The content imbalance

This week`s topic is something I`ve talked about in this space from time to time, but never really explored to its full extent. I recently had a visitor from the Gauteng legislature, a committee of which is applying itself to thinking about the relationship between the Internet, Internet content, regulating Internet access (or not), and educational issues broadly related to the Net. During this fact-finding meeting, one topic came to the fore quite clearly: the imbalance between Internet content in developed and developing countries.

How many of us, though, actually go and look at substantial content from SA?

Those of us who`ve worked with the Internet for a few years aren`t struck by this as a "real" problem. We are so used to what`s out there at any given moment that we`ve stopped reflecting on the fact that most of what we view on the Net every day, most of our surfing fare, stems from North American shores. We automatically think, "Sure, there`s Internet content in South Africa," and leave it at that. How many of us, though, actually go and look at substantial content from SA? Isn`t part of the lure of the Net related to overseas information and shopping having become so much more reachable?

If you ever look at your network adapter`s in-and-out statistics (for example, by double-clicking, in your Windows system tray, on the little icon with the flashing green lights when you`re dialled into the Net), the picture is quite frightening at the micro-level. A typical reading from my computer, after about an hour`s connection, is something like 200k sent, 5MB received. Amazing, isn`t it? Sure, I know, the metaphor doesn`t hold entirely -- after all this is a client computer whose purpose is accessing information, not publishing it. But that inherent imbalance in Internet usage is a fitting example of what`s beginning to trouble our lawmakers.

Internet access, to put it crudely, is a luxury commodity in SA. Whether it`s used for business purposes or entertainment, even if it`s used to actually generate income -- it`s still something that the vast majority of the population doesn`t and won`t have access to, at least in the next few years. White, affluent South Africans, who constitute the vast majority of Internet users, are primarily interested in information and entertainment that`s pertinent to their particular culture: in most cases, that means they`re not really interested in "local" content but prefer to explore those things that allegedly tie them to North America or Europe.

An industry, even one as fickle and young as the Internet industry, typically pursues only those business ventures that promise good returns on investment: commerce is about making money. Publishing in any form, be it on paper or electronically, doesn`t make any money. This simple statement might go a long way toward explaining why there aren`t any South African Internet sites with vast amounts of African Renaissance inspired content to balance the relentless influx of overseas content into SA.

The assumption is, "If you build it, they will come". This is unfortunately a half truth. Yes, there are very successful local content sites with good South African-centric content. But there are only a handful of them, and if you explore -- in an overall sort of way -- more closely what they offer, it`s content of interest to their target markets: white, middle-class South Africans with above-average incomes. These sites also have practically no visitors from outside the country which means that we`re (once again) not really exporting any information.

There are two notable exceptions to this rule: tourism sites and property advertising sites (estate agents). With current exchange rates, travelling to SA (if you can stomach the crime) and buying holiday property here is something that those from developed countries will do, and there are indeed some marvellous success stories. One estate agent with a Web site reports concluding a sale entirely via the Internet, without the buyer ever actually seeing the property in reality.

Of course, those success stories are few and far between, and don`t really constitute anything that our lawmakers would find acceptable. I don`t know exactly what Minister Naidoo intends to do about increasing the flow of South African content, but regulation isn`t going to address the problem.

This is -- unfortunately -- a longer-term process, one that will possibly take many years or even decades to complete sensibly. I believe that Internet access, Internet education and, ultimately, Internet content will only grow to its full potential in this country by means of unfettered competition. Don`t get me wrong: there are areas of the convergence of telecommunications and IT that even I believe should be regulated, but Internet access and content aren`t among them.

Publishing costs money and the returns are often very small. Publishing isn`t really a profitable business to be in, and those publications that survive and thrive are ones that offer something readers are prepared to pay good money for. Ultimately, this is the way content is created and distributed -- Government initiatives, though perhaps well-intentioned, won`t have the same kind of attraction as commercial ones.

What worries me about the Minister highlighting the issue over and over again is that, once again (as in the pornography debate), access providers are looking like the bad guys. We are the ones enabling all this foreign content to be viewed, and in most cases we send little back to the outside world in return. Metaphorically, this is a flawed argument, because the flow of information, unlike the flow of money (for instance) isn`t "evened out" by giving something back.

One of the most amazing things to realise about knowledge assets, as opposed to tangible assets, is that their value increases through usage. This is an argument put forward by a Swedish management consultant called Karl Erik Sveiby (who was here recently by invitation of MTN): when knowledge is applied, it typically doubles in value (ie both exerciser and exercisee gain from the exchange), while tools and other machinery diminish in value over time.

What this means for our content discussion is this: we are actually gaining from pulling in all this "foreign" content from North America and Europe. Unless and until we actually have something meaningful to give back to the world, we should be happy to benefit from what we`re getting, at a relatively low cost, and stop making noises about the lack of suitably African content on the Net. Instead of regulating content, perhaps Government should have a good hard think about putting serious capital into start-up content providers. There are lots of people in the local Internet industry who`d want to start publishing on the Net if only they could afford it.