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1. Editorial: The “new” picture of Dorian Gray |
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Things I am reading about the new economy bring to my mind
the picture of Dorian Gray. In a sort of nightmare where it’s
shifting from young to old and back in a confused pattern.
It’s hard to tell which way it’ going – and, whatever it is,
the picture has little to do with real life.
The fact is that many things called “new” are
old, or grow from old and withered roots, or are subject to
sudden deterioration. Is there anything new, for instance, in
multiplying mergers and acquisitions? That’s an old movie and
many of the “happy endings” don’t hold up over time.
It there anything new in the effort to cover as vast a
territory as possible, as fast as possible, no matter how and
why? In restructuring for short-term profit, or making deals
in which the actual value or competence of a company is
irrelevant? We’ve seen it all before. Historians of the
economy can point to many such cycles in the past, and show
how they caused more problems than they solved. But the rat
race is too fast for anyone to bother about what could be
learnt from history.
A lot of money (often phony, but sometimes real) will
change hands before the dust settles. Most of what is called
“new” is terribly old, and not very healthy. But
while the wheeling and dealing goes on in the hazy dreamworld
of the old canvas, some new and young things are growing, or
are still on the drawing board. The new economy isn’t a
dream. But too much of the attention is concentrated on
techno-makeup, on old decaying ideas and business practices
disguised as “new”.
Unfortunately many potentially good ideas and businesses
get bought out, or warped by the greed for short-term gain,
before they can develop the roots for healthy growth. The
biggest enemy of the real new economy is the overwhelming
wave of fake innovation that isn’t only hollow
but also very dangerous. Because it swallows money, resources and talent, removing
them from where they should be: making the real new economy grow.
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2. Net haters and net lovers |
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There are two people in my country that are very
different but have one thing in common: they talk a lot about
the internet and they don’t know what it is. One hates it,
the other loves, it, and neither knows why.
One is a famous journalist. His name is Giorgio Bocca.
I’ve never met him, but I’ve been reading his articles for
many years and I think I understand his attitude. He is very
aggressive, and often quite right, in complaining about the
way things are being run – in politics, society and business.
But now he has chosen the internet as the devil: the cause of
all evils. It’s quite obvious from his writing that he has no
experience of the net and no idea of how it works. He hates
something that exists only in his imagination, or in the
hype-and-horror reports he reads in newspapers. That is
warping his mind, so he fails to understand where the
problems are and the quality of his thinking is suffering.
Many of his colleagues, famous or not, have the same
problem.
At the other extreme there’s a chap that isn’t famous at
all. He is a shopkeeper. His business is small but good, he
is making a comfortable living. But he isn’t happy. For years
he has been dreaming of schemes that can make him very rich,
quickly and easily. None of them ever worked and he is quite
frustrated. I am not going to his shop as often as I used to,
because every time he sees me he has some “great
idea” about how to get instantly rich with the internet;
and he gets quite nervous because I don’t appreciate his
genius and I don’t spend time and money helping him to
develop his wonderful ideas. Like his famous counterpart, he
has no idea of what the net is of how it works. But it has
become his dreaming machine.
These are examples of two widespread attitudes. Lots of
people fall, to some degree, into one or the other category.
They feel uncomfortable about the internet, or they expect
miracles. It’s not unusual to find people that have a mixture
of both attitudes. Many of them write books and articles,
talk on television, teach – or do business on the net. And so
they spread the disease. We may be in the infancy or the
adolescence of net culture,
but it’s hard to guess how long it will take to get out of this phase.
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3. Backward technology |
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If culture and business are confused about which steps are ahead
and which are backwards, so is technology. Almost every day we hear about
“innovations” that make things worse.
One of many examples... it’s just been announced, as a
great new invention, that systems can trace a person online
and send an instant message. Of course that isn’t new. There
have been such devices for a long time. It could be done on BBSs ten years ago.
And we’ve always had the problem of being interrupted by a phone call
(that’s becoming obsessive with mobile phones).
For many years there have been people who have set their
computers to alert them immediately of incoming message. I
think it’s masochism.
One of the great advantages of e-mail is that it isn’t
“instant”. We can read when we choose, write when
we have the time. The last thing we need is an
“improvement” that makes it as intrusive as the
telephone – or visitors knocking on our door at the wrong time.
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4. New data, no major changes |
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It will take another while before new relevant statistics
are published in this newsletter. Not because of a lack of
data, but because there don’t seem to be any relevant
changes. The broad picture is more or less the same that we
saw months ago (see issues 37
and 43 of Netmarketing and a
report at the CFP2000 convention in April).
As usual, there are conflicting reports about the number of internet
“users” in Italy (as everywhere else). Some sources say five million,
some say ten. One thing is clear: there are many more than in
past years. Short-term variations can be uncertain, the
long-term growth trend is quite solid.
International comparisons (based, as usual, on hostcount
statistics) don’t show any major changes. There are some
temporary weaknesses in some data (that seems to be happening
more often than in past years) and there is a change of speed
in some countries, but no big changes in the overall picture.
Here are updates of two of our usual graphs.
Internet hosts per 1000 inhabitants
in the Europe-Mediterranean area
28 countries (of 90 in the RIPE area) with over 20,000 hosts
Density in the Netherlands continues to grow and has
reached “Scandinavian” levels. France is
consolidating its presence in the internet. Statistics for
the UK aren’t properly updated; real density is likely to be
higher than shown here. The figures for Italy and Spain are
probably underestimated, because of some hiccups in the hostcount;
but southern Europe remains relatively weak.
Internet hosts in relation to income (GNP)
in the Europe-Mediterranean area
28 countries (of 90 in the RIPE area) with over 20,000 hosts
No major changes so far. New worldwide statistics are due in August
and European data may show some evolution in coming months.
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4. Information Ecologies
(Bonnie Nardi and Vicki
O’Day) |
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Information Ecologies – Using Technology with Heart by
Bonnie A. Nardi and Vicki L. O’Day was published by MIT Press
in 1999. Unfortunately this book isn’t much fun to read. In spite of some
literary ambitions, and some good quotations, the style is less inspiring than the
concepts. But it’s interesting. It’s another sign of a strong and
growing culture that recognizes human values in the use of information technology
and understands the ecological and biological nature of the internet.
There is an interesting analysis of the need for
“gardeners” who know how to blend different sorts
of experience and competence in effective working groups.
“Resistance – say Nardi and O’Day – is sometimes part of
the strategy, buy we believe it is a flawed approach if used
by itself, because it disempowers. Using technology according
to thoughtful values seems to us to be the most viable
approach for the world we live in.” What’s needed is
co-evolution of human needs and technology. To develop,
choose and implement the best solutions to fit our
inclinations and desires. They must be evaluated, before they
are applied, “from the different perspectives of many
people throughout the ecology, not just a few people who play
the most visible and important roles.” “Diverse
participants in an information ecology can improve a new
technological design before it moves into active use.”
The authors remind us that “the habitation of a
technology is its location within a network of
relationships.”
This book is a compilation of several studies and
experiments, carried out in a variety of situations,
environments and circumstances. Results converge in a
definition of the internet as a living organism and a texture
of human relations. “A vast playing field for
diversity” that “bypasses the bottleneck of mass
media that so constrains expression.” It is “a
medium in which we are seeing a return to handicrafted
information – as though letter writing, pamphleteering, and
afternoon watercolor painting are given new life.”
Therefore “the agenda for the internet is to protect its
healthy diversity and enlarge the pool of people who have
access to it ..... No one should be rendered invisible with
respect to the internet, unless they so choose.” When
technology is applied to serve human needs and feelings
“we can bring our values into our information ecologies,
pay attention to the dynamics of coevolving tools and
practices, and develop a sure sense of the importance of all
of our contributions.”
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Summary
