"...the rise of user-generated content marks a huge shift in the media business. The inclination to represent ourselves in word and image may have existed practically forever, but the tools for creating and distributing those words and images are new... The implications for businesses are broad, starting with relatively reduced demand for "asymmetrical" bandwidth, such as cable or satellite, where there's lots of communication capacity to download content but not much to upload it. People aren't just downloading music; they're uploading their own creative efforts... Lisa Gansky, chairman and president of Ofoto, says, "In Western Europe, Korea and Japan, where the cameraphone markets are most mature, we see that group or community authoring of online photo displays is a regular practice. The ability to do 'storytelling' and rapid-share or live shares is pretty compelling to many kinds of folks.""

Excerpt from Mirror of Our Lives, by Esther Dyson, 3/31/04, (via Seb's Open Research)