The great connector: July 21, 1997 issue of New Thinking

July 21, 1997 New Thinking:
The great connector

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July 21, 1997

The great connector

By Gerry McGovern

Let’s say you have 12 hours a week for digesting information. Let’s say that right now, 8 of those hours are used digesting general information, with 4 hours allocated to specific information.

I would regard general information as information you receive from Business Week, The Irish Times, Newsweek, The New York Times, etc. It is broad information designed to meet the needs of a wide audience. It is information that is for the most part sufficient for your needs, but on occasions you feel that you need more depth on particular subjects it addresses.

I imagine general information as a worldwide river system. It is solid. It is wide. It is constant. Many cities of people have located beside one of its rivers to live and do commerce.

Specific information tends to be local in nature. It is about your neighborhood or town, or about a very definite subject; a hobby or special interest.

I imagine specific information to be like millions of small ponds or small unconnected streams. Some of this information is static and will not change. Some of it does flow and change but within a very defined environment.

Along comes the Internet - the Great Connector. All these ponds and streams, historically isolated, now have the chance to become connected.

Let’s look at those 12 hours again. 8 of them are used for general information, 4 for specific. Could it be that, say, 2 of those 8 hours for general information could be better used digesting specific information, only historically that information could not be easily or economically accessed?

If this be so, then the Internet could ultimately have a major impact on that large river network - that large, traditional publishing industry.

I have heard of small newspapers pooling their small ads into one central resource. This is an example of what the Great Connector can do - power in numbers.

At heart the Internet is local, as everyone is a local somewhere. Yes, the Internet is a new distribution system for large publishers. But one of its greatest potentials, in my opinion, is in connecting all those small ponds and streams of information.

A big fish is a big sea is still smaller than a thousand small fish swimming together. (Whether that big fish of a publisher can eat up all those small fish is a moot point.)

Whatever, the Great Connector will change things radically and those who do not change will be history rather than make it. And what the Internet will change is not the information but rather the access to the information. (And like the tree falling in the forest; if nobody reads a unit of information, is it really there?)

Yes, information wants to be free. Free to move. Free to circulate. Free to make more money for those who created it.

Gerry McGovern

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Yes, information wants to be free. Free to move. Free to circulate. Free to make more money for those who created it.