Digital Publishing versus Paper Rock Scissors

This is an update version of an article I first published under the title "Slow Revolutions are better than overnight Coups".
by Tom Koltai at 11:52AM (EST) on February 26, 2010

In 1993, I wrote a paper entitled, How Ubiquitous Free Communication will Alter the Status Quo.

I noted that ;

• because of electronic chat rooms [Prodigy, AOL and Compuserve], as more women became enamoured of the connectivity options available to them via a ubiquitous global network, that the divorce rate would rise dramatically.
• small companies that were fast out of the blocks in adopting the technology would eat into and decrement larger companies profits.
• that increasing cheap communication options would increase global commerce dramatically.
• people would form online communities with like minded people.;

What I failed to note or foresee was, that;

Companies like Ebay and Amazon that would so totally decimate the bricks and mortar business models.
I missed the meteoric growth in parcel post and courier delivery services,  
I failed to foresee that the majority of E-commerce roads lead to the USA and consequently that all money flows were via the USA (advertising, product sales – PayPal settlements were in US Dollars)

I didnt think that connected PC’s and search engines would decimate the media barons of yesterday and replace the 7:00 pm News.
I failed to foretell cameras in phones,
or that Governments would rather give money to failing corporate business models rather than encourage and fund new business models.

All in all I give my 1993 paper a C. I missed the most important predictions.

The new digital Ecosystem comprising mainly:

Goggle              Now answers more searches globally on more topics daily than the number of pages of all of the books in all of the libraries of the world.

eBay                Collects commissions on more daily sales than any other sales organisation in the world.

Paypal.             Now processes more transactions daily than any other single banking organisation in the world.

Youtube            Now offers 20 hours per minute of newly uploaded video content. (The content industry creates only approximately 7 minutes of content every minute – that includes Television, films. music videos, documentaries and  News/Current affair programs).

Facebook          Now has more words in the daily updates than all of the words of all the worlds daily newspapers.



Google to research the desired item of purchase, Amazon to buy books, videos electonic gadgets and entertainment, Paypal to pay for them, Youtube to learn how to use the item, Facebook to show and tell ones friends about the newly acquired gadget,   Ebay to sell them once we are sick of them, and again Paypal to receive payment for them.

All of these companies have become dominant in their own right.
Did any of them ask for or receive any Government funding to get where they are?
Nope. Not that I'm aware of.

Are they changing the way the world does business? Most assuredly.



Yet they are successful not because of Government hand-outs but because they provide what is needed by the consumers.

The estimated number of jobs created by these new digital giants including the support industries that both live off and feed the new denizens of the net, already outnumber all of the employees of all of the newspaper and magazine publishers/printers, TV and radio stations globally.

The biggest boon of this new digital economy is the oportnity for mums at home. eBay allows a suprising number to buy, sell and trade at a small modest profit, boosting the family finances whilst simultaneously killing the bricks and mortar one dollar shops. It's a fascinating destructive cycle that only needs a modicum of industrialisation added to it to revitalise the economy.



These companies all started in bedrooms or garages. They grew and were successful because of vision, determination, usefulness and appropriate funding at the right time.

In garages all over Australia, inventors are inventing, hamstrung by lack of funds, and totally unaware of how they can obtain those funds.

For an invention to become successful there has to be a series of propitious events that occur at the right time, in sequence.

Unfortunately, only a very small percentage of the inventions are ever funded correctly, marketed correctly and supported correctly.

Also unfortunately, many don’t “Grok” the usefulness of the invention.

A Hypothetical.
A number of years  ago, (1987) a gentlemen in Melbourne was featured in that wonderful (no longer published) Australia Post magazine, with his Hydrogen reactor powered Ford Falcon 500.

The article explained that although it was in fact a Hydrogen Reactor it was quite safe.

How does one sell that concept to an RTA Clerk to obtain road-worthiness registration for the vehicle.

Power Plant : Hydrogen Reactor.
Cylinders:  6
Manufacturer:  Homemade

Automatically the application would be declined.

Therefore, the gentleman, had the choice of lying about the engine, or driving an unregistered vehicle.

Had Steve received funding, then Australians today would be paying pennies for the fuel as opposed to dollars. Unfortunately, Steve came up against the wall of self interest.

The Self Interest of Politicians and Lobbyists that required Petro dollars to remain in office or to earn a living.
Politicians unfortunately generally can’t see beyond the next election.
If Steve had lobbied the Government with a five thousand dollar per day lobbyist by saying:

If everyone drives on Hydrogen then:

• Australia could export all of it’s oil to other nations.
• Australians would have zero emissions from their vehicles.
• The budget would be positive every year, because, 
• Australians wouldn’t have to spend 11% of their pay cheques every week to pay for fuel.
• Deliveries would be cheaper therefore our lifestyle values would increase with more money going into the economy for locally made products.
• The local vehicle industry would sell more Australian made autos (after all the rest of the world is driving on hydrocarbons).
• Australia would become the leading economically successful nation on earth.

 But Steve didn’t lobby government and we are still driving smoke belching hydrocarbon burning vehicles; we still pay through the nose for the precious black gold and are suffering as a nation because of the stranglehold of fuel oil on the economy.

..and of course our politicians are in trouble with their failture to meet the CO2 reduction requyirements.

So Steve’s invention fizzled, yet the self serving interests were served. All this because Canberra didn't recognise the potential of Steve's Hydrogen car.

Although I should interject here, that it was more than likely that some  scaremongering went on the time to ensure that Politicians were scared oof Steve's Hydrogen powered marvel.

This is the choice that entrepreneurs and internauts face each and every day.

If the Government doesn't understand what you are doing, then you are probably breaking the law if you keep doing it.Then again, had Steve (the Hungarian guy in Melbourne with the mobile Hydrogen reactor) not told anyone, then no-one would know, but then he couldn't have raised any money for his invention.

For readers peace of mind, I should explain that it is possible to construct a Hydrogen reactor in your kitchen using caustic soda as the catalyst (to split H2 from 0).

For every invention that sees the light of day, thousands get forgotten.

As more people become connected it will be both easier and simultaneously harder to :
Create a meme,
That creates the brand

Although there are still opportunities e.g.: Twitter.

If you had told me five years ago that fifty percent of the online world would be tweeting their life stories via twitter daily, I would have laughed at you.

But this is where peer pressure assists the meme.
If all your friends are on Twitter, then to be part of the crowd, you also have to be on Twitter because otherwise, you can’t follow what they are saying.

But the real problem?

The self serving interests of companies that can afford to hire lobbyists to convince Government to grease the wheels of commerce in their favour and genrally against the long term interests of the citizens and the conomy.

Had the Broadcasting companies utilized the services of a Psychic and discovered what we all now know about Google, Youtube and to a lesser extent about Paypal, I am sure that none of those companies would exist today, having been legislated out of existence before they made good.

It would appear that to hold a successful revolution, it must be:
Public – under the nose of the persons that the invention disrupts.

Discrete – It should sneak up gradually, not suddenly appear on the radar.
Useful – The product must appeal unilaterally to a specific demographic
Unique – The invention should have a unique aspect that is not replicated elsewhere.
Rock & Roll – To become a meme, it must apply to a young demographic. (They – the young demographic will ensure that Grandma and Grandpa follow.)

Examples of Successful Revolutions.
Newspapers are now virtually unread in their paper forms (but in the last ten years we have gone from .6 of a PC per Australian to 1.6., Telecommunicaitons has grown exponentially 14.7% CAGR (in Australia, VOIP has almost displaced almost all commercial voice traffic on the analogue copper network (Telstra local and std call fees). Bricks and Mortar Video stores and Record shops closing but digital sales are rocketing.....
The Soviet Government was essentially toppled from inside by the wide adoption of personal computers facilitating non-censored traffic between individuals.

If you are an inventor, good luck with your Revolution, because, that is what a successful product roll-out requires. A revolution in thinking, a revolution in marketing and a revolution in selling the concept to the funders.

Oh yeah, it needs one more thing. It needs your local politician to understnad that you are the next Bill Gates...... make sure he knows that if he doesnt support your business plan, Australia will loose billions inthe future.

The Estimated cost of Australia not adopting Steve's Hydrogen car in the eighties? Approximately 4.54 trillion dollars. But that's a tale for another day.