Bitcoin disrupts the payment process entirely, creating a new currency in the process. Analysts see rapid adoption of these payment systems. It provides convenience and ease of the payment process to the buyer and the seller by leveraging the modern connected web end points. Apple Pay retains the incumbent intermediaries and the payment-processing community. Two recent examples that provide disintermediation in contrasting terms are Apple Pay and Bitcoin. We think the future of the Internet and its present is in disintermediation. So, is disintermediation dead? Not at all. But arguably that is precisely what has been happening. He says that he always worried that the tools and the rhetoric around the Internet could just as readily be co-opted by the Man (by which I mean profit-based organizations and overbearing governments). There is some sense in which the Internet is in danger of not meeting its potential, Jeffries quotes an industry proselytizer as saying. For the inventors, the developers and the designers, the rewards have to be more than financial a guarantee that their vision will stay true, not hijacked. But some of the stakeholders the inventors, the developers and the designers on one end the users on the other are only slightly better off. And we have more data and information than ever before. But it hasnt quite worked out like that. Stuart Jeffries, a feature writer and columnist for the Guardian in London, wrote last year that when Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, he thought hed created an egalitarian tool that would share information for the greater good.
That is, until the next intermediary comes along. The valuations of Airbnb and Uber at $13 billion and more than $41 billion, respectively speak volumes about investor enthusiasm. Investors clearly like intermediaries, especially the ones that are first to market and have a bundle of cash to work with. It too has gained visibility and notoriety by taking on the established hospitality market and allegedly skirting existing laws. It has taken the demand for temporary housing and tourist accommodations and created a geographically dispersed pool that tourists can tap. But perhaps Ubers greatest contribution is its willingness to challenge regulators and traditional fleet owners in a business many consider a monopoly.Īirbnb is in a similar boat. Indeed, it has popularized the concept of surge pricing (some call it price gouging). Uber is taking on the global taxicab business, bringing technology to bear on how cars are allocated and how trips are priced. Uber and Airbnb, among the newest Internet luminaries, although doing some things differently, are still intermediaries at their core. And the more traditional brick-and-mortar business giants such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot are attempting to adopt the Internet as their new sales channel. Buyers are just as far from sellers as they once were. And instead of bringing stakeholders closer, they have created their own hierarchy of intermediaries. The Internets biggest successes from search engines such as Google and Yahoo to retail giants such as Amazon and eBay to hubs of social exchange such as Facebook and Twitter to sharing economy stalwarts Airbnb and Uber are all middlemen or intermediaries. But more than a quarter century since its inception, however, the World Wide Web has become the middleman in and of itself. The Internet has succeeded in cutting out the old-fashioned middlemen. Possibly, it would even distribute more of the gains to the true spirits behind the World Wide Web: the designers, the developers and the inventors. The web would cut out the middleman, increase transparency and streamline the relationship between buyer and seller. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of what would become the World Wide Web, hoped his creation would evolve into a powerful, ubiquitous tool as thousands of individuals, universities and companies worked both independently and together.Īmong the webs most compelling promises was disintermediation.
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