the glittering allure of the mobile society | smlxl white paper | november
2008
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The cartography on this page illustrates thebillions of social interactions and socialtransactions created by individuals, every day. We are rapidly moving to a world where everyone can be connected, and, by 2015, five billion people
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will be connected via a mobile device. That is a 100-foldincrease in networked traffic. Couple that statistic with this one: in 2006, 161 billiongigabytes of data were generated, and by 2010, 988 billion gigabytes of data will beproduced
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.These are almost unimaginable flows of raw material. But it’s not just the scale of the data flows that is impressive. It is thecombination of social and social medianetworks that are forming the all-embracing infrastructure of contemporary society. So these data flows, pinpoint accurate, are the traces, shadows, and trails of human interaction. They allow for the first time the ability to completely overhaul the metrics of communication, which in turn providesthe means to rewrite the methodology and accepted practices of commercial marketing andcommunication. This development is not only enabling, it is defining.In its short, eight-year life as a mass media, mobile has already cannibalised over one fourthof all music sold, as well as one in six dollars spent by video gaming, whilst paid content onmobile is already 20% greater than all paid content on the Internet. TV, movies, newspapers,and even books are migrating to mobile.The first paid content was downloaded onto a mobile phone as recently as 1998, yet today, at $31.3 billion, content revenues on mobile have grown to be larger worldwide than Hollywoodmovies, video-gaming software, or global music industry revenues.
The History of Mass Media
Access to knowledge has been a defining story of civil society. Information technologies havehistorically redistributed access to knowledge and information from controlling institutionsto the masses. We are witnesses to another period of profound change, and it’s not just knowledge that is being redistributed, but, in fact, the possibility of economic production.Which means that those once privileged institutions are no longer able to dominate marketsby exercising control over them. We are getting used to living in a connected age where wenaturally and increasingly draw on our participation in various networks for assistance,information, and support. This is the story of the Mobile Society and the 7
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Mass Media.Historically, there were six forms of mass media that preceded mobile: print, recordings,cinema, radio, television, and the Internet.[1]
And in the beginning was the word: Print, the 1
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Mass Media
Printing technologies from the late 1400s opened the floodgates for information andknowledge to be shared through pamphlets, books, newspapers, music scores, andmagazines. Printing technologies were a significant contributor to the demise of the feudalsystem and the hegemony of the church over large swathes of Northern Europeanpopulations. Imagine going in a few short years from a world of no information and illiteracy to a world where, in the first 15 years after the invention of moveable type, between 8 and 24million separate titles were published. As printing spread and publishing developed,technological innovation created new market structures. Soon publishers become thecontrolling institutions, wishing to exercise their control and hence domination of that market space. The first ever copyright act was the Statute of Anne 1709, enforced in the U.K.from 1710.
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Influentials are toast? http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2008/02/influentials-ar.html
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IDC: The Expanding Digital Universe–2007.
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