When J.P. Morgan electrified his home in 1882, he placed an expensive, customized generator in his cellar and hired a professional electrical engineer to manage it. At 9 p.m. every night, the lights would go out, because it was time for the engineer to go home.
The point is that nascent electricity was expensive, complex, and only available for the very rich. No one doubted that electricity had the potential to change the world, but decades elapsed before it was easily available at an affordable price. Once electricity made the switch, pardon the pun, from a luxury to an affordable utility, it revolutionized the world -- from manufacturing to housework to communications to recreation. In fact, the value unleashed by electricity is arguably the single biggest economic and social propellant the world has ever seen.
Today, the Internet holds the same promise.
ACCESS IS EVERYTHING. We have entered an era -- what I call the Participation Age -- where the value of the Internet isn't simply connectivity but the collaboration it enables among participants. The future is one of real businesses providing real value (not sock puppets) the world over; education, health care, and government services more efficiently delivered to citizens; and increasingly free and open societies conducting themselves more transparently.
I believe the technology industry has a responsibility to enable that future. Not only because it's the right thing to do but because it's also good business. (After all, I am the president of a $13 billion global corporation.)
The first step is to eliminate barriers to access. Although the number of people connected to the Internet will soon top 1 billion, that's only a drop in the bucket. Most are citizens of developed nations. The vast majority of the world remains underserved.
Open-source technologies and low-cost devices are a step in the right direction. The Brazilian government uses free software and cellular phones to do everything from tracking disease outbreaks in remote areas to increasing tax collection revenue through mobile micro-payments.
VALUE IN VOLUME. But it's not just about the technology: It's also about new business and customer models that allow commercial and government services to flourish. And that means dispensing with the antiquated view of making people pay for the access point -- the equivalent of charging for a checking account, when most are free.
Carriers give handsets away for free because they make money on the subscription necessary to receive the handset. Banks offer free checking because they can then sell you their entire portfolio. Google (GOOG) and Yahoo! (YHOO) give away services for free because there's a fortune in the end result. And, better yet, they ultimately put great tools directly in the hands of more users. For these companies, there are no barriers to adoption.
The magic is in the services and value delivered around the product. In the free-software movement, volume is derived from its price -- free -- and value from innovation, in all forms. The cost of reaching customers, traditionally the most expensive part of building a business, has essentially been eliminated, which in turn enables massive, global participation. Certainly innovation has value, but there is also value and brand awareness in volume, even if you're not paid directly for it.
CHOICE, PLEASE. To date, this massive evolution of free software has occurred without much discussion around the differing rights and obligations of the licenses (and licensees) involved. As more of the world participates in an open network, more and more valuable intellectual property (IP) is being created across the globe. Which means the licenses under which IP is distributed are only increasing in importance.
I believe that all developers -- whether nations, universities, manufacturers, or software developers -- want choice: Developers should be able to choose to weave their own IP into an open-source product without any obligation to deliver their privately developed intellectual property back to their competitors. Licensees should be able to stand on our shoulders, build derivative products based on open projects, without our hands in their pockets or business plans.
In practical terms, this means you are free to choose what to reveal, what to withhold, and how to price your products. As technology leaders, we should be giving developers the world over the basic building blocks for innovation -- without any obligation to disgorge private property or predetermine its price. You can withhold from a company, from the community, from the world, anything you build. Or you can choose to share. It's entirely your call.
SUSTAINABLE BY DESIGN. This choice permits nations and individuals to take control of their future -- to build upon the assets created by others without any future obligation. Does this mean I only believe in one open-source licensing model? Absolutely not. Just as there's no one cell phone or office suite for all the world to use, there's no one license for all open-source software.
Bringing more people online to do more things with more devices and services means more demand for the energy-hungry computers that power the Internet. That's good for business, but, for some time now, the industry has behaved as though power consumption didn't matter. Yet the costs, in both environmental and financial terms, are significant. Couple ever-increasing global demand for fossil-fuel resources -- especially in Brazil, Russia, India, and China -- with rising fuel costs, and we have a major issue.
For companies whose business is online, their power bills are second only to payroll. No joke, that's why some search engine companies are building data centers next to smelting plants. Computers are voracious consumers of electricity.
PAY A PREMIUM. So let's take a look at another industry. What's the biggest disruptive technology in the auto industry today? Hybrid motors. They're destroying traditional hierarchies, creating new alliances, and fostering new competition. Why? Consumers want more value from their vehicle in an environment of escalating fuel costs.
Some more environmentally conscious consumers are even willing to pay a premium. The auto giants (and possibly a few upstarts) who get this right will not only be contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gasses but stand to make a fortune.
It's time for the tech sector to think beyond itself and acknowledge its role in the larger enviro-business context. Adding more massive, hot boxes to the network isn't just inefficient and expensive, it's irresponsible. And just as the world's auto manufacturers are learning today, there's an opportunity to do right by both the planet and your shareholders. In many ways, they're different sides of the same coin.
HIGH-TECH IMPACT. The bottom line in all this? Let's make the pie bigger, and we all benefit. Only 15% of the world's population has access to the Internet today. Many have more immediate needs than technology, but the direction the IT industry takes today has the power to affect their lives and the global community for years to come.
Over the years, the tech industry has always punched above its weight class. And, in my view, it's not just an ability we have, it's an obligation. Let's go do it again.
READER COMMENTS
Jonathan Schwartz is president and chief operating officer of Sun Microsystems and leads all operational functions at Sun, from product development and worldwide marketing, to global sales and manufacturing
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