Sun Microsystems has established a hosting service for all employees who wish to blog, on any topic. The latest participant -- CEO Jonathan Schwartz.

It is an interesting development because it provides an alternative to established channels of intracorporporate communication, with who knows what long-term result.

Paul Strassman, information chief of Xerox before the term CIO was invented, wrote during the 1980s that the many companies that turned down the chance to invest in the copier were not stupid -- they ran the idea through all the accepted models for valuing innovation and found that the pay-off was not there. What they missed was the machine's potential to cause a redesign of the structure of the organization, oriented around copying capabilities.

The Internet is the same. The effect will not be to make existing structures of companies or markets more efficient but to create new possibilities. EBay and Amazon, which are revolutionizing areas of commerce, are the most obvious examples of this.

The same possibilities await the distribution of creative products. But there must be a revenue stream for the artists and the middlemen who find and fund them. Trying to distribute product for free while the artists make a living by selling T-shirts, and the middlemen make a living not at all, will not cut it. Nor will the idea of funding by means of an Internet tax, which would eliminate the ability of consumers to express their preferences in a marketplace.

posted by James DeLong @ 8:20 AM | General

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