Sunday, January 09, 2005
Opinion? Sure, but it's in the Times...
The New York Times reports on a Pew Internet & American Life Project study. The study polled experts for their views of what the 'net is going to look like down the road. The actual study can be found here. Anyway, as you might expect when you ask some 1,300 people what they think, the answers were all over the place. My favorite stat: half believe that "anonymous, free, music file-sharing on peer-to-peer networks will still be easy to perform a decade from now." The other half live in caves. I'm not saying it's right for artists to lose the ability to be compensated for their work, but, have you ever heard of, oh, I don't know, China? And let's not forget about sneaker-net. File-sharing, like warez before it, is here to stay. Whether you call it piracy or fair use, consumers have an expectation about their ability to listen to music where and when they want. The only way the incorrect half of that study gets to be right (and proves me wrong, to boot) is if music distribution becomes sufficiently intelligent that folks can do what they want with "their" music and makes peer-to-peer file-sharing irrelevant.
The full results makes for interesting reading as well. The study gives a quick insight into the disparity in answers right up front. Question 2 asks "What year did you start using the internet?" The response garnering the highest percentage, by far with 54%, was "1993 or later." How many other fields have over half its experts possessing roughly a decade or less of experience in that field? Folks, as smart as we may think we are, we're still in the cave painting days. The reason so much of what's happenin' on the 'net feels like it's completely new is because it is! I've got a 6 year-old child. Ask me what she's going to be like when she's 30, and I'm probably going to look like a schmo on half the answers even 10 years from now because so much is still so nebulous. Very few people manage to predict the future. The ones that seem to either react faster once it becomes clear, or make it what they want it to be. So stop predicting. Start creating.
¶ 11:04 PM
The full results makes for interesting reading as well. The study gives a quick insight into the disparity in answers right up front. Question 2 asks "What year did you start using the internet?" The response garnering the highest percentage, by far with 54%, was "1993 or later." How many other fields have over half its experts possessing roughly a decade or less of experience in that field? Folks, as smart as we may think we are, we're still in the cave painting days. The reason so much of what's happenin' on the 'net feels like it's completely new is because it is! I've got a 6 year-old child. Ask me what she's going to be like when she's 30, and I'm probably going to look like a schmo on half the answers even 10 years from now because so much is still so nebulous. Very few people manage to predict the future. The ones that seem to either react faster once it becomes clear, or make it what they want it to be. So stop predicting. Start creating.
¶ 11:04 PM
