David Weinberger blogs his impressions from a World Economic Forum meeting in NYC earlier in the week. He was asked to talk to the Entertainment and Media section, and boy, he did not like what he encountered:

...these people are thrashing. They're floundering. They're desperate to find a way in which their organizations still add value. They are in denial but, it seemed to me, they know that there's just about nothing that the market wants from them. For example, at one point someone said, "Content is king." I replied that judging from the content they're producing, marketing is king; that's where their real value is. Further, I said, on the Internet, connection is king. But then they want to know how to "monetize" connection. There's nothing wrong with that, so long as you understand how monetizing it can kill it.

...

Third, they believe they're responding to the market. They do not recognize that their market has abandoned them. They think that file-sharing is an aberration. In some unthought way, I think they actually believe that the legislation they're back[ing] is something the market wants. They maintain this thought this by not actually thinking it out loud.

There is much more and it is depressing. The conclusion?

These are smart people and I liked talking with them. They were willing to listen. Some, in fact, even agree to varying degrees. But they are riding beasts that are in agony, and the Internet will be a sticky stain on the bottom of their massive hooves.

We are doomed.

But in his talk, David represented the Net well. He made a point to the BigCon (big content) companies that they do not really understand the "customers" and probably the whole 'internet thing':

I said that I understand that to them the Net looks like a medium through which content passes, some of which people aren't paying for. But, (sez I) their customers aren't "consuming" content. We're not consuming anything. We're listening to music, We're watching video streams, We're talking with friends. To call it content is to miss why it matters to Big Content's customers.

By the way, the official topic of the session was how to "monetize communities". David is right, that's evil.

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