Back in 1997, Esther Dyson, one of the Dot-com’s most prominent digiteri famously pronounced in her book, Release 2.0, that the "the Internet will change the world."
About 4 years later, in 2000, Larry Ellison once remarked as if in retort to Dyson’s euphementistic pronouncements that there wouldn’t be that many companies created by the Internet.
As Fortune magazine recently commented however, many of the ‘outlandish’ predictions made in 1996 largely came to pass in 2006.
This is the first of a series of articles that will try to realistically asses the impact the Internet has played in the grand world of business.
First up, lets take a look at the entirely new business models and businesses that use them, that would not have been possible without the Internet…
[Humans have] a real tendency to overestimate how much things will change in the next two years; but also…a tendency to underestimate how much things will change in 10 years…Bill Gates
Let’s look at how much we may be underestimated change in the last 10 years. Let’s take a look at how the Internet has created entirely new online industries:
Etailers
- Amazon.com – the original e-tailer
- MTGSoldHere – niche e-tailers of CCG’s
Online Marketplaces
- Auction based:
- eBay – online marketplace
- Ariba’s Free Markets
- e-lance.com
- Matching Buyers and Sellers:
- Match.com/Online Dating – marketplace for personal relationships – or – intimate encounters. Aggregates supply and demand
- Monster.com
Online Classifieds
Library/Resource Sharers
- Netflix – Film Library – the Internet was the only cost-effective channel to field requests and preferences
Online Advertising
- Google – Automated online advertising placement agency, traffic monetizer and the world’s leading search engine to drive traffic
- Yahoo – custom online advertising to its audience
Critical infrastructure providers
- Paypal – electronic payment systems
- Google – search engine for easy identification
- Local Webhosting provider
- Akamai – high capacity content hosting
Online Gaming:
- Subscription based: World of Warcraft, Everquest
- Transactional based: Online Poker, day trading
- Virtual Products: Guildwars, Magic Gathering Online
- Negative Expected Value Gaming: Online Casinos, electronic lotteries, kino
Software as Service:
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For those of you desperately wished for Al Gore to win in 2000, be grateful for the wonderful lawyers and non-partisan electoral oversight committees that made we sure we would never have to experience that travesty of incompetent administration.
This is the type of America and world you might have gotten instead:
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2006/05/snl_al_gore_for.html
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Though it’s been out in Asia since last Christmas, and out in DVD and VCD for a couple of months, only now is the love story cum musical Perhaps Love, finding its way to North America making an appearance at the San Francisco International Film Festival.
Perhaps Love stars Takeshi Kaneshiro, Zhou Xun and Jacky Cheung as Lin Jin Dong, Sun Wa and Nie Wen respectively, caught in a love triangle of sorts in this musical within a love story. The movie centers around the filming of director Nie’s latest production, a Moulin Rouge-type musical, while his two leads Sun, Nie’s longtime muse and companion, and Lin struggle to come to terms with their own personal history.
Art imitates life as the plot of the Nie’s film which closely mimics the story between Sun and Lin unfolds in the parallel, informing the viewer of the history between the two leads characters. The musical numbers in Nie’s movie, big productions the likes of Chicago and Moulin Rouge, simultaneously advance the plot of Nie’s movie and the parallel story of Sun and Lin.
Perhaps…Love is innovative in it cleverly supports 3 stories – the plot of Nie’s film, the on the set tribulations of shooting Nie’s film and the backstory between Sun and Wa. Moreover, each segment was shot by a different a cinematographer providing a different look and feel between the three segments but nonetheless successful in maintaining a narrative cohesiveness between all of them.
Perhaps…Love will probably draw the strongest comparisons, and rightly, to Moulin Rouge both with its similar story within a story narrative device, style of musical production and even musical similarity in a number of the songs.
However, Perhaps…Love retains its Asian sensibilities in its narrative themes. While Moulin Rouge plays up the "love conquers all," – in fact repeating the line "All you need is love" over and over again, Perhaps…Love is much more pragmatic about the subject. Storywise, Perhaps…Love focuses on the compromises Sun Wa makes to advance her film career, juxtaposing her distant film diva persona of the present, with the innocent free-spirit that fell in love with Lin 10 years earlier. We see her gradual transformation from the latter to the former, the tormented impact on Lin and how they eventually comes to terms with each other.
The character of Sun Wa is also a metaphor for the transformations, both internal and external, mainland China has undergone in the same 10 years that spans the film. Lost is the innocence and selflessness, traded-in for material and career success and a bitchy "all for me" mentality. The film itself serves more outsized reminders as the Lin and Sun eventually return to Beijing, where they first fell in love 10 years ago, to find much of it lost. The noodle shop where they first met closed, the skyline polluted with construction cranes and the walls covered with ebay.com.hk posters as a sign of the Beijing and China as a whole’s rapid economic development.
Still as Sun goes so too, as filmmakers suggest, does mainland China. While Sun doesn’t find redemption at the end of the film, she does find reconciliation. In finally acknowledging the past that she had so vehemently denied at the beginning, the film suggests that China too is leaving its period of blind economic development for a more self-informed era of growth – or perhaps such is the hope of the filmmakers.
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…and all of the Washington press in the Annual Washington Correspondent’s Dinner.
You have see this to believe it.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-869183917758574879
It’s interesting Colbert’s virtuoso performance hasn’t received more coverage in the mainstream press (leaving it up to the Blogsphere to fill up the gaps left over by the press…).
They say comedy is more depressing than tragedy. When there is no hope remaining all you can do is laugh. Laugh and despair. Only another 2.5 years of the W. and cronies to put up with. (Hopefully the next bunch will give less reason for the cynical laughter.)
Appended – 2006-05-08:
It seems the mainstream media does not want the Colbert’s virtuoso performance to get out as the initial link is broken. I’ve replaced it with Google Video link. Thank goodness for Sergei and Larry – they’ll pander to the Chinese communists* and they won’t take shit from the GWBush.
(*Seriously though, I respect the business decision they made about China – I do think it was right call and by and large, Google, so far has lived up to its motto of ‘Do No Evil’ )
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Confessions of An Economic Refugee 