Here’s an organizing thought: the Internet echos automatically, but with no original sound, there is only silence.
Everyone’s glassy eyed over the capacity for echo – from Facebook to Twitter to Google. As those technologies get more sophisticated and integrated and issues like privacy and rights to access get clarified in practice (when did an employer ever have the right to audit your family safe deposit box or photo albums, but now they want your private login to Facebook?), the Ritalin of necessity will calm this ADD culture and the focus will return to the content creators – that’s where the value will be. Having the best Content Curators; the best cultural interpreters and explorers will rule.
Strong market hypothesis dictates that when the tools themselves become – as they are getting to be – ubiquitous, then what’s in them will be the scarce resource that becomes valuable. The skill of Writing will reclaim its dominion over that of blogging or tweeting unorganized thoughts indiscriminately. People will look for the voices that help them, transmitted in a way they can pick out of the passing gusts of hot air.
In that light, the newspapers – chugging away reporting on their local focus and echoing national stories – will take the role of The Little Red Hen. The hardworking Hen, undervalued by the public, all atwitter and google eyed, while making the bread that – in the end – everyone wants.