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One of the most interesting things to happen in a while is the acquisition by Amazons Jeff Bezos of The Washington Post. The traditional media industry, as you all know, have been struggling with seriously dwindling sales and prescriber base. The discussion have been going on forever about how to make money in the upheaval that digitalization means for this industry. The sentiment has moved from “people will never pay for content” (i e reading papers online) to “we have to charge or we´ll die”. Finding out exactly what people are willing to pay for, in what form to cast subscriptions and the payment of content is an artform. In light of this, Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post, and what will happen with the legendary paper over time, will be followed closely by a lot of people. To get a deeper explanation and background, I highly recommend reading the article “Bezos, Heraclitus and the Hybrid Future of Journalism” by Arianna Huffington, of the HuffPost. In the article is also mentioned another project Mr Bezos is involved in; the 10 000 year clock being built by the Long Now Foundation (founded by, among others Brian Eno). The clock…. The foundation is working to encourage long-term thinking and “hopes to provide a counterpoint to today’s accelerating culture and help make long-term thinking more common. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years”. Try thinking with a 10 000 year perspective, I don´t know about you but it sort of hurts my head. Also, it is scary because the first thing that comes to mind is “we wont be here anymore”. If you consider that we have not even lived in communities for more than about 7 000 years (the xxxx number of years before that, we were hunters and gatherers living in small groups), it is truly hard to imagine what the world will be like in 10 000 years. With a media vehicle like the Washington Post, a deep understanding of all things digital – and the interest in long-term thinking, it is not unlikely that Jeff Bezos will be a positive influence.
