Why Bandwidth Is the Oil of the Information Economy
August 1st, 2008 by Gen KanaiTim Wu, who I met briefly at the OECD event in Seoul in June has a great op-ed in the NYT: OPEC 2.0 or Why Bandwidth Is the Oil of the Information Economy. I know that I and most of the people that I work with are addicted to bandwidth.
In an information economy, the supply and price of bandwidth matters, in the way that oil prices matter: not just for gas stations, but for the whole economy.
And that’s why there is a pressing need to explore all alternative supplies of bandwidth before it is too late. Americans are as addicted to bandwidth as they are to oil. The first step is facing the problem.
Americans are not the only ones- I would say that anywhere where broadband has a significant penetration there is an addiction to bandwidth.
August 2nd, 2008 at 9:53 am
Gen,
my image of bandwidth is more as the water/electricity/sewerage of the information age. While we depend on these things are we addicted to them? Addiction implies an unhealthy, and ultimately unnecessary dependence, which I think it is fair to characterize our relationship with oil as. But water, electricity, sewerage, these define the urban revolution of the last 150 years – long before any real dependence on oil, the urbanization of the world’s population depended on at least clean water and sewerage, and then later electricity.
In the same way as we can imagine a world similar to today, but with alternative, far cleaner power sources, but not a world like ours without clean water, sewerage and electricity, a world without bandwidth would be a fundamentally different world.
August 13th, 2008 at 12:50 am
yesterday, my friend, who is a reporter, got a need to get 90 MB audio file from internet in late night.
the only connection she has at that time/place via 36k dial-up modem.
we think that it may be faster if i just download that, put in usb drive, and take a taxi to give it to her. (30 mins d/l + 1 hr taxi … still faster than her 36k)
in the end she somehow got that file without my help.
but we talking about, this is probably a kind of measurement for bandwidth
– if you have a need of an amount of information that the telecommunication infrastructure cannot deliver it faster than normal transportation mode, this means you have a real serious problem in telecommunication infrastructure.
November 13th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Damn! I just typed a whole long comment and then the screen went funny when I hit the submit button. Is it in moderation or do i have to type it all out again?