Social Machinery

Is clear that the decade 2000-2010 made profound changes in all levels of our lifes. From the way we communicate, interact, socialize, entertain to new paradigms settled in many industries, I think is a good time to stop and think about the biggest losers during the last ten years.

 1. Physical media storage

The last ten years marked the disappearance or reduction of the use of physical media storage like VHS, CD, DVD, Blu-Ray among others. During the first years of this decade, VHS technology was swapped out by DVD and during the last 5 years we saw the rise and fall of CDs in the music industry. Lately, the epic battle between the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray was lost by both sides even before started: the current Blu-ray price is ridiculously expensive and there is no mass market for Blu-ray players still.

New digital formats (MP4), streaming services (Youtube, Spotify), File sharing protocols (P2P), advanced compression mechanism  and cloud computing changed the media industry drastically during the last 10 years. The cost of producing, distributing and sharing any media was reduced dramatically making much easier to access music, series and movies. 

2. Internet access providers

ISP World started this decade as a promising industry due to the exponential growth of Internet demand. But Internet changed completely during the last ten years moving from a walled garden approach controlled by few portals to a booming and fragmented ecosystem (web 2.0). In this new scenario, ISPs were shrinked in the value Chain as mere dump bit pipe. They couldn’t manage to show additional value besides connectivity.

Besides, as Internet access became a basic need in order to be part of the modern economy, the demand for higher connection speed putted higher pressure on their infrastructure. Most analysts agreed that a useful Internet speed today shouldn’t be below 3MB per second. Unfortunately, in most of emerging markets the average speed is far below this number and still the price per access is not affordable for everyone. Also quality of service and net neutrality pressure from consumers pushed authorities to increase regulatory policies for ensuring people get the quality of service they paid for.

Finally, Mobile operators started to move from traditional voice business to give mobile Internet access via HSDPA or coming 4G Technologies, making ISPs business increasingly challenging. 

3. Traditional media

Traditional media has lost most of its influence, focus, power and economic value during this decade. The problem is deep and exceeds the economic crisis that we are going through. Basically, their problem is the media paradigm shift they are facing and the lack of flexibility to understand the dynamic of new media, where users are in the driving seat, giving personal  points of view is important and arrogance is not a virtue.

In addition to this, more rich, real time and relevant media channels has emerged as mainstream media challenging traditional print, television or radio formats. Therefore, advertising spending has been moving towards digital formats where brands have a better control and measurement of their marketing budget.

4. Music labels

At the beginning of this decade we saw the file sharing revolution driven by Napster. This was a glimpse on how music will be consumed during the next ten years. Napster was released in June 1999 by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker allowing to share music we had on our hard disks with friends and strangers on the Internet.

By July 2001 the service was closed by legal actions from four music labels who felt that sharing music violated copyrights. But the closure simply enhanced the start of another revolution: hundred of P2P networks appeared on the internet to continue this new way to find, discover, get, and listen to music.

Music labels have had ten years to offer an alternative solution that at least equaled the simplicity of discovering music in comparison to the CDs sold in a music store. But this never happened. Also, they didn’t recognize that copyright business models have changed forever due to the way internet works. Instead, traditional music industry by the hand of collective management societies started fear campaigns against service providers, P2P platforms and individuals to avoid their business model to be threatened.

There is some light at the end of the tunnel by the hand of streaming services like Spotify or iTunes Music Store concept were users are willing to pay for music due to the convenience such service provide to them. Nevertheless, a drastic mind shift is needed from music labels to leverage on these new technologies and business models. 

5. Ecology

After Copenhagen climate change summit fail on December 2009, this decade leaves a bitter taste for everyone interested on stopping climate change.

Before we started this decade some advancement were made by industrialized countries. The Kyoto Protocol was initially adopted on 11 December 1997 by 37 industrialized countries, aimed at combating global warming, with the goal of achieving “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. At least it was a first attempt from World leaders to work together towards global policies that could stop climate change.

But after all the efforts done by ecologists and NGOs during the last decade, during the latest climate change summit in Copenhagen, World leaders couldn’t agreed on real commitment for stopping carbon emissions and preventing climate change. Blaming games, politics and accusations were the only things left after this summit. Hence, we are starting a new decade with even more questions about our World sustainability and how to face next decade ecology catastrophes.

More read: Alt1040