To us, this appears to be one of the great constants of the web.
It is taking power away from existing large institutions and pushing it out to smaller entities and often all the way to individuals.
In the process it is building up new institutions (such as Google), but the net result appears to be a distinct shift of “power to the people.” We see this at work in many of our existing investments:
Etsy’s marketplace for handmade goods lets artists connect directly with buyers;
Covestor enables investors to share their track records and discover each other;
Wesabe puts folks in control of their finances;
Tumblr facilitates sharing oneself;
BugLabs lets anyone create a custom network-connected device. In each case, individuals are empowered in ways that simply were not possible prior to the web.
Would you like to comment?
Join Diigo for a free account, or sign in if you are already a member.