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February 23  1999

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Suits in the global village

MEDIA guru Marshall McLuhan had people frowning and scratching their heads in 1967 when he wrote of the global village. This was a place, he said, "created by instant electronic information movement. (It) is at once as wide as the planet and as small as the little town".

What on earth did he mean? Thirty years down the track it is obvious that the Internet fits his description that originally stemmed from the increased use of telephones, radio and television. Indeed the Y-Life site on the Web has taken the analogy another step or two in a feature called the Road to Webville,

It describes cosy communities of students, software developers, shoppers and the like beavering away with e-mail and Web sites that link common causes regardless of geography.

Microsoft boss Bill Gates is often quoted as saying the Net is in its very early stages; more like an old wild west or frontier town than a sophisticated city. Maybe it was when Mr Gates finally decided to squat there several years after the pioneers laid the foundations. But now some familiar names from what we may call the real -- or non-cyber --world are settling in, and buying up the neighbourhoods.

Names like Packer and Murdoch. Kerry Packer's Publishing & Broadcasting and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation last week decided to inject up to $709 million into telephone reseller One.Tel over the next three years. The money will be mainly used to finance One.Tel's marketing efforts on its mobile phone, long distance and Net services.

It gives both companies even more leverage in Australia's increasingly important communications industry. Packer and Murdoch companies control much of our TV, newspaper and magazine markets already. They began spreading their Web wings seriously last year.

A stake in One.Tel reinforces their liking for the Net as a money-maker next millennium. One.Tel's emblem, a cartoon surfie known as the Dude, was very much at home when the global village was just that, a village. But the suit-wearing, corporate style personified by Lachlan Murdoch and James Packer, who brokered the deal for their fathers' companies, is bound to catch on as the village grows.

And do not be surprised if village life is soon influenced by a virtual stranger, albeit one with a familiar name. James Murdoch, at 26 the youngest of Rupert's clan is charged with lifting News Corp's Net presence, seen by some online critics as lagging behind other media giants like Time-Pathfinder and the Bertelsmann empire.

And why are the new faces appearing in the global village; a town whose early inhabitants moved there to get away from corporate influence and consumerism? An answer might be found in Fortune magazine which said last week:

"Global competition and the ever-increasing pressure for productivity gains have made new technology investment an absolute necessity for most businesses, not a luxury reserved for good times. The growth potential of the companies leading this revolution dwarfs that of old-line blue chips."

The bottom line is that by the end of 2000 there are expected to be 300 million people in the global village. And the bulk of them will be well-educated and affluent enough to help push new barriers . . . or spend money, whichever comes first.

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