One similarity between the various religions of antiquity and those of the modern era is the presence of theories about history as a cyclical phenomenon. The Greeks, ancient Egyptians, dharmic faiths, and the Islamic world share with Chinese ideologists or Renaissance thinkers the formulation of theories about this phenomenon, which is becoming increasingly familiar in technological innovation.
The only difference between the binary environment and the ancient empires is that walls are no longer built of stone, and transportation routes no longer depend on the weather’s unpredictability. Now, pathways incorporate intangible transport vessels that require smaller devices to reach their destination instead of docks.
In this scenario, it is impossible to go a day without witnessing new examples of how digitalization has altered our behavior. Indeed, we are only at the beginning of an evolutionary period that will only conclude with integrating information and communications technologies (ICT) into all productive sectors of society. As I have mentioned on numerous occasions in this space, one of the consequences is a mutation of telecommunications networks that have lost their role as the main protagonists.
Just as the emergence of sedentary communities led to an increased population, improvements in agriculture, and the domestication of animals, paradoxically, the innovation that has enabled various technological platforms to offer the same service has spurred the rise of the nomadic customer. The loss of brand loyalty has gradually been replaced by loyalty to high-speed connectivity without glitches or quality issues.
A future in which traditional telecommunications networks have been transformed into mere content pipelines presents a terrifying outlook for today’s telecommunications service providers. It must be a very painful premise to face reality where their networks transport specialized third-party applications that offer solutions desired by users, whether it be interactive entertainment with friends, audiovisual services, or simple telephony.
As if lifted from a history book, differentiation is once again the religion of the empire. However, the mandate is not to replace these new gods with even more recent ones but to rescue the ancient deities already known to everyone and strengthen them by modernizing them. Make them closer to the current environment and let them evolve just as their believers have become. Return to that bygone world of content production.
History shows us that any change in the people’s beliefs, however small, brings devastating effects on some of the present-day protagonists. The symbolic fall of the familiar in the face of the strength of those who emerge victorious to reposition themselves as valid bearers of a belief or to demonstrate that the break with the past is irreversible and the old gods have expired.
The world of ICT has an element that many seem not to understand fully—the difference between a digital content business model and one that originally emerged from circuit-switched connections, which allowed us to communicate via email, messaging, or voice.
The greatest difference—and a source of many conflicts—is the non-territorial nature of content applications. Like gods hidden behind the sun’s rays, these can be hosted in multiple locations simultaneously. They are stored in virtual temples that can be accessed by any user who has the application, provided they also have an Internet connection fast enough to avoid latency issues. The new deity offers closeness and flexibility, liberating its followers from many constraints.
In stark contrast, traditional telecommunications operators can only offer their services in geographic areas with a network that supports their devices—hence the existence of roaming services provided by mobile companies. The old gods can only be visited in their temples. The more orthodox among them refuse to explore different alternatives to reach their followers. Innovation does not seem to offer opportunities but rather blasphemy. There is no power behind the new deities. They are simply a trend.
However, one must not underestimate the new deities that have the power to access the narratives of past events. Content providers can learn an important lesson from the history of telecommunications. A finite number of customers cannot support an exaggerated proliferation of providers, and there is a limit to how much content a single user can consume in one day.
For this reason, the world of creation, in all its facets, faces a future that seeks to reduce it—through corporate concentration—to a small group of global giants that dictate what, how, and when the audience consumes content. Perhaps these will be disguised with a few niche operators serving as a façade to perjure competition. The peace among the new deities will be very short-lived.
Today, anyone involved in the world of content would identify Twitter, Netflix, WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook as some of the main content controllers in the market. Some of them, with pre-existing corporate affiliations, are like gods born of the same progenitor and belong to the same corporate entity.
Once the civil war among these new deities begins, one of the segments that will face a severe storm of mergers and acquisitions is that of audiovisual content platforms for movies, series, soap operas, and documentaries.
The difference from the concentration processes of telecommunications providers is that local producers will have to compete with global giants who, in most cases, far exceed them in generating new content that can be consumed immediately. The consumption model has also changed; building a temple is no longer necessary, and having a spokesperson to announce the service’s availability is enough for those with high-speed Internet access.
Let’s look to the United States to anticipate what awaits the rest of the world. Every national free-to-air television channel is launching its audiovisual platform, complementing its offerings with games, proprietary content, and real-world activities enhanced by artificial intelligence. The first line of battle against the new deities emerges from the priests of the past who seek to break free from the old gods and compete against entities like Disney, Netflix, or Prime while liberating themselves from the yoke of traditional pay-tv operators to market directly to consumers.
On the other hand, old deities have chosen to accept a name change for their “Saturnalia” to continue existing, even if only under a new narrative fed by the short memory of their followers. With a new mantle, some of the so-called pipelines are looking to enter the content production and distribution business, some adopting an intolerant stance akin to calling for a holy war against competitors. In contrast, others focus on the need for exclusivity as a differentiator. Others, unable to evolve and aspire to reclaim their glory days, resort to cooperative strategies to reduce data transport times, simultaneously using these measures to build customer loyalty and retain revenues—even if it means complaining about the existence of the content provider so that it subsidizes the losses of what could not be adequately defended.
Such fragmentation forces a market reorganization aimed at reducing the number of players. A major challenge remains within a polytheistic and promiscuous framework of content consumption. Each consumer only has 24 hours a day for all their activities and little patience to adapt to the rituals of these new self-appointed deities.
