The Death of Distance
• Distance will no longer determine the cost of communicating electronically
• Companies will organize certain type of work in three shifts according to the world’s three main time zones: the Americas, East Asia/Australia, and Europe
The Fate of Location
• No longer will location be key to most business decisions. Companies will locate any screen-based activity anywhere on earth, wherever they can find the best bargain of skills and productivity.
• Developing countries will increasingly perform on-line services - monitoring security screens, running help-lines and call centers, writing software, and so forth – and sell them to the rich industrial countries that generally produce such services domestically.
The Irrelevance of Size
• Small companies will offer services that, in the past, only giants has the scale and scope to provide.
• Individuals with valuable ideas, initiatives, and strong business plans will attract global venture capital and convert their ideas into viable business.
• Small countries will also be more viable.
• Good news for secession movement everywhere.
Improved Connections
• Most people on earth will eventually have access to networks that are switched, interactive, and broadband
• Switched: like the telephone, and used to contact many subscribers.
• Interactive: unlike broadcast TV, all ends of the network can communicate.
• Broadband: capability to receive and transmit TV-quality motion pictures through the Internet.
More Customized Content
• Individual consumer will receive (or send) exactly what they want to receive (or send), when they want it.
Deluge of Information
• Because people’s capacity to absorb new information will not increase, they will need filters to sift, process, and edit it.
• Companies will have greater need of boosters – new techniques – to brand and push their information ahead of the competition’s.
Increased Value of Brand
• What’s hot – whether a product, a personality, a sporting event, or the latest financial data – will attract greater rewards. The cost of producing or promoting these companies will not change, but the potential market will increase greatly. That will create a category of global super-rich, many of them musicians, actors, artists, athletes, and investors.
• For the successful few and their intermediaries, entertaining will be the most lucrative individual activity on earth.
Increased Value In Niches
• The power of computer to search, identify, and classify people according to similar needs and tastes will create sustainable markets for many niche products.
• Niche players will increase, as will consumers’ demand for customized goods and services.
Communities of Practice
• The horizontal bonds among people performing the same job or speaking the same language in different parts of the world will strengthen.
• Common interests, experiences, and pursuits rather than proximity will bind these communities together
Near-Frictionless Markets
• Many more companies and customers will have access to accurate price information. That will curtail excessive profits, enhance competition, and help to curb inflation, resulting in “profitless posterity”: it will be easier to find buyers, but hard to make a fat margins.
Increased Mobility
• Every form of communications will be available for mobile or remote use. While fixed connections such as cable will offer greater capacity and speed, wireless will be used, not just to send a signal over a large region, but to carry it from a fixed point to users in a relatively small radius.
• Satellite transmission will allow people to use a single mobile telephone anywhere, and the distinctions between fixed and mobile receiving equipment (a telephone or a personal computer) will blur.
More Global Reach, More Local Provision
• While small companies find it easier to reach markets around the world, big companies will more readily offer high-quality local services, such as putting customers in one part of the world directly in touch with expertise in other places, and monitoring more precisely the quality of local provision.
The Loose-Knit Corporation
• Culture and communications networks, rather than rigid management structures, will hold companies together.
• Many companies will become networks of independent specialists; more employees will therefore work in smaller units or alone.
• Loyalty, trust, and open communications will reshape the nature of customer and supplier contracts: suppliers will draw directly on information held in databases by their customers, working as closely and seamlessly as an in-house supplier now does.
• Technologies such as electronic mail and computerized billing will reduce the costs of dealing with consumers and suppliers at arm’s length.
More Minnows, More Giants
• The cost of starting new businesses will decline, and companies will more easily buy in services so that more small companies will spring up.
• Communication amplifies the strength of brands and the power of networks. Industries where networks matter, concentration may increase, but often in the form of loose global associations under a banner of brands or quality guarantees.
Manufacturers as Service Providers
• Feeding information on a particular buyer’s tastes straight back to the manufacturer will be easier and so manufacturers will design more products specially for an individual’s requirements.
• Some manufacturers will even retain lasting links with their products: car companies, for instance, will continue electronically to track, monitor, and learn about their vehicles throughout the product life cycle.
• New opportunities to provide services for customers will emerge, and some manufacturers may accept more responsibility for disposing of their products at the end of the cycle.
The Inversion of Home and Office
• As more people work from home or from small, purpose-built offices, the line between work and home life will blur.
• The office will become a place for the social aspects of work such as celebrating, networking, lunching, and gossiping.
• Home design will also change, and the domestic office will become a regular part of the house.
The Proliferation of Ideas
• New ideas and information will travel faster to the remotest corners of the world.
• Third world countries will have access to knowledge that the industrial world has long enjoyed.
• Communities of practice and long-distance education programs will help people to find mentors and acquire new skills.
A New Trust
• Since it will be easier to check whether people and companies deliver what they have promised, many services will become more reliable and people will be more likely to trust each other to keep their word. However, those who fail to deliver will quickly lose that trust, which will become more difficult to regain.
People as the Ultimate Scarce Resource
• The key challenge for companies will be to hire and retain good people, extracting value from them, rather than allowing them to keep all the value they create for themselves.
• A company will constantly need to convince its best employees that working for it enhances each individual’s value.
The Shift from Government Policing to Self-Policing
• Governments will find national legislation and censorship inadequate for regulating the global flow of information.
• As content sweeps across national borders, it will be harder to enforce laws banning child pornography, libel, and other criminal or subversive material and those protecting copyright and other intellectual property.
• Greater electronic access to information will give people better means to protect themselves. The result will be more individual responsibility and less government intervention.
Loss of Privacy
• Government and companies will easily monitor people’s movement.
• Machines will recognize physical attributes like a voice or finger print.
• Civil libertarians will worry, but others will accept the loss as a fair exchange for the reduction of crime, including fraud and illegal immigration.
• In the electronic village, there will be little true privacy – and little unsolved crime.
Redistribution of Wages
• Low-wage competition will reduce the earning power of many people in rich countries employed in routine screen-based tasks, but the premium for certain skills will grow.
• People with skills that are in demand will earn broadly similar amounts wherever they live in the world.
• Income differences within countries will grow; and income differences between countries will narrow.
Less Need for Immigration and Emigration
• Poor countries with good communications technology will be able to retain their skilled workers, who will be be less likely to emigrate to countries with higher costs of living if they earn rich-world wages and pay poor-world prices for everyday necessities right at home.
• Inexpensive communications may reduce some of the pressure to emigrate.
A Market for Citizens
• The greater freedom to locate anywhere and earn a living will hinder taxation.
• Savers will be able to compare global investment rates and easily shift money abroad.
• High-income earners and profitable companies will be able to move away from hefty government-imposed taxes.
• Countries will compete to bid down tax rates and to attract businesses, savers, and wealthy residents.
Rebirth of Cities
• As individuals spend less time in the office and more time working from home or traveling, cities will transform from concentrations of office employment to centers of entertainment and culture.
• Cities will become places where people go to stay in hotels, visit museums and galleries, dine in restaurants, participate in civic events, and attend live performances of all kinds.
• Some poor countries will stem the flight from the countryside to cities by using low-cost communications to provide rural dwellers with better medical services, jobs, education, and entertainment
The Rise of English
• The global role of English as a second language will strengthen as it becomes the common standard for telecommunicating in business and commerce.
• Many developing countries will adopt English as a subsidiary language.
Communities of Culture
• At the same time, electronic communications will reinforce less widespread language and cultures, not replace them with Anglo-Saxon and Hollywood.
• The declining cost of creating and distributing many entertainment products and the corresponding increase in production capacity will also reinforce local cultures and help scattered peoples and families to preserve their cultural heritage.
Improved Writing and Reading Skills
• Electronic mail will induce young people to express themselves effectively in writing and to admire clear and lively written prose.
• Dull or muddled communicators will fall by the information wayside.
Rebalance of Political Power
• Since people will communicate their views on government more directly, rulers and representatives will become more sensitive and more responsive to lobbying and public-opinion polls, especially in established democracies.
• People who live under dictatorial regimes will make contact more easily with the rest of the world.
Global Peace
• As countries become even more economically interdependent and as global trade and foreign investment grow, people will communicate more freely and learn more about the ideas and aspirations of human beings in other parts of the globe
• The effect will be to increase understanding, foster tolerance, and ultimately promote worldwide peace.
• Distance will no longer determine the cost of communicating electronically
• Companies will organize certain type of work in three shifts according to the world’s three main time zones: the Americas, East Asia/Australia, and Europe
The Fate of Location
• No longer will location be key to most business decisions. Companies will locate any screen-based activity anywhere on earth, wherever they can find the best bargain of skills and productivity.
• Developing countries will increasingly perform on-line services - monitoring security screens, running help-lines and call centers, writing software, and so forth – and sell them to the rich industrial countries that generally produce such services domestically.
The Irrelevance of Size
• Small companies will offer services that, in the past, only giants has the scale and scope to provide.
• Individuals with valuable ideas, initiatives, and strong business plans will attract global venture capital and convert their ideas into viable business.
• Small countries will also be more viable.
• Good news for secession movement everywhere.
Improved Connections
• Most people on earth will eventually have access to networks that are switched, interactive, and broadband
• Switched: like the telephone, and used to contact many subscribers.
• Interactive: unlike broadcast TV, all ends of the network can communicate.
• Broadband: capability to receive and transmit TV-quality motion pictures through the Internet.
More Customized Content
• Individual consumer will receive (or send) exactly what they want to receive (or send), when they want it.
Deluge of Information
• Because people’s capacity to absorb new information will not increase, they will need filters to sift, process, and edit it.
• Companies will have greater need of boosters – new techniques – to brand and push their information ahead of the competition’s.
Increased Value of Brand
• What’s hot – whether a product, a personality, a sporting event, or the latest financial data – will attract greater rewards. The cost of producing or promoting these companies will not change, but the potential market will increase greatly. That will create a category of global super-rich, many of them musicians, actors, artists, athletes, and investors.
• For the successful few and their intermediaries, entertaining will be the most lucrative individual activity on earth.
Increased Value In Niches
• The power of computer to search, identify, and classify people according to similar needs and tastes will create sustainable markets for many niche products.
• Niche players will increase, as will consumers’ demand for customized goods and services.
Communities of Practice
• The horizontal bonds among people performing the same job or speaking the same language in different parts of the world will strengthen.
• Common interests, experiences, and pursuits rather than proximity will bind these communities together
Near-Frictionless Markets
• Many more companies and customers will have access to accurate price information. That will curtail excessive profits, enhance competition, and help to curb inflation, resulting in “profitless posterity”: it will be easier to find buyers, but hard to make a fat margins.
Increased Mobility
• Every form of communications will be available for mobile or remote use. While fixed connections such as cable will offer greater capacity and speed, wireless will be used, not just to send a signal over a large region, but to carry it from a fixed point to users in a relatively small radius.
• Satellite transmission will allow people to use a single mobile telephone anywhere, and the distinctions between fixed and mobile receiving equipment (a telephone or a personal computer) will blur.
More Global Reach, More Local Provision
• While small companies find it easier to reach markets around the world, big companies will more readily offer high-quality local services, such as putting customers in one part of the world directly in touch with expertise in other places, and monitoring more precisely the quality of local provision.
The Loose-Knit Corporation
• Culture and communications networks, rather than rigid management structures, will hold companies together.
• Many companies will become networks of independent specialists; more employees will therefore work in smaller units or alone.
• Loyalty, trust, and open communications will reshape the nature of customer and supplier contracts: suppliers will draw directly on information held in databases by their customers, working as closely and seamlessly as an in-house supplier now does.
• Technologies such as electronic mail and computerized billing will reduce the costs of dealing with consumers and suppliers at arm’s length.
More Minnows, More Giants
• The cost of starting new businesses will decline, and companies will more easily buy in services so that more small companies will spring up.
• Communication amplifies the strength of brands and the power of networks. Industries where networks matter, concentration may increase, but often in the form of loose global associations under a banner of brands or quality guarantees.
Manufacturers as Service Providers
• Feeding information on a particular buyer’s tastes straight back to the manufacturer will be easier and so manufacturers will design more products specially for an individual’s requirements.
• Some manufacturers will even retain lasting links with their products: car companies, for instance, will continue electronically to track, monitor, and learn about their vehicles throughout the product life cycle.
• New opportunities to provide services for customers will emerge, and some manufacturers may accept more responsibility for disposing of their products at the end of the cycle.
The Inversion of Home and Office
• As more people work from home or from small, purpose-built offices, the line between work and home life will blur.
• The office will become a place for the social aspects of work such as celebrating, networking, lunching, and gossiping.
• Home design will also change, and the domestic office will become a regular part of the house.
The Proliferation of Ideas
• New ideas and information will travel faster to the remotest corners of the world.
• Third world countries will have access to knowledge that the industrial world has long enjoyed.
• Communities of practice and long-distance education programs will help people to find mentors and acquire new skills.
A New Trust
• Since it will be easier to check whether people and companies deliver what they have promised, many services will become more reliable and people will be more likely to trust each other to keep their word. However, those who fail to deliver will quickly lose that trust, which will become more difficult to regain.
People as the Ultimate Scarce Resource
• The key challenge for companies will be to hire and retain good people, extracting value from them, rather than allowing them to keep all the value they create for themselves.
• A company will constantly need to convince its best employees that working for it enhances each individual’s value.
The Shift from Government Policing to Self-Policing
• Governments will find national legislation and censorship inadequate for regulating the global flow of information.
• As content sweeps across national borders, it will be harder to enforce laws banning child pornography, libel, and other criminal or subversive material and those protecting copyright and other intellectual property.
• Greater electronic access to information will give people better means to protect themselves. The result will be more individual responsibility and less government intervention.
Loss of Privacy
• Government and companies will easily monitor people’s movement.
• Machines will recognize physical attributes like a voice or finger print.
• Civil libertarians will worry, but others will accept the loss as a fair exchange for the reduction of crime, including fraud and illegal immigration.
• In the electronic village, there will be little true privacy – and little unsolved crime.
Redistribution of Wages
• Low-wage competition will reduce the earning power of many people in rich countries employed in routine screen-based tasks, but the premium for certain skills will grow.
• People with skills that are in demand will earn broadly similar amounts wherever they live in the world.
• Income differences within countries will grow; and income differences between countries will narrow.
Less Need for Immigration and Emigration
• Poor countries with good communications technology will be able to retain their skilled workers, who will be be less likely to emigrate to countries with higher costs of living if they earn rich-world wages and pay poor-world prices for everyday necessities right at home.
• Inexpensive communications may reduce some of the pressure to emigrate.
A Market for Citizens
• The greater freedom to locate anywhere and earn a living will hinder taxation.
• Savers will be able to compare global investment rates and easily shift money abroad.
• High-income earners and profitable companies will be able to move away from hefty government-imposed taxes.
• Countries will compete to bid down tax rates and to attract businesses, savers, and wealthy residents.
Rebirth of Cities
• As individuals spend less time in the office and more time working from home or traveling, cities will transform from concentrations of office employment to centers of entertainment and culture.
• Cities will become places where people go to stay in hotels, visit museums and galleries, dine in restaurants, participate in civic events, and attend live performances of all kinds.
• Some poor countries will stem the flight from the countryside to cities by using low-cost communications to provide rural dwellers with better medical services, jobs, education, and entertainment
The Rise of English
• The global role of English as a second language will strengthen as it becomes the common standard for telecommunicating in business and commerce.
• Many developing countries will adopt English as a subsidiary language.
Communities of Culture
• At the same time, electronic communications will reinforce less widespread language and cultures, not replace them with Anglo-Saxon and Hollywood.
• The declining cost of creating and distributing many entertainment products and the corresponding increase in production capacity will also reinforce local cultures and help scattered peoples and families to preserve their cultural heritage.
Improved Writing and Reading Skills
• Electronic mail will induce young people to express themselves effectively in writing and to admire clear and lively written prose.
• Dull or muddled communicators will fall by the information wayside.
Rebalance of Political Power
• Since people will communicate their views on government more directly, rulers and representatives will become more sensitive and more responsive to lobbying and public-opinion polls, especially in established democracies.
• People who live under dictatorial regimes will make contact more easily with the rest of the world.
Global Peace
• As countries become even more economically interdependent and as global trade and foreign investment grow, people will communicate more freely and learn more about the ideas and aspirations of human beings in other parts of the globe
• The effect will be to increase understanding, foster tolerance, and ultimately promote worldwide peace.