Seth Godin points out that the effect of the transformation of the music industry is in the eye of the beholder: 

There’s never been a time like this before. So if your focus is on music, it’s great. If your focus is on the industry part and the limos, the advances, the lawyers, polycarbonate and vinyl, it’s horrible.

I can think of several industries that are being remade real-time by today’s overpowering socio-technological forces. Lots of angst on the “industry” side of these businesses:

• Can department stores be profitable?
• How does the United States Postal Service maintain its vast infrastructure with less and less  to deliver? 
• Will newspapers find a reason to exist? (I hope so!)

Our industry can take a lesson from this.  What’s important is not the storage (or the processors, network, search engines or social networks). The technology and products and business models are all a means to an end.  What really matters is the information.

So if you’re an information user (that’s you, by the way), it’s all good.  There’s never been a time like this before. More and more of it, more accessible, more usable, more valuable – dirt cheap and getting cheaper. 

Is the news as good for those that provide the technology to deliver the information?  It will be for those that aren’t stuck in yesterday’s methods.

All of us in the business of making that happen need to pause occassionally and refocus on the goal.  It’s easy to forget that we’re not the focus, but an enabler.  Our value comes from our role in the care and feeding of information and how easy we can make it for consumers and businesses to use it. 

Google has shown how much value can be created by focusing on the right thing.

Is Seagate doing the right things to make information more usable for consumers?  Are we helping to make information work harder for businesses? 

Let’s hear what you think.