>> re: bandwidth commodities, futures, derivatives - start discussion
I'm just starting to get a handle on the players in the meta-web universe.
One organizing concept of the meta-web is: moving from manual to automated management of web resources.
This must necessarily include all kinds of web resources: bandwidth, page caching, server allocation and placement, processes and transactions, etc, etc.
The imperative is ... if it is a web resource, then it will move through certain stages of existence: invention, proliferation, standardization, etc, etc. In a business sense, the management of these resources will also move through various predictable stages: manual episodic, standardized manual, partially automated marketplace, fully automatic self-administration ... this list begs elucidation.
Two truths stand out for me:
1. It is less possible to predict which of the players will win than it is to predict how the game must evolve.
2. All web resources will progress through similar stages of resource management evolution.
Both these "truths" seem to me to have very interesting investment implications.
Frank ... are any of these market-makers taking the technical high ground?
Are any of them designing a system for managing arbitrary resources? Are any of them open platform business models ... capable of incorporating, rather than competing with other players?
I would posit than only such an approach will survive ... any less robust approach must necessarily under-compete in the evolutionary changes that history suggests will occur.
If such a venture cannot manuever it's genes into the meta-web, then the years ahead only it's fossilized remains will be found. It will have been consumed, become mere foodstuffs, or otherwise out-competed, by those whose ideas have merged into the meta-web.
The end-game here is automatic self-management of all resource by "the web itself" ... the self-aware meta-web.
So the sort would be ... are they end-game compatible? There are multiple variations on the end-game ... multiple forms that the meta-web could take ... not just one imperative structure ... but functions of the structure can be anticipated ... and processrs toward those functions.
We are in the unique position of being able to anticipate the end-game somewhat. Australopithicus did not have this ability, or so I think. |
