April 30, 2012
e-publishing
As we know the digital revolution is disrupting the music industry, photography, newspapers, television and book publishing. With respect to the latter the e-book looks to become the publishing market's primary engine. Authors will go digital-first and the most successful will land a traditional book deal with legacy publishers.
Jason Epstein, in an interesting post on the US government's Justice Department’s suit against Apple and several major book publishers for conspiring to fix retail prices of e-books on the New York Book Review blog, highlights how digital technology is a disruptive technology for book publishers. His succinct observation is that:
The revolutionary process by which all books, old and new, in all languages, will soon be available digitally, at practically no cost for storage and delivery, to a radically decentralized world-wide market at the click of a mouse is irreversible. The technologically obsolete system, in which physical inventory is stored in publishers’ warehouses and trucked to fixed retail locations, will sooner or later be replaced by the more efficient digital alternative.
Amazon is leading the way. It set out to charge $9.99 per e-book download, considerably less than it was paying publishers for their e-book inventory. Amazon’s own pricing strategy—which, unlike Apple’s and the publishers’--- is to sell e-books below cost to achieve market share and perhaps a monopoly.
Amazon’s competitors could not afford such a costly strategy. Publishers wanted to be able to set the price of titles for sale on the site, not Amazon and ensure DRM to prevent piracy. Publishers have countered Amazon’s pricing policy by adopting the agency pricing model, in which inventory is not sold to retailers, but consigned to them as agents who are compensated by a fee. The retailer in this model does not purchase content but acts only as the publishers’ representative, and so they has no right to determine the retail price.
The publishers’ move has triggered ongoing antitrust investigations in Europe and Washington, D.C., over whether book publishers and Apple illegally colluded to raise e-book prices. We have shifted t from the near-monopoly we had before the agency model, via the oligopoly we have today. What we don't have is a truly competitive retail market that also supports midlist sales.
There have been are lots casualties on the information highways, and no doubt, there will more. The traditional music industry, for instance, was devastated by the onslaught of the digital economy and also refused to adapt and went into all sorts of legal battles trying to protect their traditional market. Ultimately they failed. Apple then became one of the largest players in the digital music market with 220 million iTune users.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:32 AM | TrackBack
February 22, 2012
the digital economy
Paul Buddle observes that people are shifting from the view that the National Broadband Network (NBN) means more than just fast internet access. It is part of the transformation of the Australian economy into a digital economy:
Those who are still talking about broadband as an end in itself do not understand the situation. Broadband is simply the tool that will further enable and advance the digital economy. So those who are looking at broadband in isolation are totally missing the point.....Included in this group is the Liberal opposition in Australia...To them broadband is ‘it’ – they are completely missing the point of the digital economy.
Over at The Drum Nick Ross agrees. He says that healthcare, education, business innovation and, in many quarters, society in general will be revolutionized for all Australians-- - particularly for those in rural areas plus the elderly. The NBN is an infrastructure which provides a platform for business, services and innovation.
You can see the emergence of the digital economy with the effects the internet is having on the music industry, the publishing industry, the retail industry, the media, the commercialisation of web 2.0 space by Facebook, Google; and more subtly with e-education, e-government, e-banking and e-health.
In this newly emerging economy information in digital form is facilitated by the digital devices that allow the free movement of vast amounts of information in the shortest time possible between people in different parts of the world. We are becoming aware that a digital economy and knowledge is increasingly becoming a substantial driver of economic growth and that it will underpin the majority of future job creation in Australia.
When the mining boom is over it is the national broadband network which will provide Australia with the opportunity to become a global hub for digital talent, and for the high value technology-enabled and content-driven businesses that depend on that talent.
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June 22, 2011
NBN: a long time coming
It's been a long time coming, but it does now look as if the $11 billion infrastructure-sharing agreement between the Gillard Government and Telstra is to be signed and announced very soon(probably this week). A Coalition government under Abbott would strongly consider throwing the NBN contracts out. They say no to a very significant economic reform.
Under the agreement, Telstra expects to receive $11 billion from taxpayers in return for gradually shutting down its copper wire network and sharing its underground ducts with NBN Co. Telstra expects to receive about $4.5 billion for transferring customers and about $4.5 billion for a long-term infrastructure leasing contract. By shutting down its copper and cable networks Telstra will effectively end its monopoly over the fixed communications network in Australia. NBN Co can now start speeding up its plans to roll out the NBN.
Creating a national high-speed broadband network and ending Telstra’s domination of fixed line telecommunications means that Telstra then runs a retail service only. Its management strategy is--and this has been so for a year or more -- to push better services, pricing and marketing to its contested retail customers. Its immediate strategy is to grab as many subscribers as possible in previously uneconomic areas by upgrading its copper wire street cabinets---remote integrated multiplexers (RIMs). It will then keep them as NBN customers as they are migrated to fibre.
This 'Top Hat ' project---the equipment upgrade sits atop the existing street cabinets--will enable Telstra to treble the number of available ADSL ports in the cabinets and so increase speeds from ADSL levels to ADSL2+ levels. The NBN will take ten years to be completed and the industry will still have to rely for a long time on these Telstra wholesale services.
Telstra's aim is to ensure that it is well placed in a digital future where Telstra, Internode, Optus, iiNet and others are all forced to buy their wholesale product at a uniform price, and to compete on customer service and the user experience.
As Paul Buddle highlights what we will see happen is a shift in the national economy towards a digital economy that will result in the development of e-health, digital media, e-education and so on. The NBN will create a new economic platform for a range of new businesses and indeed industries who can harness the enormous information processing power of the NBN.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:15 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
December 7, 2010
WikiLeaks: pressure mounts
WikiLeaks continues the dump whilst the extra juridical attacks on Julian Assange and on WikiLeaks continue. The US, the defender of internet freedom and democratic governance, is doing all it can to stem the flow of this information. A compliant Australia, as a friend of the US, is doing everything it can to assist the US in its extra-judicial pursuit of WikiLeaks.
John Naughton in Live with the WikiLeakable world or shut down the net. It's your choice in The Guardian say that this:
represents the first really sustained confrontation between the established order and the culture of the internet. There have been skirmishes before, but this is the real thing.....The response has been vicious, co-ordinated and potentially comprehensive, and it contains hard lessons for everyone who cares about democracy and about the future of the net.There is a delicious irony in the fact that it is now the so-called liberal democracies that are clamouring to shut WikiLeaks down.
The leaks expose how political elites in western democracies have been deceiving their electorates--especially over Afghanistan.
Though absolute transparency is not desirable or necessary, there has been too much secrecy and subterfuge in the name of diplomatic endeavour in the current system of governance with respect to Irq and Afghanistan. So a corrective towards transparency is a good idea.
Naughton adds that what WikiLeaks is really exposing is the extent to which the western democratic system has been hollowed out.
In the last decade its political elites have been shown to be incompetent (Ireland, the US and UK in not regulating banks); corrupt (all governments in relation to the arms trade); or recklessly militaristic (the US and UK in Iraq). And yet nowhere have they been called to account in any effective way. Instead they have obfuscated, lied or blustered their way through. And when, finally, the veil of secrecy is lifted, their reflex reaction is to kill the messenger.
The liberal democracies are opposed to the idea of an internet that further democratizes the public sphere. When challenged they show their authoritarian side and the due process of the law be dammed. And yet, after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Iran/Contra, the cruise missile attack on Sudan, Colin Powell's cooked-up testimony to the Security Council in 2002, how many of us are under that many illusions about the dark underbelly of U.S. foreign policy?
Update:
Glenn Greenward at Salon.com says:
Just look at what the U.S. Government and its friends are willing to do and capable of doing to someone who challenges or defies them -- all without any charges being filed or a shred of legal authority. They've blocked access to their assets, tried to remove them from the Internet, bullied most everyone out of doing any business with them, froze the funds marked for Assange's legal defense at exactly the time that they prepare a strange international arrest warrant to be executed, repeatedly threatened him with murder, had their Australian vassals openly threaten to revoke his passport, and declared them "Terrorists" even though -- unlike the authorities who are doing all of these things -- neither Assange nor WikiLeaks ever engaged in violence, advocated violence, or caused the slaughter of civilians.
For those politicians crying treason and death penalty on Wikileaks founder Julian Assange the term 'terrorist' simply means someone impedes or defies the will of the U.S. Government with any degree of efficacy. The mainstream US media rolls over, despite the US's standard practice of CIA black sites, rendition, the torture regime, denial of habeas corpus, drones, assassinations, private mercenary forces, etc in defending its imperial interests. The media outlets appear to be devoted to serving, protecting and venerating US government authorities, turn a blind eye to secret governance and appear to do little to challenge the 'eradicate Assange' calls.
It is beginning to look as if the United States cannot be both a republic and an empire. At the moment it is acting like a wounded bear confronted by its demise as the global superpower. This empire may well unravel with unholy speed.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:18 AM | Comments (22) | TrackBack
November 22, 2010
the warp + weave of a digital economy
Alan Kohler makes an excellent point in his Added value needed for online media survival on the ABC's The Drum with respect to the future of the fourth estate.
His general point is that industries are being disintermediated by the digital economy and are having to reinvent themselves to stay afloat:
The most urgent of these is retailing. For thousands of years we have had to travel to a shop to buy goods because the shopkeepers have controlled their distribution, just as media companies have controlled information.Now we can go direct to the source of the goods, wherever they are in the world. The volume of shopping online is now ballooning and just about everything is now being bought on the internet and delivered to homes in packages - books, shoes, clothing, food, household items.Traditional retailers sitting behind the counters in their stores in shopping malls and strips are now facing huge challenges; many won't survive. Those that do will provide something extra that can't be bought online, some sort of added value or service.
An example. Black and white sheet film for my 8x10 monorail view camera costs $140 a box (of 25 sheets) in Adelaide and $80 from B+ H in New York. Sure, I have to pay the freight, but I can use the internet to place a bulk order for several types of film for several different film cameras, thereby spreading the cost of freight. The film is then stored in the fridge until I need it.
So why would I buy from the local camera shop withe outrageous markups charged by the importers? I would only visit them if they provided added value--ie;, to help me solve the problems I'm encountering with cameras (repairs) and photography.
Journalists working in the mainstream or corporate media are no different. Their model is one person speaking to many in a digital world of Web 2. that provides the mass ability to communicate with each other, without having to go through a traditional intermediary. As Kohler points out:
It is now possible for anyone to find out almost anything. Someone sitting at home can now read any press release, watch any press conference, or read its transcript, and examine any document anywhere in the world.The lowest paid jobs in society are those that anyone can do, but can't be bothered or don't have the time, like cleaning or driving. The danger for plain reporting is that it will be increasingly seen in that light - as a service that anyone can do but can't be bothered or haven't the time. No-one is going to pay much for that, if anything, and advertisers have already discovered that they are in the driver's seat with online media because there is a glut of inventory and it's all measurable and accountable, unlike newspaper advertising.
The digital revolution shifts us from the traditional transmission model to a communication model in an open space of publicly available information with the emergence of greater convergence of text, data and moving pictures.
Kohler's solution rejects both Murdoch's paywalls for transmission and the Guardian's free, open and collaborative journalism that loses money that Alan Rusbridger outlined in the 2010 Andrew Olle Media lecture. Kolher says that in order to survive in both cases journalism must add value - "specifically it must impart meaning. It must do what its customers cannot do themselves, which is to explain what events mean, not just report them."
Well, good bloggers in a post-Gutenberg world are already explaining what events mean ---isn't that the point of commentary? What was one a passive audience has become critics, commentators and photographers. So journalists in the corporate media have competitors and people will only read them if they have something valuable and worthwhile to say.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:43 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
September 29, 2010
Tasmania: a silicon valley?
David Bartlett, the Premier of Tasmania, says that Tasmania is set to become the next Silicon Valley-style technology hub as the national broadband network is implemented over the next three years. It is envisioned that Tasmania will lead Australia in connecting to the global digital economy.
Tasmania, as a technology hub, is part of the Bartlett government building a dynamic and modernised economy structured around five priority sectors for innovation in the state’s economy:
• high-value agriculture, aquaculture and food
• renewable energy
• the digital economy
• a vibrant, creative and innovative Tasmania built on its lifestyle advantages, and
• further growing its tourism advantage.
This Innovation Strategy was first outlined in the New Economic Direction Statement (2008) which re-focussed the state’s economic direction on three key strategies: innovation, skills and infrastructure.
Most attempts at building the next Silicon Valley in other countries have failed. They thought in terms of "innovation in a box" that you can simply build overnight, unconnected to its surroundings, to the culture, to a moment in history.
Margaret O'Mara in Foreign Policy argues that Silicon Valley was based on substantive government contracts, a top-tier university (Stanford) as a research center and networking hub, a venture-capital model, a risk tolerance and meritocratic ethos of Silicon Valley financiers, and competitive amenities that provide a palce where creative, talented entrepreneurial people want to live.
O'Mara, the author of Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley, says:
The secret of Silicon Valley is that it wasn't a consciously planned silicon city. The Valley exists because of other big forces -- Cold War spending patterns, sustained GDP growth, and large-scale migration and immigration. It prospered because of unique local characteristics like risk-tolerant capital, entrepreneurial leadership, and good weather. It grew organically. It had room for happy accidents and lucky breaks. The not-so-good news for places like Shenzhen's University Town or Russia's Innograd, the high-tech corridor Medvedev wants to create in a woodsy area outside Moscow, is that this kind of ecosystem can't be built quickly from scratch. It takes time to grow, and success will depend on things its builders cannot control.
Even though globalization has changed the playing field, and the technologies that the Valley helped create have brought far-flung places and people together like never before, place still matters, and the right ingredients still make a difference.
It is not clear that Tasmania has the right ingredients to build a high tech hub or a city of knowledge. For instance, it is not clear that the University of Tasmania is like the American research universities that were at the heart of this formation of Silicon Valley: a university as an economic development engine, urban planner, and political actor.
In Silicon Valley universities and their administrators were central to the design and implementation of cities of knowledge, and successful scientific communities often depended upon the presence of an educational institution that not only had extensive research capacity, but was also an active participant in state and local political power structures.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:50 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack