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Gutenbeg and theoial media evolution:an invetigation of thewold whee it otnothing to ditibuteinfomation
rihad stay
Social Media Consultant, Publicis Consultants
Abtat
This article exposes the impact of a fundamental shift in the wayinformation moves within our society, which is generating creepingobsolescence for the business models of organizations involved inthe institutionalized provision or mediation of information, be theynewspapers or banks, as well as creating a new information spacethat is currently called social media. The article examines the wayin which the disruptive effect of social media is already making itspresence felt and sets out a course for organizations who wish toadapt to the world of social media. This is based on shifting invest-ment from control of content and transactional channels into thecollaborative, collective, and communal assets where value will sitin a world where power no longer resides in the institutionalizedcapability to control access to information.
Altenative
 
2 – The journal of nancial transformation
Gutenbeg and the oial media evolution: an invetigation of thewold whee it ot nothing to ditibute infomation
If humankind has enough of a future to still have a history, it ispossible that the last 500 years will be come to be known as theGutenberg era on account of there having been one dening char-acteristic, rst established by Johannes Gutenberg, responsiblefor shaping the nature of society and its institutions throughoutthis entire period. This characteristic, which could be called theGutenberg principle, is the fact that the mass distribution ofinformation became possible, but was expensive and thereforeinstitutionalized. This principle has been so xed and all pervasivethat it has become like a hidden foundation, and standing as we arenow, in the twilight of this era, it is still difcult to appreciate theextent to which it has shaped the fabric of our world. It is only theemergence of a new world, where information does not conform tothe Gutenberg principle, that affords us the opportunity to recog-nize the extent to which this relationship between information anddistribution has shaped and created not just organizations like themedia, but also other forms of mediators such as banks, lead to thecreation of mass consumer brands, and controlled the relationshipbetween individuals and institutions of all types, both commercialand political.This article seeks briey to expose the extent to which theGutenberg principle has shaped our world before turning its atten-tion to the likely characteristics of the post-Gutenberg era — theworld of what is currently called social media — identifying boththe ways in which organizations will feel its impact and also howthey will have to adapt in order to survive in a world where powerwill not lie in the institutionalized capability to control access toinformation.
The pe-Gutenbeg wold
In the world before the introduction of the printing press it wasnot possible to distribute precise replicable information to a largenumber of people. Information could be captured, in the laboriousand time-consuming process of hand-produced books, scrolls, ortablets, but access to this information was restricted to a smallelite group. Transmission of knowledge thereafter had to rely onpurely word-of-mouth channels and the form of information thatwas prevalent was therefore the story, this being the form bestadapted to surviving the process of ‘Chinese whispers’ that masscommunication involved.Institutional development was limited and society tended to bedominated by religion and feudal political systems, institutionswhich were well adapted to the use of narrative or hierarchy asmeans of propagation or control.
The Gutenbeg evolution
It is widely acknowledged that the introduction of the printing presswas revolutionary in its impact. It was credited as being the catalystfor the Renaissance, the development of science, and creating thepressures which forced power to slip from the hands of monarchsand religious orders and become shared across a much broadersection of society. However, there is a temptation to see all of theseshifts as history and fail to see the extent to which, what might becalled the Gutenberg principle, continues to play an active role inthe shape and operation of society and institutions today.Simply put, the Gutenberg principle can be expressed as the factthat mass distribution of information is possible, but expensive. Theeffect of the Gutenberg principle was the rise of institutionalizedand mediated channels to create the efciencies and scale neces-sary to manage the interaction between people with informationand needs on the one hand, and the people who wanted that infor-mation or those who could satisfy those needs. The most obviousexample of an institution which emerged was the media but in real-ity almost all of the institutions that have emerged since Gutenbergowe their existence in some part to the operation of the Gutenbergprinciple: a bank, for example, at its most basic is simply a way ofcreating the efciencies and scale necessary to mediate informa-tion about people with money and people who want money.While the technologies and channels for the distribution of informa-tion have developed signicantly since the Gutenberg press, thebasic structure of the Gutenberg principle has not: it still costs lotsof money to distribute information to a mass audience.
The pot-Gutenbeg wold
The emergence of the Internet and the World Wide Web in the1990s was initially hailed by many as ushering in a new democraticage, driven by much greater access to information. In reality, whilethe Internet had a dramatic impact, the revolutionary shifts pre-dicted did not occur. This is because, in its earliest days, the WorldWide Web still conformed to the Gutenberg principle. Building a website, accessing server space, and publishing information requiredboth money and technical expertise and was, therefore, still thepreserve of institutions rather than individuals. The reality of muchgreater access to information was not matched by a greater abilityto publish it.Speed of access also limited the ability of the Internet to be achannel for all forms of media, restricting its use to text-based andtransactional forms. As a result, much of the initial investment inthe web went into servicing and creating institutional opportunities,with e-commerce emerging as the major new web-based phenom-enon. This changed with two developments. First, the spread ofbroadband Internet access made it possible to easily both uploadand download all forms of media: video, images, and audio as wellas just text and transactions. Second, tools emerged which madeit simple for people to publish or spread information. Blogging wasthe rst example, followed by social networking and distributionand sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr.
 
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Gutenbeg and the oial media evolution: an invetigation of thewold whee it ot nothing to ditibute infomation
There has been a third trend which is gathering signicance,based around attaching relevance and context to all of the oth-erwise random pieces of information now being published. Thisconcerns practices such as tagging, rating, and commenting, aswell as services such as social bookmarking and news-sharingsites, which allow individuals to store and share information. Thistrend is responsible for creating forms of collective intelligenceand what has been called ‘crowd wisdom’ and is probably the mostimportant area to watch going forwards because of its ability toallow individuals to create the trust and connections necessaryto transact and communicate amongst themselves without anyinstitutionalized intervention.Information can now ow between one individual and all of thepotential individuals for whom that information might be of rele-vance, without any form of signicant institutionalized intervention(except the provision of a freely available technological infrastruc-ture). This is what could be called the post-Gutenberg principle,although perhaps a better term would be the social informationprinciple. In very general terms, the social information principleis likely to generate a very powerful disintermediating or de-insti-tutionalizing effect, which, in theory, could have consequencesfor society at least as signicant as those generated in the rstinstance by the development of the printing press. This is likely toplay out over many years, since institutions and practices whichhave been the foundation of our society for 500 years are unlikelyto disappear overnight. However, there are some signicant effectsof the social information principle which are already upon us, and itis these which are examined in the next section.
Undetanding the pot-Gutenbeg wold
There are essentially three ways in which the post-Gutenberg worldis already intruding. These are the decline (or slide into irrelevancyand obsolescence) of institutions and businesses for whom informa-tion mediation is their principle function, the rise of transparencyand the challenge to institutionalized trust, and the challenge tomarkets posed by reduced costs of entry and the ability to serviceniche demands.
The end of intitutionalized mediation model
As noted earlier, the Gutenberg principle is hard-wired to a greateror lesser extent into almost every institution that has emerged overthe last 500 years because it controls the way in which informationows within organizations and society as a whole. However, it isthe businesses which deal with information or content in its purestand simplest form — those that were the rst to emerge follow-ing Gutenberg’s discovery — that have also been the rst to feelthe impact of the end of the Gutenberg era. These are the media,music, and lm businesses and an examination of their decline isimportant, not just because of the clues it gives as to how other sec-tors may be affected, but also because of the role and importanceof the media — the news media in particular — in business and thewider society.Almost all the time spent by individuals with forms of social media isachieved at the expense of time spent consuming traditional media.There are many estimates of how this is developing, but one verycredible source, Ron Bloom, CEO of Mevio (formerly PodShow),made the case in 2006 that within 5 years 50 percent of what themedia consumers consume would be produced by other consumers(i.e., social media)
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. While this may be an estimate at the higher endof the scale, almost no one has seriously challenged the view thatparticipation in social media is signicantly reducing consumptiontime of traditional media — and consumption time directly equatesto the available revenue pool.This obviously has huge commercial implications for the traditionalmedia (if Bloom’s prediction is correct, this will equate to a 50percent market reduction), but more generally, any organizationwhich relies heavily on the traditional media for communicationor distribution of information will nd their ability to communicateseverely restricted and they will be forced to enter the social mediaspace simply in order to maintain prole or share-of-voice. Thisalone could be the factor which forces organizations to engage withsocial media, especially since those that can successfully exploitthis space will gain a signicant competitive advantage.What is highly instructive about the decline of the traditional mediais the way in which it is happening. Many in the media still have afalse sense of security based on the idea that the content of socialmedia is not ‘as good’ as the content of traditional media: it is notwritten as well, not produced as professionally, or does not meetthe standards required for ‘journalistic integrity.’ Consequently, theidea that a newspaper could ever be replaced by ‘the narcissismof the blogosphere’ or the television by ‘the rubbish on YouTube’seems absurd to them. In reality, their denition of ‘good’ is shapedby the requirement for it to be of mass appeal and, of course, thesocial information principle dictates that individual relevance ratherthan mass appeal is what dictates the distribution of information.This belief is underpinned by the false assumption that one formof institutionalized access to information (a newspaper) will bereplaced by another institutionalized form of access. Instead, whatis happening is that the process of information sharing within socialmedia is replacing much of the function of information provisionorganized by the institution of traditional media. This shift frominstitution to process is one of the dening characteristics of theshift from the Gutenberg to post-Gutenberg world. This is not hap-pening because social media is doing ‘news’ any better — ratherit has changed the denition of news, shifting it from a denitionrestricted by the economics of expensive distribution to one basedon individualized preference. People still want national and inter-national news and content of mass appeal, but in terms of priority,
1 This idea was expressed as the 5:50 prediction – i.e., within 5 years, 50 percent ofwhat the media consumers consume will be produced by other consumers whilespeaking at the IMedia Connection Brand Summit, Florida, 2006
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