I started subscribing to The Economist (a UK weekly publication) over 30 years ago while I was at the Harvard Business School getting my MBA and was offered a heavily discounted student subscription.  I have subscribed ever since and every week, this ‘must read’ magazine drops into my mail box.  A fervent advocate of free-markets and competition, I love the way The Economist (from my experience) practices what it preaches.  When I graduated from Harvard I received a subscription renewal form indicating that as I was no longer a full time student, I would need to renew at the standard rate.  I responded that although I was leaving Harvard, I was joining the “university of life” and would only renew my subscription at the student rate.  A quarter of a century later, I still get the magazine at student rates!  That’s putting your money where you mouth is.

 But the reason for drawing your attention to the Economist is that in the current edition (April 22^nd-28^th 2006) there is an excellent and very readable “Special Report on New Media”.  It is authored by Andreas Kluth who is based in San Francisco and before joining The Economist, was an investment banker at JP Morgan.

 Although the report fundamentally says nothing which cannot be found elsewhere or via the OPLAN Foundation website, it is full of engaging references, anecdotes and metaphors for the emerging world of “conversation media” – or peer-to-peer communications as we OPLANers would refer to it.  The Report focuses almost exclusively on this new media and content.  And that’s both the appeal and the frustration of the Report.

 On 15^th March 2003, The Economist published its Quarterly Technology Review with a lead article entitled “Launching Telecom II” which pointed to the emergence of a world of abundant bandwidth in both fixed and wireless digital infrastructure technologies and possible implications.

“What could make Telecoms II the economic engine of the next decade is the way such networks are largely “user financed” and deployed in an unplanned, ad hoc manner – and thus free to grow exponentially if demand for them takes off”

 We describe these networks as OPLANs but what is significant is how, even in The Economist’s mind, the two have not been put together yet!  Kluth, in this week’s Economist quotes the November 2005 statistic from the Pew Internet & American Life Project that, “… 57% of American teenagers create content for the internet – from text to pictures, music and video”.

 Hold that against the Cache Logic data that over 60% of Internet traffic is peer-to-peer and you can glimpse the future!   Very little of that 60% is probably ‘original content’ but given the voracious appetite for “conversation media”, we can be pretty sure that the % will grow and grow and grow!

 Like I have long said, any business model that differentiates between ‘creators’ of content and ‘consumers’ of content is doomed.  I wish our public policy makers and politicians would wake up to that fact – and appreciate the earth shaking impact that will have on great tracts of current obsolete legislation and regulatory policy.