we are all in the media business

What will the world be like when the media industry is bigger than the oil industry?

I don't think we realize how big a role media is going to play in this millennium. We see images every day. We interact with screens (cell phones, computers, TVs, and iPods) more than we do with faces.

The problem we are going to have is the shift in thinking from media as something we add to our current businesses and lives to the fact that our businesses and lives will be centered around media.

Media is the business we are all in now. Just like customer service was the real business we were in during the past 30-40 years - media is the new business.

In case you are missing my point - you are in the media business or you are not in business. You are communicating or you are bankrupt. That is the core of what commerce is now. Period.

So how does this play out for the average business owner? You need to restructure your company to begin integrating media into the very fiber of what you do. When I talk about media I am talking about education - entertainment and news. These are the three core areas that need to be woven into what you do.

Actually strike that. I am still thinking like the old economy. Don't weave media into what you do. Start with your media business and weave what you do into that. Don't have a media business? Then you aren't in business - at least not much longer. We all better get busy.

are copyrights dangerous to our culture?

My nine month old son Gunnar was fussy the other night. I logged onto YouTube and began clicking on Sesame Street videos from 20 years ago. He loved them. I did too!

A flood of memories came back to me from my childhood and I began to wonder about who owns these original videos. I feel like they are part of my childhood. They are part of my cultural history. I wonder how Sesame Street will respond to this copying of their content and posting to YouTube.

This got me thinking.

For the past 100 years our culture has been played out through the media. We have recorded our modern history and culture through film, television, music, and the internet. Most of this media is currently in the hands of copyright holders that have control over the content. If they prevent the rest of us from making copies we increase the potential of losing this information, entertainment, and history.