The Digital Revolution | Chris and Susan Beesley|Online Business ...

Way back in 2005, we realised that there were going to be huge changes in the way that people would earn their income in the future.? Video we knew was going to play an ever increasing role in the lives of us all providing us with solutions to problems as well as entertainment.? In 2006 when Google acquired YouTube the digital revolution was well underway.

At that time we were still working as management consultants and accountants in our own business and our clients were starting to look to the internet which was opening up huge opportunities for those prepared to be ?first to market?, to be using internet marketing ? blogging, Google PPC, and the early Social Media (Twitter and Facebook).? We are first and foremost entrepreneurs so we set about learning all that we could to help our clients which was to be fundamental in our future as online marketers in 2010. Little did we know the effect that the digital revolution would have on us ?.

One of the key influencers for us was Daniel Priestly (Author of Key Person of Influence) who was the first person to help us understand Social Media and the impact that this would have on our lives and give a voice to every entrepeneur ? he already saw the effect of the digital revolution.? Daniel has always been someone who saw the future way ahead of time ? a ?thought leader? and we were fortunate to have him appear on our TV show and explain how he saw the impact that the Digital Revolution would have on the lives of entrepreneurs forever ?.

We became the founder leaders of The Six Figure Mentors back in 2010 and always shared with the Founder Stuart Ross the vision for internet entrepreneurs and the launch of The Digital Experts Academy is that dream come true.

Here the Digital Experts Academy share their thoughts of the Digital Revolution and how each of us can now capitalise on what has become a digital economy

The Industrial Revolution of the 19th-century led to enormous increases in population, expansion of cities, and a boom in technology and the economy. It began in Britain during the late 18th-century and quickly spread across Europe and on to the rest of the world. Everything that was once done by hand slowly became mechanized, and the world began to change.

What was the result of all this industrialization? Tremendous wealth was created by some; however, tremendous hardship was felt by others as mechanization eliminated their jobs. More?efficient ways of producing goods?were being developed; unfortunately, not everyone benefited equally. Farmers were now forced to produce more and more just to survive and make ends meet. The real winners were the entrepreneurs who took advantage of the emerging technologies to create products, solutions, and services that didn?t exist before.

Then came the Great Depression in the 1930s. We have all seen the pictures of people standing in line for food and work. Despite the circumstances, there were some, who not only avoided that fate, but also found ways to become more?successful. In fact, there were more millionaires created during the Great Depression than any other time in history. How was that possible?

One such entrepreneur was Andrew Carnegie, a magnate of the steel industry in the early 20th century. He commissioned magnate author Napoleon Hill to write a book about the principles of success by reverse-engineering the success secrets of the wealthiest, most successful entrepreneurs in the world. Napoleon interviewed 400 of these millionaire entrepreneurs and condensed their common themes of success into his famous book ?Think and Grow Rich?.

As the economy transitioned, a huge transfer of wealth began. Those who were correctly positioned benefited enormously. Those who weren?t, found themselves in line for food stamps and handout.

Productivity increased, the more technology advanced, creating less?reliance?on?expensive human labor. Then came the Jet Age, Atomic Age, and the Space Age. All of these were part of the Second Industrial Revolution, and each of these created tremendous wealth for a?privileged?few. For millions of others, it meant new competition and obsoletion.

When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger, and the other represents opportunity. We are now in the beginning of an even bigger revolution. For some, this means crisis, for others, opportunity.

If history repeats itself, there will be yet another massive transfer of wealth.?There will be those on the cutting edge of change who will benefit, and everyone else.

In the 80?s, a shift began from traditional industry, (that the industrial revolution brought through industrialization), to an economy based on the manipulation and exchange of data and information. Whereas the Industrial Revolution created tremendous wealth by allowing the mass production of goods, the Digital Revolution has created what we believe is even a greater opportunity to create wealth.

During the Digital Revolution, we gained the ability to transfer information freely; we now had instant access to information that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously. As we all know,?this has changed how the world functions and communicates dramatically.

Here are a few examples of how far we have come in 20-30 years:

• Vinyl records gave way to CDs, then MP3s, and now streaming audio
• The VHS tape gave way to the DVD and Blu-ray, and now, streaming video
• Pay-phones?gave way to cell phones
• Dial up Internet gave way to high speed digital cable
• The typewriter gave way to the printer
• Mail evolved to the facsimile, then email
• Film photography transitioned to digital photography

In 1995, Nicholas Negroponte wrote Being Digital, a book that analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of the advancement of technology. He also predicted how the technologies will evolve.

Be it newspapers, entertainment or sex, Negropronte predicted that we are headed towards a future where everything that can be will be digitized.

Negroponte predicted that his own book made of ?unwieldy atoms? will probably be replaced by a digital copy in the future. (Several e-books exist of Being Digital making the quote rather prophetic.)

Atoms make up physical, tangible products. Digital information, on the other hand, is made up of bits, the smallest unit of information on a computer. (Ones and zeros, to be precise.)

All products and forms of information that are now made of atoms (books, CDs, etc.) will eventually be digitized and made into bits of information that can be shared and exchanged instantaneously.

A major landmark in the revolution was the transition from analog to digitally recorded music. In the 1980s, the digital format of optical CDs replaced analog formats such as vinyl records and cassette tapes, as the popular medium of choice.

Motorola created the first mobile phone in 1983. Towards the end of the 1980s, having some knowledge of computers became necessary for many jobs.

In 1992, the World Wide Web was released to the public. It didn?t take long, and by 1996, the Internet was in the mainstream consciousness and many businesses listed websites in their ads.

By 1999, almost every country had a connection, and more than half of Americans used the Internet on a regular basis.

After revolutionizing society in the developed world in the 1990s, in the 2000s, the digital revolution spread to the developing world.

Check out these Digital Revolution stats (Source: Wikipedia)

1990

• Cell phone subscribers: 12.4 million (0.25% of the world population in 1990)
• Internet users: 2.8 million (0.05% of the world population in 1990)

2000

• Cell phone subscribers: 1.1 Billion (19% of the world population in 2002)
• Internet users: 631 million (11% of the world population in 2002)

2010

• Cell phone subscribers: 4 Billion (67% of the world population in 2010)
• Internet users: 1.8 Billion (26.6% of the world population in 2010)

As you can see, by 2010, almost 2 billion people used the Internet. That?s almost three times the number in 2000. By 2010, 4 billion people were using cell phones,?compared to just over a billion in 2000.

By 2015, tablet computers and smartphones are expected to exceed personal computers in Internet usage.

The bottom line is this: Industry is becoming more information-intensive and less labor and capital-intensive. This means that more and more traditional barriers to success in business are being removed.

In the traditional economy, investments in human capital?and financial capital are critical to the success of a new venture. However, as demonstrated by Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook and a million other tech startups, it is now possible for a group of relatively inexperienced people with limited capital to succeed on a large scale in the digital economy.

The good news in all of this is that there is now a whole new world of possibility in the increasingly virtual world. Things that were unimaginable in the traditional economy are all of a sudden possible. Many of our success stories are from people that would never have?stood a chance of success in the traditional economy.

Instead having to risk life and limb to prospect for gold, virtually anyone with a computer and access to the Internet, can access the Digital Gold Rush.

If you?ve ever said to yourself, ?I wish I?d bought Google stock early on??, or, ?I wish I had bought into Apple as a startup??, you know that all too familiar feeling of being left behind when you?ve passed up a significant opportunity.

Nobody knows for certain where the Digital Revolution will take us. Some believe it may lead to digital cities, economies, and societies sometime in the future. Others, like Ray Kurzweil, believe the day will come when artificial intelligence will super-cede human intelligence and computers will control the world!

Regardless of where we are headed, one thing?s for sure ? there is a ton of opportunity to be capitalized on by those who are smart. You want to be on the cutting edge of these changes not only to capitalize on the opportunity created by the change in times but to avoid being crushed, outsourced, eliminated, and made redundant.

They ask the question ?History has taught us some hugely important lessons over and over again. On which side of history will you be??

Source: http://chrisandsusanbeesley.com/the-digital-revolution/

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