 | ||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||
|
« TABOR Update | Main | Blurring Reality » November 5, 2002Disintermediation Bites BackDarwin magazine suggests that Orbitz, the online airfare merchant owned by a consortium of airlines, is sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Orbitz is a shining example of two of the consequences that Internet gurus used to make good money blathering on about. The website has eliminated one expensive middleman (the travel agents), and has another (reservations systems) in its crosshairs. And it has made an incomprehensible pricing system transparent (if not comprehensible) with the end result of reducing airline fares, which have become the commodity that they always looked like they should have been." But therein lies the problem: What the gurus didn't tell us was that the benefits of shooting the middleman could easily be washed out by the empowerment of the customer once a product had been reduced to a commodity.The Internet is having this kind of impact on all sorts of industries. It occurs to me that politicians are a middleman, of sorts. As the Internet provides voters with more and more direct access to government information, making once-incomprehensible government more transparent - will the Net not also undermine politics and entrenched government? Your thoughts and comments please ... I may even publish them. Email them to me at bill-at-billhobbs.com Comments
Post a comment
Comments Policy: Your comment is subject to deletion if it is off-topic or includes foul language or personal attack. Readers, please email me if you find comments that include egregious violations of this policy. Comments may not post immediately - do not post twice!
|
|||||||||||
