Page 16 - AC/E's Digital Culture Annual Report 2015

Cultural business models on the Internet16that this is science fiction and it will never occur, but if we read his book The Singularity is Near, we will see how the scientist gradually explains page by page what stage we are at in all the areas of what he calls the singularity – first described by the mathematician John von Neuman in 1958 – which Kurzweil expects to happen in about 2045.In barely 31 years – much sooner in several of the business areas that will be affected dramat- ically – new models will emerge, totally digital in many cases. They will be created by startup companies which, without taking into account existing businesses, will invent ways of doing so better, faster and more cheaply.Are existing companies doomed to fail? Unfor- tunately, most are. They will not be capable of reacting and are bound to become obsolete if they fail to act in time.Everyone is familiar with the case of Kodak, the major American company that invented digital photography. It attempted to defend its “photo film” business and has been driven to bankrupt- cy by its own invention which, in the hands of much more flexible companies, has stolen the market and invented new areas of use that bear no relation to those of the twentieth century.Whereas scarcity prevailed in the 1900s, the 2000s are the century of abundance. Whereas families used to take hundreds of photographs throughout their lifetime, they now take thousands of digital photographs during a single trip to Indonesia. It is common for the average person to have 200 or 300 new photos stored in their mobile at any time.Abundance generates new business models that are related to the compilation, classificationand exploitation of information of all kinds. The so-called “Internet of Things” is generating millions of data that reach hundreds of thou- sands of servers all over the world in real time. It is early days yet to see what business models this mass information will establish.Business models will increasingly build on big data in order to offer services based on information generated by users.It is also too soon to know how legislation will allow the use of this type of data, which is often public, and the type of remuneration that will be possible in each case. What is clear is that many business models will emerge in connection with what is now called “big data” and thatwe will soon have companies on a global scale that will offer very advanced services based on gathering this information and selling or renting it to companies and individuals.Until now it has been almost possible, for example, to have access to a major city’s entire infrastructure plans in real time. The digitisation of the past years, still very slow and inaccessible to councils with a small budget, is being speeded up by the falling cost of this type of work and the supposed reuse and monetisation of these sources of data and plans.Private companies will increasingly offer to fund public projects in exchange for being able to use the data obtained as a basis for new businessChallenges of the twenty-first century. How to adapt a company to the twenty-first century