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Embracing the Challenges of Web 2.0 Age
The challenges It has been clear for quite some time that the internet is much more than a new distribution outlet for traditional media. While the initial internet investment bubble may have burst in 2001/02, it reflected an anticipated and unprecedented shift in the structure of markets and value propositions that has been proven to be largely true across many markets by the time of this paper in 2009.
Utopian visions and dystopian fears For some, the internet is the ultimate globalising free market force set to bring down trade and market barriers to entry and usher in a new age of productivity and efficiency. For others, it is the ultimate egalitarian force, destined to reduce the power of big business, and hand power back to the consumer and citizen. For adherents of this world view the main public policy issue becomes ensuring maximum access to the internet at sufficient transmission speeds to allow for the receipt of a wide range of services and content. Any public subsidy should focus on the UK’s broadband network – its capacity and universal coverage. However, there is also a more dystopian view. The internet brings with it large scale piracy of content undermining incentives to create new intellectual property of value. The internet will make all its users into marketable commodities whose personal details and behaviour patterns can be accessed and influenced by those trying to sell us products and services we don’t want or need. It will also undermine previously protected national cultures and institutions, leaving in its wake a homogenised global culture. It may usher in emerging global monopolies such as Google, e-Bay and Amazon which will squeeze out local players and be accountable to no national or even pan regional regulator. It will bring the market type mechanisms such as auctions and exchanges to all areas of human life previously influenced by individual and cultural sensibilities, from organ donation to child adoption and genetic matching. For adherents of this view, the main focus on public policy should be the protection of privacy and the punishment of piracy. Both these visions are very probably wrong. What is certainly true is that the internet has the capacity to change many traditional and national activities for better or worse in fairly small lengths of time by historic standards. Policy makers and regulators above all need to ready themselves for this uncertainty and develop
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