Killing the middle man

August 28, 2006
by Björn Jeffery
Good Old Trend

I’m trying to create a few new habits for myself regarding health and learning. One of them is taking a morning walk before work and listening to a few interesting podcasts while I do it. I started off with the two latest TEDTalks, Jimmy Wales from Wikipedia and Richard Baraniuk from Rice University.

Of the two, the latter was the most interesting. Baraniuk described his knowledge sharing project Connexions which is an interesting idea in itself. But the most interesting part of it was the fact that projects with free content – community produced and licensed under CC or similar – kills the middle man completely. In the new chain of production it goes from author to printer to distribution. No external handling, marketing or editing. Not necessarily at least.

There will be a new market evolving just supplying the means for people to do everything themselves. A network for distribution of small editions books for example. Like Logoworks if you will – enabling a low cost professional framework to use for small scale businesses or projects.

(if you know of good podcasts for my morning walks please leave a comment!)

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The Author

Björn Jeffery is a Swedish technology columnist, advisor, and independent analyst based in Malmö, Sweden. He is the technology columnist for Svenska Dagbladet and co-hosts a podcast for the newspaper. He was previously CEO and co-founder of Toca Boca, the kids’ media company that grew to over one billion downloads. Through his advisory practice, Outer Sunset AB, he works with companies on digital strategy, consumer culture, governance, growth, and international expansion.