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What just happened to my site layout?

The Long Tail … and exploring what’s available on it

I loved our reading for this week!

Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail captured the future of commerce, at least for products and services that exist as bits and bites. The shift in the music, book and film industries illustrates how the variety offered by the unlimited space online is changing consumers behavior. Though that’s a demonstration of economic change, there’s no question that it will change our society, and probably profoundly. I wonder what the world will look like in 10 years.

One thought I have is that the hundred-pound brains will take over from the pop stars as culture shapers. The people who can find ways to filter useful bits of info to people who are most likely to appreciate it (the googles of the world) will dictate how our society changes — whether they intend to or not because as the information we receive changes so will our perspectives.

For about the last 50 years, we have all (at least in this country) been exposed to fairly homogenous ideas around which we have built our viewpoints, likes and dislikes. Variation abound, but we can all be grouped by a fairly small number of demographic statistics. It’s possible that as our access to information splinters, our ideas, viewpoints and preferences will change, too. This could mean real diversity. It’s already starting to happen. As apolitically as possible, I present as argument the fact that the two front runners for the democratic presidential nomination are outside the demographic of all former presidents. Less than five years ago, pundits were debating whether the country would even entertain the idea. Is anyone else excited by this?

Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook make it possible to have friends in all parts of the world. It’s possible that in the near future, even the idea of friends will change.

Who knows the outer limits of the Internet’s impact on society when Japan isn’t far away from Washington, D.C.