The Australian Community Network
An Essay on Internet Capacity for Competing Business Groups entitled...
The Development of a Shared Network
Overview of the Internet
The Internet enables a dimensional shift in our thinking and behaviour in many areas of society, because we can view and create activity on line as we choose. We can view choirs and NASA flights. We can join chat groups, write blogs, share resources and live in virtual worlds as an avatar.
Business is not on the Main Street
Business people are universally re-considering their on line options and the first new flexing of on line muscles is being experienced through shop portals. Not since banking, Pay-pal, Facebook and, of course, pornography arrived have we peered into the looking glass with such intensity.
Virtual Self Realisation
The culture of the Internet will feel like it self-realises in the coming 5 years. We'll see a flowering of social culture, a conscious shaping of the Internet landscape by vertically aligned groups of like minded people (eg industry, environment and social groups). Shared networks are on the horizon.
Market Driven
Various factors are at work to make this happen. Competitive Internet predation by buying groups, slowing discretionary spending, peak oil, food supply and changing work life balances. In such a changing world, tribal loyalties will compete with price sensitivity.
How to Succeed - the Benefits of Association
Successful offers to the market will require exploration of the benefits of association.
Through co-operation and just sheer aggregated force, on line communities of many persuasions will reach critical mass (eg Facebook). They will continue to manifest hugely entertaining and successful electric villages driven by service, relationships and the new collective language of intentional networks - a living sandbox.
What makes Critical Mass?
The Internet, being our creation, will tend to resonate or harmonise by itself and by our design. It will also tend to change in harmonic jumps rather than a gradual improvement, which is evidenced by the history of Facebook, Google, content retrieval as some examples.
The Village Green
These virtual spaces, not of the tricks of graphics, but of real social networks will bring us back to the most important resources we have, each other.
The Return Home
This is be the beginning of The Return Home period, where as increasingly self aware and valuable communities we perceive an aliveness, a synchronicity and a shared recognition of the creative power of the Internet in our hands. It ceases to be out there and becomes an 'in here' personal and group experience.
During The Return Home period we are likely to rebuild and live more intelligently in the natural world with tremendous co-operative spirit using the Shared Network as the learning, social and trading resource. A more unified world.
Summary of the Shared Network
The larger picture is that the Internet is a massive trading floor of knowledge, goods and services - and it will generate quantum leaps in capacity. We are in one of those quantum leaps now, the Shared Network.
Austcom - Building Sustainable Communities
The Australian Community Network australiancommunities.org.au is a shared network shaped by a real community. It is a collection of groups who, by their presence, have crafted a working array of tools such as web pages, on line database applications, events notices, news systems, public access areas, email mailing lists and more. Our core precept is that we help build social, economic and environmentally sustainable communities.
The Austcom Network has the inherent structure to allow further shaping as required by the many communities of users. It's development is highly flexible to need.
Your Community is Waiting
An on line bike community is already being constructed right now by the community of bike users including interactive ride maps, accommodation networks, food outlets, rural tourism networks, education and lobby groups and on line stores. These are largely on the Network and are also in the wider web through those internal network links.
Co-operate or Die
Competitive advantage in the market against predatory buying groups will be through cooperating with all possible interests in the industry including competitors and creating a super group, always finding new horizons of benefit.
Points of Intersection - A Numbers Game
These additional, planned points of intersection in society on line and in person are the very real engine room of economies based on the Internet.
Shared Development benefits, including security, wealth and sustainability rely on cooperation, pioneering and absorption not competition, status quo and separation. The triple bottom line of a shared network requires a humane approach to business to be successful and the reward is access to the whole market.
Building a Shared Network and Realising Commercial Gain
Development of a shared network is about initiating an idea, rendering it on line, understanding response and adjusting content accordingly.
The actual networks do not need to start as sophisticated tools - but they grow and develop as the market commands. The critical factor is generating activity and through that discovering the market. That could be through school bike clubs, serious and professional riders, lifestyle riders and transport riders. The 80/20 rule will apply to a changing field. Only relationships count. More and smaller transactions (some based on service) will tend to replace capital purchases. This is the competitive advantage that a shared network has (intellectual capital) over 'dumber' corporates driven by single bottom line alone and drive the market to purchase on price not value.
Conclusion
The development of a seriously competitive network in the biking industry is already underway at the hands of the industry itself. Is merely needs participation and bringing a retail contribution to the table to generate the next quantum leap in activity and benefit - and an unassailable advantage.
This is something the industry builds - Austcom provides the tools - mailing lists, shops, pages in common, google interface, events and more depending on the need of the industry and the contribution the industry can make to the network.
Start with the list. Everything radiates from that.
