On Jul 2, 2011, at 9:31 PM, Doug Barton wrote:
On 07/01/2011 14:17, Keith Moore wrote:
Whenever people talk about the Internet as if it were just about
"access to content", I have to wonder. The Internet has always
been more about conversation than content.
The overwhelming majority of Internet users are consumers of content. Some of
that content is stuff like Skype, instant messaging, etc.
The point is that the Internet is not primarily about producers in the center
doling out content to users at the edge. Granted, netflix uses a lot of
bandwidth. But a lot of what has driven use of the Internet, and continues to
drive it, is users engaging in conversation of one form or another. This was
true when email and Usenet were the apps consuming the most bandwidth, and it's
true today for Skype, Facebook, Youtube, IM, blogs, etc.
Meanwhile, traditional producer-to-consumer media channels of all types are
steadily dying. They tend to blame it on copyright violation, or "free"
access to content on the Internet. The real problem is that most of what they
produce is crap. They're stuck in an old model that says that a few people
should decide what's good for everybody else, but now people are in a position
to decide what's good for themselves and/or create their own content.
The overwhelming majority of businesses that make the Internet work are the
content providers, and the ISPs that enable the consumers of that content to
reach it.
Failure to recognize these 2 critical facts leads to producing standards
documents that have no relevance in the real world.
Insistence on sticking to anachronistic models of "the real world" will do the
same thing.
Keith
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