A local real estate publication recently published a feature article on the National Broadband Network which I think is a great thing.  If you’ve ever had to go back to dial up internet or use a slow connection, you’ll notice that most sites and online applications don’t compensate for slow speeds, and I truly believe it will get faster, better, cheaper and again, we’ll be relying on it more and more for everyday thing.

When I lived in Tokyo the internet access to our place was very very fast.  We paid around $100 per month and through our little phone linewe got High Speed Unlimited Internet, Unlimited Nataional Calls, Foxtel (yes through the phone line) and it was awesome.  In the next decade I don’t doubt that we’ll get use to video calls and conferencing – for business, personal, social and more.  We’ll get use to TV via the net. We’ll get use to zero load time of internet sites on our PC’s.  We’ll get use to cloud computing (software that is internet based). We’ll rely on mobile computing even more.

20 years ago, if I told my parents that I’m going to be a web developer they would have said, “Great… What the heck is that?”  My kids will probably be moving into roles that only exist in the dreams of creators and will be sparked by the incredible speed of technology and the internet.  Personally, I think if Australia doesn’t get on board with rolling out something of world standard (and then make it affordable), our kids will miss out and we’ll miss out on possibly growing old and being part of their lives – albeit via HD webcam links to their flatscreen in their lounge rooms from the other side of the world!

It’s not going away folks.  And that’s why I love what I do and see an increasingly great future in building websites and web based solutions.

According to Forrester Research the figures point to a definite ‘YES’.

The below chart categorizes techonology users into several categories.  Most interestingly is the difference between Creators (25%) and Spectators (62%) and this spread varies depending on demographics.

In short, a lot more people are into consuming online media from sites like Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, News Sites, Youtube and others.  Less than half of all consumers are Creators…

The other day I ran into a successful journalist who said he surprised that tools and sites like Twitter and Facebook and personal blogs had not faded away and were in fact gaining popularity.

People, companies and groups of all types are seeing the value in being Creators… because it’s not really that hard to Create nowadays. Given the right tools, training and time, anyone can have a voice, a published video or song and be heard.  Gone are the days of needing a print press, expensive direct mail or a TV station to get your message heard.

So what’s it going to be?  Want to Create?