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Life After Digital: Someday The Internet Will Disappear
It occurred to me today that my generation will leave little behind of the culture we created.
We won’t build anything like a Grand Central Station, cathedral, monument, or pyramid. Everything we build is temporary and will shortly disappear.
Our culture will be gone too. Written documents will go out of style with printed books to make way for cheaper and more efficient digital files. The day we make the full transition to the digital world will be the day that the cultural trail goes cold.
In the irony of being the most documented, over sharing generation ever to live, that digital information will be lost. Services will shut down, technology will change, and the electricity may one day go out. A hiccup in our civilization caused by war or worse will cause the network to crash. It wasn’t architected for the relentless erosion of time. It’s built on a flimsy patchwork of services that barely work when given the constant attention of engineers.
If the system goes down, even for a brief time, all that data will be gone. It will be locked on magnetic disks and memory chips in ones and zeros, and we will lack the precise technology to decipher them. Our focus will be on getting the system and our civilization back up and running. The task of figuring out how to retrieve all of that data will be insurmountable. It will be stored on machines that no longer work, in software that no longer runs, written in languages that are no longer used.
It’s already happening. The data and high quality footage from our first moon landing, a seminal event for our civilization, is locked on giant reels of magnetic film. There are no machines left to read their contents; it might as well not exist.
The digital representation of our culture will become dead bits, and instead of reviving them we’ll start over. My blog seems like the perfect place to lament this eventuality. In a short time it will disappear, along with everything else posted here.
The Internet Destroys Profits
The Internet is a force that levels communication, distribution, information, and access. Controlling these four things has been the foundation of business. In the past if you could control one of these things better than your competitors, you had an advantage. The Internet removes this advantage, and thus, levels money out of practically every industry it touches.
It is my opinion that both the individual and humanity as a whole benefits from the Internet. I also think that particular businesses have capitalized on the unique opportunities the Internet presents. From a macroeconomic standpoint I worry that the net result of the Internet has not been positive for business. As the Internet increases efficiency, the efficiency creates unmanageable data overload. While it drives down costs, it also drives down profits. It increases communication but it demands instantaneous, around the clock responses. It allows for quick and cheap distribution, but the distribution channel can no longer be controlled. Digital files can be infinitely replicated at zero cost, but it drives down the value of the contents to near zero. It provides businesses with vital information, but that information is also available to competitors and consumers. It gives us access to the world, but it prevents anyone from restricting access to anything.
It’s clear that this has happened with music, movies, television, print, cable, auto, telecom and real estate. I’m sure there are dozens of industries that have not had their profits ground out by the Internet. I would theorize that this is only because the Internet has yet to set it’s sites on that industry. Where the Internet touches, profits shrink. You can think that your industry will be exempt, and you might be right. Chances are it will be swept under; it’s only a matter of time.
This may seem like an odd thing to say coming from someone who is a proponent of the Internet. The Internet has reshaped the business landscape and redefined the profits that can be expected. It doesn’t seem like the business world has fully adjusted their expectations. I keep hearing the question asked, “How can X industry return to its former level of profits?” In response the industry inevitably tries to generate more revenue with the same business model and it doesn’t work. It’s possible that once the Internet touches an industry, pre-Internet revenue levels will never return. The only solution is to change the size of company so it is in line with the profit potential. For example, you don’t need a massive building with hundreds of employees to sell music. It is very likely that this is the dawn of the small business age.
Of course, there is the chance that for every industry with destroyed profits, there is an entirely new business model that the Internet has enabled. At the moment, the Internet may be a net negative for business because those new possibilities have yet to be realized. What’s more likely is that some industries will discover a new model, but most will have to reorganize around adjusted expectations.
