Themepunks

Capitalism is eating itself. The market works, and when it works, it commodifies or obsoletes everything. That’s not to say that there’s no money out there to be had, but the money won’t come from a single, monolithic product line. The days of companies with names like ‘General Electric’ and ‘General Mills’ and ‘General Motors’ are over. The money on the table is like krill: a billion little entrepreneurial opportunities that can be discovered and exploited by smart, creative people

Salon.com Technology | Themepunks

The problem with this is that it’s still fairly untrue. Google is the king of search, amazon of retial sales, etc. While thousands of entrepeneuers are making they’re way on the internet now, I think it’s more likely this is due to the open nature of the commercialized internet and not an intrinsic part of the net itself.  Billions of people buying stuff, using stuff, etc will naturally lead to more than just a few major “brands” or companies of web services, but there is a limit and increasingly it seems the nature of the net is changing. Recently flock’s beta testers complained they didn’t have enough windows users for their tests. I mean that right there shows the way computers and the internet is going, a smallish “vanguard” or “indie-ish” group that ultimately uses software that the rest of the world never entirely digests and uses. While occasional break outs in indie films and music happen the actual culture that drives these little economies and cliques is fundamentaly different than the one that consumes them on a major level. Basically subcultures aren’t entirely defined in difference to some other, usually “larger”, culture they’re defined by idiosnycracies and their particular uses of the technologies around them. The question is, will the world outside of those with high technological obsessions, begin to emulate the behavoirs and morals of the folks powering these things? In time yes, but like any build, it takes a lot longer to get there. In other words, while you could achieve success fast in days of olde before there were as established customs when it came to internet use, companies and products today have a lot more working and viable competitors they will need to swim with before they can acheive the sucess of say google or MS. There’s only so many major behavoirs the internet can support and a good deal of those (search, blogging, p2p, social networking) are already hitting their zenith. New trends will take longer to emerge in the major culture of the net as a whole.

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