down. Editors and owners have dictated to us what we can hear/read/watch, at what times, and in what manner (e.g., with commercial interruptions). The headlines have been yelling at us. Certainly I do not intend to be disrespectful of the powerful role these broadcasters and journalists of all types have served in the democratic process. Nor do I advocate that they will disappear. On the contrary, I tip my hat and salute those who, knowingly or unknowingly, participate in the daily implementation channels of "free speech."

Interestingly enough, each new communication technology has mimicked the one before, while pundits have forecasted the death of the previous technology. Cinematography is a good example. At first, they put stationary cameras on stages and filmed plays. Today, one look at Hollywood and we can see that cinematography has evolved into an entire art form.

When radio came out, they predicted the death of newspapers. When TV hit, they predicted the death of radio. Cable was supposed to kill the TV networks, and Internet was supposed to kill all of the above. The facts are that we have more newspapers, magazines, cable/TV channels, and radio stations than ever.

While hierarchies are often portrayed as pyramids, they are really, on a functional level, like chains. They connect one value-producing element with another value-consuming one (e.g., a producer with a consumer). Internet technologies are causing the links in the chain to drop out. Ultimately what will be left are only those links that add value, thereby engendering very efficient and short chains (compressed hierarchies).

There was a story I heard at an MIT forum about a computer engineer on a business trip in Hong Kong. As this man was scrambling to get to the airport to return to California, he passed a tailor who beckoned him to come and buy a custom suit. Claiming lack of time, this engineer was told, "Pick your fabric. We'll take your measurements, and send you the suit. You'll be out of here in five minutes."

While sitting on the plane, this engineer contemplated the tailor experience. Ultimately, he hit upon the idea of feeding measurements into a computer-driven cutting machine, that would produce "just-in-time" clothing. Knowing that the market for men's dress suits was declining, he focused on jeans.

The interesting thing about jeans is that a significant portion (I believe the figure quoted was 80%) of the retail cost is attributed to the channels of distribution. Using this new method, great savings could be had.

It took a while before getting a national jeans company to get behind this technology. At first, they would measure people's sizes via optical beams. The store salespeople would record the measurements by hand otherwise the customer wouldn't believe anything was going on. When the customer left, the pencil recorded measurements were thrown out since the computer had already sent the optical recordings to the just-in-time cutting machines.

Now you would think that, with all this cost savings, the company would pass the savings on to consumers. Yet, in North America, "custom" implies more expensive. Although the company was actually saving money, they increased the price of the jeans by $5, and enlarged their margin's spread.

Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, authors of The One to One Future, have a fair amount to say about one-to-one marketing, and this jeans example continues in like vein.

Every time I go to buy jeans, I have to figure out what size I am, what's my favorite brand, what store did I get it from last time and then drive back and forth to the mall. This represents a total of two to three hours each time I repeat this loop. With the just-in-time example, imagine I'm sent an email, "Mr. Scott, we see that it's been six months since your last purchase. We have a current special on our new black denim. If your body style has remained the same, we would be happy to custom prepare a pair for you. Free leather belt if you act this week. Also, you're welcome to visit our nearest sizing and showroom boutique to see samples and confirm your dimensions..."

Now imagine a competing firm that comes up to me and says, "Hey! We've got better jeans that cost less!" On a certain level, I wouldn't care how much of a cost savings they offered. The first firm already knows me and loves me. By switching companies, it forces me to repeat my time investments and educate the new company about my preferences. It also introduces risk, since the new firm might not deliver as promised.

Earlier I mentioned Jeffersonian qualities. By this I mean that people are drawn to freedom of choice.

I lived in Argentina in 1978 and watched them make the turn from dictator/military rule to democracy. I also had the good fortune to travel through much of South America. In addition to their great passions, I loved the conversational friendships experienced in many Latin cafes. There I would find many intense debates about the benefits of various social frameworks, e.g., capitalism, communism, socialism.

Yet, no matter where I went, the black markets where always richly in swing. This proved to me that no matter what ideology one subscribes too, left alone, two people will strike their own deals, to their mutual satisfactions.

Black markets represent the Jeffersonian spirit of free trade, a spirit I would argue is innate to all. Digital communication technologies also appeal to our Jeffersonian natures, allowing us to: express ourselves; sample others' expressions; create and exchange value.

Consider education. As an industry, it hasn't changed much in the last hundred years. But now with the unfolding of digital learning materials, we can access/click the auditory versions or the visual versions or the text versions, depending upon our preferences. This says nothing of being free to do so without geography/time constraints via distance learning technologies.

At the same time, we see content producers, like musicians, gaining global exposure for their works via the MP3 format, sans record labels, having more options to create and distribute their works.

If Patrick Henry were alive today, I'd think he'd be tempted to proclaim, "Give me a mouse, a computer, a sound card, a color printer, a modem, and a video camera with a firewire connection. Give Me Digital Liberty for All, or Give Me Death."

In the next section we will take a closer look at some of the characteristics of digital technologies. Before leaving, consider James Redfield's book, The Celestine Vision. It foreshadows a time when exchanged, bartered bits are the basis for a global giving economy. Hmmm. Wonder if that's all about secured servers helping individual e-farmers exchange their harvested value, much like our ancestral bazaars.

Bravo to innate trading behaviors! Does anyone have any cabernet sauvignon from Argentina or Chile, mas or menos 1992, to trade - llama me (do call)!

Seriously though, the best example I could find pertaining to the nature of human creativity being the same despite the technological advances of the ages, appears in the title of a book produced by the Institute of American Indian and Alaska Native Culture and Arts Development: Creativity Is Our Tradition.

And by definition, creativity will always be our heritage to explore. The digital tools afford us more options.   top