October 18, 2007 9:56 AM
How Broadband's Growth Has Been Powered By Users
I had the great fortune to meet John B. Horrigan, associate director for research at the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a couple of weeks back at the KMB Conference.
He's been at this effort to better track and understand usage of the Internet for more than seven years; needless to say, he's one of the ones who really gets it.
This morning I came across an article he wrote that I highly recommend everyone go check out.
In it, he mentions a gathering back in 1993 entitled "Users: Who Needs Advanced Networks?" that postulated the greatest use of the Internet to be two-way video communication in educational, medical, and political arenas.
He then goes on to contrast that with what's really been driving demand for upload capacity: the rise of social media, where users and viewers are now becoming producers, uploading photos, music, videos, posting to blogs, and the like.
There are some interesting observations and concrete numbers to be found herein, though I can't help but continue to bang my head against the wall that it almost seems as if we were having more concrete discussions about how to use big-bandwidth networks to improve society 15 years ago than we are today.
