Exclusive Interview with Ms. Esther Dyson: The Most Influential Woman on the Internet
I’m pleased that I can publish on my eMarketing Blog interview that I made with Ms. Esther Dyson, definitely one of the most influential woman on the Internet. Esther Dyson is Editor at Large at CNET Networks, one of the most powerful Internet media companies that own digital assets like Download.com, MP3.com, Com.com etc. She started working at CNET after she had sold her company EDventure Holdings to CNET. She publishes expert articles on Release 1.0 and organizes one of the industry’s best conferences like PC Forum where gather Internet decision-makers like Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, Salesforce.com Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff or Marc Zuckerberg, Facebook.com CEO. Esther Dyson was Chairman of ICANN board for 2 years. She is regular speaker on major conferences like AD TECH, World Economic Forum, Shop.org, Comdex usually as a keynote speaker. She is also a well-known investor. Some of her investments are in Meetup.com, Technorati, Delicious and Flickr.
You can find more about Esther Dyson on http://www.release1-0.com or to visit her frequently updated Flickr page on http://www.flickr.com/photos/edyson/
Dejan Bizinger: Internet is much more different from early days in 1995. What do you think about the power that it has today in shaping people views, socialization and shopping habits?
Esther Dyson: The internet gives *people* the power to shape other people’s views and shopping habits. It’s easier for people to find out what like-minded people think about products. It also gives them the ability to find one another.
DB: What is your prediction about the future Internet trends?
EM: Among other things, we will no longer have much anonymity. Although my specialty is the Internet, by 2040 , in the developed world, that won’t distinguish me from any other observer of human behavior. Most information will be on the Internet, whether freely available or not, and most people’s actions will be traceable…if someone with power cares to go to the trouble. The only question is how difficult laws and policies will make it to do so.
But there will be more to this trend than the government spying on innocent victims, or even on they-asked-for-it dissidents. The big questions revolve less around anonymity, pseudonymity or total transparency, and more around societies’ tolerance for diversity on the one hand, and recognition of individuals’ fluidity on the other. Those are the things we need to watch out for, even more than for breaches of privacy. Is it possible to have a tolerant society where much once-private behavior is visible? In fact, is such visibility necessary for tolerance to reign and the range of
acceptable behavior to broaden?
That’s my hope. Because right now, we’re losing anonymity in two opposite ways. On the one hand, we’re losing power to authorities who are demanding ever more information from us – in order to fly, as we pass through tollgates or even just tool down highways, cross borders or even just enter
public buildings. We are also giving up more and more information – wittingly or not – as we shop and tk what else, both offline and online.
Yet on the Internet, we are also jumping at the chance to be famous. People google others, and worry over their own Google rankings. They collect friends on the social network sites and send what used to be family-style Christmas letters out to friends. Even as individuals evince more and more concern about privacy and related issues around identity theft, more and more people are getting onto the Web as themselves, publishing blogs, posting photos, contributing reviews to
ratings sites and revealing all (or so it seems) on dating and social network sites (such as Friendster).
So what’s next? What’s the backlash to all this? Will these trends simply extrapolate smoothly, or what kind of opposite reaction will they provoke?
For starters, I think many people will move pretty rapidly from no identity to multiple identities. Whether you’re simply an individual attempting to remain fluid and not get caught in a single identity (only a studious geek, or only a fun-loving mom or a talented musician) or you’re concerned about privacy and you want multiple identities to throw the authorities off track, ! expect to see more and more people with multiple identities that may or may not be easily traced. (For sure, most such identities will be traceable by authorities with subpoena power, but not by your neighbors, your colleagues or even your prospective employer.)
Nonetheless, our slime trails will become increasingly visible. Here, I think we’ll see a cultural change – a sort of “reputation statute of limitations.” Curiosity will continue (we’re human beings, after all), but there will be a broader understanding of how people can change. (I would love to see websites get better at dating their material, while Google and other search engines could, for example, show recent information in black, while older items would be shown in increasingly lighter shades of grey.)
But the good news is that individuals are gaining power at the expense of anonymity. Not only can they publish their erstwhile secrets: they also publish their wants and offers. The Net is empowering individuals to engage with others not just as consumers picking from what’s on offer, but as active negotiators defining specs for others to meet.
To be sure, that does not require complete identification, but it requires credentials, reputation and the like.
Where does this all lead? Is there safety in numbers? If a million people admit to having smoked dope, or stolen hotel towels or tk, can one do so with impunity?
Here the issue is not so much privacy as accountability on the one hand, and society’s willingness to condone a government that might single out its enemies. That’s a bigger question than privacy. The optimists don’t worry. The pessimists are hiding.
DB: You were ICANN chairman for two years. What is your opinion about the importance of domain names and what do you think about the dot com buzz of selling domains for several million dollars?
ED: I think domain names are not all that important; it’s much more useful to run a good business than to have a good domain name. That said, domain names are still an interesting business, but a competitive one in which it is hard to make money.
DB: Do you think that outsourcing can cause problems for the people living in USA and Western Europe, that they will loose their jobs or have lower salaries? Do you see some country or region that can be a good competitor to India regarding outsourcing?
ED: I think that the US and Western Europe have their own problem, which is a lack of interest in technical education… so that they are falling behind other countries. I see outsourcing as a big opportunity for talented young people in emerging markets, who will one day become good customers for companies in the developed markets. However, the US and other countries do
need to figure out how to help their IT workers handle this change… with retraining, unemployment insurance and other measures. perhaps some of them could train the next generation of students… Others should go to developing markets and apply some of their talents there.
DB: You sold your company EDventure Holdings to CNET. How is it to be a part of one of the biggest Internet media companies?
ED: It gives us many more resources, which is good.
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