Welcome to the New Internet

The New Internet is upon us. Faster connections, bigger hard drives, cheaper hosting, online storage, highly interactive user-driven web sites... The Web 2.0 paradigm is ubiquitous, and nearly every connected individual has at least one online presence, be it a blog, social network profile, personal home page, or even simply a private email address.

The New Internet knows no boundaries. The New Internet rejects shackles, allows users to bypass regulations, allows surfers to obfuscate their identities. The New Internet is driven by users, where users provide content and exchange information, provide software, patch software, share software. The founding Ethos of the White Hat Hacker is gradually being rediscovered by the main stream once more; the Ethos pushing the boundaries of law in favour of user freedom, and battling the Renegade Hackers, known as Crackers, or Black-Hats.

The revolution is gaining speed. The New Internet threatens the old models of business. The New Internet is democratic to the extreme, liberal and community driven. The New Internet promotes the Equality of each and every individual in the world. The New Internet is a platform for absolute freedom - for better or for worse.

But enough rhetoric.

The New Internet dictates the New Face of eCommerce, and observes four realities:

1. That which can technically be copied will effectively be copied.
2. If a resource is meant for the public, it will be made available without constraints.
3. If a user can obfuscate their identity, they will.
4. The User Base, the population of the New Internet, dictates the direction of the online market.

Business models that forget these basic realities about the New Internet will fail.

Marketable goods must correspond to at least one of these properties:

• tangible Item
• reliable Guarantee
• enjoyable Experience

Only these can be sold online, for only they have meaning in the Real World on their own. Anything that can be copied and/or provided by oneself cannot be sold.

Multimedia is digital. Multimedia Business will undergo a revolution. This is how I see Business on the New Internet:

Literature

With the advent of the electronic books, printed books will become collectibles. The will to save paper and to carry vast quantities of literature in a lightweight format will outweigh the need for printed copies in day-to-day life.

Novels, newspapers, manuals and magazines will all be available in electronic form.

Radio

Radio guarantees broadcast of highly intelligible communication even in the most cut-off areas of the World and Space.

Communication expert, guarantee of wireless communication, and provider of background information and entertainment, the Radio lives on relatively unaltered.

Music

The Artists will retain ownership of their works. Companies will pay for licenses to publish the work of Artists, along with works from other artists, in any format.

Published Collections with glossy Cover art, and witty commentary become the sold goods. Concerts are the main marketable commodity.

Graphic art

Photographers and painters release their work under Non-Commercial Creative Commons licenses. Their work is found on the Net, and companies hire the best and brightest of them to forward their image.

Originals sell. Signed prints are the marketable goods. Art by Commission returns.

Cinema

The View-and-Leave model is over. High-definition screens and high-bandwidth provide home cinema experience.

Affordable Event Cinema houses allow web users to determine viewings, and provide film-relevant events and entertainment after viewings.

High Event Cinema going is a mix of experiences; tours of actors, producers, artists and technicians accompany the live showing of films, followed by conferences with the artists - composer interviews and concerts, talks with graphic designers, technology seminars and all associated trades take place.

Television

High-transfer rates on the Net removes broadcast station monopoly. Stations are backed by advertising, content is provided online. On-demand viewing provides always higher-quality image and sound, and 100% uptime, no load wait.

Extra hardware for audio and visual quality are sold or leased, guaranteed uptime is the marketed service.

Video games

The console rules the roost. PC gaming is online and requires subscription for advanced experience. Subscriptions are linked to bank accounts, not readily available emails or copiable and subvertible product keys. In-game time sinks, real or perceived, are removed to maintain game reputation.

Software

The best engineers lead projects and know limitations and capabilities of software. They lead and direct open-source programmers who provide code on an allegiance basis.

Home software is free; commercial software runs businesses, and guarantee fixes and customization - bespoke tailoring of base-package solutions.

Support is the main revenue stream.

Security

Online accounts are hosted by security services, staffed by White Hats. They monitor accounts and pro-actively battle Black Hat intruders.

DRM will fail, but document privatization of documents will prevail. Private documents require a server for decoding. Stronger algorithms protect documents. Privatized documents survived where DRM failed, because DRM servers could be shut down at the whim of providers. Companies have functional interest in keeping authentication servers up. Companies providing DRM content did not.

Is your business ready for the New Internet?

A Reason Behind Religion

In the course of trying to plan out a novel, I am trying to create and document a religious form for its inhabitants. Originally this was supposed to take a non-mythological form, all based around rational thinking. But the more I reflected on it (and this is the domain of theological psychology; my thoughts being further prompted by a printed article in The Economist), the more I realized that without the dogmatism of something unquestionnable, such as the Will of God for example, there is an inherent possibility to throw each and every rule out the window at any given point. This can be for the better or the worse, but the point is not there.

A "faith" based in the scientific methods cannot form a religious community: it forms a democratic one, in which the majority voice of the people wins it over the rules their predecessors have laid down; whereas in a properly religious community, any decision of what is right or wrong can be deffered to the Supreme Being(s).

Up and down the Faction Ladder

As a community grows larger it becomes harder to moderate the interactions between the disparate groups within (which I will call factions). The larger the community, the more sparse any interaction between an individual and any other becomes. There are a select few who will be the most frequently contacted, and this grouping around any one individual becomes a faction. Whilst within a faction, a level of mutual and self-initiated respect is upheld by each and every individual, this becomes less so as the group grows.

As such, each faction appoints (or is appointed) a leader (implicitly, the leader in a group of friends is the most popular person), and each collection of factions elects a leader to the rank above (think from community to neighbourhood representative), to moderate at different levels the interactions between the now dispersed entities. This deference of responsibility goes up and up, until we reach a point where we need an authority that everyone agrees cannot be questioned. That authority is "God" or "the gods" or "the Natural Order". The interpretation of how to behave in the light of such Truth is the basis of our sense of morality, the practical derivative which we use to guide us through our actions, and keep the group as a whole running relatively smoothly, with the idea (and system) of justice present to smooth out the creases.

In a religious society, the morals are defined and passed down through the generations as truths not to be questioned, rules not to be broken. They are firmly engrained into our belief system (thanks or due to our parents) and as per this definition, anything that is different is a "wrong" way of doing something. This exclusiveness is what has allowed small communities to develop through time into vast states, even Empires, united under a relatively homogenous way of thinking (at a very broad level mind you). It is, as anyone should be quick to point out, also the source of many woes.

On the other hand, science allows for the questioning of the model at hand, which is constantly updated with the latest information, refactored to take into account as many facts of the world around us as can be perceived, and also allows us to infer new possibilities that can reside hidden in the cosmos, attainable only by the power of our minds.

The argument against Science + Faith = Religion

So, to come back to the original problem: why can there not be a religion based on scientific principles?

Democracy is based on the aforementioned ideal of encompassing every known truth about the state of the world, by deciding that the desire that is expressed most widely is the one to adopt at any given time. Bis repetita placent. The problem here is that each person has their own reality, their own values derived through the ancestors to its current form and influenced by the world around us. As each person evolves socially and experiences the world around them differently, each person therefore splits back into their factions, leaving a heterogenous, divided collective of factions, decreasingly united by the number shared of moral values as we zoom out to the larger communities; values which, by the nature of their not being scientifically quantifiable, can only in social analysis carry equal weight.

The result is that no one set of moral values can be applied to a group of people, short of creating a dogmatic rule - one solution is religion, which speaks to the heart, another is political system, which speaks to the mind; and whilst any leader in a political system may be questioned by virtue of their being merely human, the Supreme Being(s) itself/themselves/Himself cannot. The closest a person can come to this is by becoming a dictator, and even that person cannot keep the illusion of the divine for long.

In both cases, such ruling dogma can be seen as a tool for a purpose: to maintain cohesiveness amongst a large group of free-radicals who would otherwise be in a state of chaos; and as a tool it can be wielded for both beneficial and degenerative purposes. The ideal would be a benevolent dictator: one who would remain unquestioned - not merely by the awesomeness of their power, but also in the belief that what they are doing is truly and sincerely in the interest of all.

Such a belief is maintained in a religious community. Those who hold faith in their religion do not question, because they earnestly believe in the benevolence of their Supreme. In a political system? I do not believe there can be such an individual, because it would be hard for all people to believe in a powerful human being's earnest good will, since it would require a purity unheard of to hold out against the temptation to abuse such power.