Industrialization is transforming our information economy, destroying old business models and creating new opportunities. The impact it will have on new media will make Web 2.0 seem tame in comparison. To understand this transformation and leverage it effectively, you need to parse the myths from reality.

Back in May 2009, I argued that industrialization is the most transformative force on the Internet. Human tasks are rapidly being displaced by machines. Factories of advanced technologies are being constructed to automate the manufacture of information and content. Predictably, there is much hand-wringing and righteous indignation expressed about this economic sea change. (more…)

We’re only a month away from the launch of our thought networking service. On this blog, I’ve outlined our vision of thought networking as a new category of semantic applications. With thought networking, we want to help consumers effortlessly collect their thoughts and bend the Internet around them. Leading up to our launch, I want to summarize our vision for this service and our motivations for creating it.

Addressing a Pervasive Problem

The problem with today’s Internet is that it is imposed on consumers. Information is organized for them in advance, without their input. Consumers are treated not as individuals but as amorphous collections of audiences. Producers spend massive amounts of money trying to guess what their audiences need, and compensate for the gaps with monolithic websites and complicated tools to sift through it all.

A much better approach would put the horse in front of the cart, allowing individual consumers to dictate how the information should be organized for them. Simply ask them, “What are you thinking about?” and make those thoughts the organizing force behind it all. Computers could then wield these concrete representations of our thoughts to reorganize and reconstitute the information for each individual. Producers save money; consumers get the simple, made-to-order Web they deserve.

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