Once upon a time, everything was controlled by giant faceless monolithic organisations. That was the Age of Whales. Huge, lumbering entities, surviving through sheer mass and power.
But then came computers, home computers, connectivity, broadband and suddenly a new equilibrium becomes possible. And not just possible but actual. And not just actual but thriving.
This is the Age of Minnows.
Technology has made it possible for individuals to control the means of production, communication and distribution into a new type of mass market.
In the Age of Whales, the mass market was a cookie-cutter sea of identical clones. Choice was limited or non-existent. The manufacturer TOLD you what you wanted. You had to conform or do without.
But in the Age of Minnows, the mass market is not ONE market - it is a collective of highly specialised, differentiated, fragmented groups. Partitioned into much smaller enclaves of tastes and interests. These mini-markets are a nightmare for the Whale producers - their production pipelines were not designed to cope with a multiplicity of mutually exclusive preferences. Their pipelines are designed to deliver tightly focussed designs in massively replicated volumes.
And here is where the new story begins.
The only force agile enough to cater to so many different markets are the individuals in the markets themselves. Instead of looking to a large corporate organisation to supply what we want, we now are beginning to have the option to choose from suppliers who are often just single individuals. Think blogs, fansites, ebay and indie bands on iTunes. Compare those with newspapers, printed magazines, supermarkets and music CDs.
Individual choice has gone from being a pipe dream to being a tangible economic actuality.
This is the Age of Minnows. Where the weigh of the collective minnows threatens to overshadow the bulk of the individual whales.
Now, more than ever, small is beautiful
