Ged over at Renaissance Chambara expressed what I felt was a jaded comment on my recent Global Neighborhoods TOC .01 post. Two points he made seem to be "conventional wisdom," as John Kenneth Galbraith called it:
(1) Don't underestimate the power of big, and (2) Don't fool yourself into thinking the Web 2.0 stuff is a bubble.
I found it cute that he cited Google as a company that has the advantages of big and therefore they get all the smart people at the expense of startups. Less than a decade ago to smart kids from Stanford University, went against conventional wisdom on the worthlessness of the search category and started the very same Google with a most decidedly anti-corporate attitude. Their current advantage seems to me not to be bigness, but their ability to continue to execute as if they were a startup.
[Just look at Sergey Brin. This is a guy who still thinks like a start up.Photo by ptufts]
Of course, I have no disagreement with the many obvious advantages of bi Thomas L.Friedman wrote a great called "The world is Flat" about how global enterprises are taking advantage of the connected world. After I read Friedman, however, I felt he missed the part of the story that interests me most--the disruptive capabilities of small. Most business and social upheaval germanates from small, often loosely joined organizations.
Ged's second point--that what is happening right now is Bubble 2.0 also brings Google to mind and I'll get to that in a moment.
First, what is happening now most certainly seems to have some bubble aspects, but from where I sit, it's less relevant than conventional wisdom would have you believe. Bubbles have been a part of technology explosions for 200 years, perhaps longer. They have played a role in the adaption of motor-power water transport, gun-making, gold discovery, trains, oil exploitation, automobiles and all sorts of other things.
After some new category of innovation gets introduced a few people get very rich very fast. They are followed by a lot of people who try to do the same, many of whom fail often abruptly and dramatically. When the innovation that started it all proves to have enduring value,this violent brief period--the bubble--is followed by a prolonged period of steady growth and technology refinement--such as we have experienced with the computer.
That's what happened with Internet companies. A half dozen years a combination of greed/naivete and intentional manipulation brought about a violent implosion. That has just about been talked to death if you ask me. It's just not interesting anymore.
What is really interesting to me and I would argue, is socially and economically of great importance is to look at what happened next after all those companies bit dust. First a few of them endured and they did okay and changed the world just a bit. Three obvious examples are Google, Amazon and eBay. If you think about it, there are quite a few of them that are a good bet to last quite a long time.
The survivors consolidated a lot of the talent and technology from the ones who failed to make the cut. Yes, Ged a lot of talent went in to them--but not all.
A good number of developers in 2001,2 and 3 hung out in coffee houses sucking in cheap or free broadband where they started exchanging ideas with other people when they weren't reading articles that proclaimed all tech developers who did not live in India were destined to be taxi drivers or work behind counters in bookstores.
These are the people who have started whatever it is that has started. These are the people who have provided the technology to make this a global explosion and to let people with similar interests and passions find each other and to develop a new kind of community that could not possible exist.
Is there a bubble? Sure, but what is interesting is what the world looks like after the inevitable consolidation, after Google and Microsoft and Yahoo have picked the cherries. How will these companies have to adapt in a world where the communities that companies serve have more power than the companies themselves?
I don't have a clue what the answers are but I'm passionately curious to explore the issues. Global Neighborhoods is interested in how this new wave of technology will impact humanity, how cultural differences will bump up against human similarities; how well will people get along even when there governments do not. 
[TS Eliot, poet, Nobel Lauriet]
I am interested in meeting the people who the poet TS Eliot must have had in mind when he wrote "Only those who will risk going to far can possibky find out how far one can go." Those are the people I want to interview for ths book and who will guide me in reaching my conclusions, more than stats and cyncs and academic compilations.
I have no idea what Global neighborhoods will conclude. I have about 280 pages to write before I get to that point, and so far, I've just written an early draft of the first portion of my TOC.
