---
title: "Pure Dry Goods: How the Internet Will Disrupt 17 Traditional Industries in the Next Decade"
description: "In the next decade, the Internet will disrupt 17 traditional industries by breaking information asymmetry, leveraging big data, and utilizing the self-regulating mechanism of the swarm intelligence. This will lead to transformations in retail, wholesale, manufacturing, advertising, news, telecommunications, logistics, hospitality, tourism, catering, finance, insurance, healthcare, education, TV, film, publishing, and monopolistic sectors."
author: "New Distribution"
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published: "2015-05-11"
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# Pure Dry Goods: How the Internet Will Disrupt 17 Traditional Industries in the Next Decade

> In the next decade, the Internet will disrupt 17 traditional industries by breaking information asymmetry, leveraging big data, and utilizing the self-regulating mechanism of the swarm intelligence. This will lead to transformations in retail, wholesale, manufacturing, advertising, news, telecommunications, logistics, hospitality, tourism, catering, finance, insurance, healthcare, education, TV, film, publishing, and monopolistic sectors.

#### How the Internet Will Disrupt These 17 Traditional Industries in the Next Decade
The most valuable aspect of the Internet is not that it produces many new things itself, but that it re-explores the potential of existing industries and uses Internet thinking to re-elevate traditional industries. From this perspective, I observe that the Internet's impact on traditional industries has three characteristics:
**1. Breaking the pattern of information asymmetry, doing everything possible to make all information transparent.
2. Integrating and utilizing the generated big data to maximize resource utilization.
3. The swarm intelligence of the Internet has a self-regulating mechanism.**
Calling the group thinking mode of human beings swarm intelligence, you can imagine the establishment of a human group brain memory bank: initially, the search paths between neural memory nodes are not yet established; when we need to use them repeatedly, strong connections gradually form. Before the birth of the Internet, these paths connecting memory nodes were weak, and strong connections were extremely rare. But after the Internet appeared, these paths instantly lit up, and all memory nodes could connect in an instant. This gives humanity an unprecedented system support for overall future decision-making. Based on such a memory model, humanity will rewrite various industries and the future of mankind.
The following is an inventory of various industries:
**1. Retail**
The biggest drawback of traditional retail for consumers is information asymmetry. In the book "Priceless," psychological experiments show that laypeople have no idea about the pricing of products in a certain industry; they only need to be given an anchor price, and consumers will be led by the nose.
However, C2C and B2C completely break this pattern, flattening the world and making the true pricing of a product transparent. This greatly reduces the cost of information acquisition for consumers, allowing everyone to know the true price range of a product, making regional price monopoly no longer possible, and consumers are no longer kept in the dark. Moreover, e-commerce has created a large number of user-generated content (UGC) reviews. These UGC truly create the trust mechanism of the Internet. This virtuous cycle is an advantage that traditional retail cannot have.
**Predictions for the future of retail:**
1. It will become a combination of offline and online, with synchronized prices.
2. Homogenized products emphasizing functionality will become increasingly uncompetitive, while products with first-class user experience will stand out.
3. With the help of Internet big data, personalized integrated pushes will be carried out (such as Amazon's homepage recommendation algorithm).
**2. Wholesale**
Traditional wholesale has great geographical limitations. A shop owner who wants to open a small gift shop in Beijing needs to travel a long way to Zhejiang to purchase goods, not only facing a long journey but also trust issues. So for purchasers, every wholesale transaction is actually a risk.
When Alibaba's B2B appeared, this risk was minimized. On the one hand, small shop owners do not need to travel long distances to personally inspect goods; they only need to ask the other party to mail samples. On the other hand, the trust accountability system established by Alibaba makes it unnecessary to meet several times to have a reliable grasp of a person.
**Predictions for the future of wholesale:**
1. Under the influence of the Internet, future B2B should be completely globalized, and trust issues will be well established over time.
2. After the Internet prospers to a certain extent, the role of intermediate agents and wholesalers will gradually disappear, and more will be directly replaced by B2C.
**3. Manufacturing**
Traditional manufacturing is closed production, where the producer decides what goods to produce. The roles of producer and consumer are separated. But in the future, the Internet will dismantle this state. In the future, customers will participate in the entire production process, and users will jointly decide to manufacture the products they want. That is to say, in the future era, the boundary between consumers and producers will blur, and at the same time, traditional economic theory will face collapse. This is also the destined birth of the new C2B model.
Xiaomi phones are a typical product made with Internet thinking. Just as Kevin Kelly described Wikipedia in "The Technium," there is infinite power at the bottom; as long as you add some top-down rules, the combination of the two will unleash astonishing power. Thus, it completely surpasses the Encyclopedia Britannica. The current manufacturing industry is a bit like the Encyclopedia Britannica, consuming various human and material resources to do an extremely difficult thing, completely without using the power of the Internet.
**Predictions for the future of manufacturing:**
1. Traditional manufacturing will be unsustainable, and the era of large-scale advertising and mass production will come to an end.
2. It will enter a new tribal era, with personalization, customization, everyone is a designer, everyone is a producer, and everyone is deciding the future of their tribe. This is the rule of the Internet game.
**4. Advertising**
The traditional advertising industry theory has collapsed, and the current era has shifted from mass advertising to precision advertising. Google's AdWords keyword bidding can be considered the leader in Internet advertising. Traditional advertising is casting a wide net to catch fish, while Google's AdWords is precise strikes one by one. The precision of AdWords lies not only in keyword placement, but advertisers can also choose placement time, placement location, broad match keywords, exact match keywords, and other precise options.
Not only is it so precise in search, but it also emphasizes precision in website alliance placement. As long as you search for corresponding product keywords on Baidu, Google, or Taobao and then enter websites with these alliances, the advertising areas on those websites will show ads related to the products you have searched for. The degree of precision is unprecedented compared to traditional advertising. The essence of this approach is actually a kind of big data thinking.
**Predictions for the future of advertising:**
**1. The future advertising industry will be redefined and enter a precision placement model.
2. The future advertising industry will rely on Internet big data for reconstruction.** In the future, after you are fined for drunk driving, perhaps your wife's phone will show a text ad asking whether you need to purchase insurance for you.
**5. News**
The traditional news industry is monopolized by oligarchs. Under such a monopoly, it is actually monopolizing the truth. Self-media and small and micro media can be said to be inevitable products of the Internet development process. The biggest feature of Internet evolution is transparency! Transparency! Transparency! Foucault said that the essence of discourse is the will to power. If the news industry is the leader of discourse hegemony, then self-media is the deconstruction of discourse hegemony, returning discourse power to every speaker who has the right to speak.
Traditional news reporting is cold and objective, while self-media is more subjective and humanized, doing such a cause as a "person." That is to say, future self-media is not only a brand for publishing news in a certain industry, but also a flesh-and-blood personal personality.
From the traditional news industry to self-media, it can be seen as a change from the dissemination of information by authoritative discourse institutions to the dissemination of information by a person with personal charm. In addition, for self-media practitioners to make a profit, the premise must be to rely on strong personal charm to attract fans who are truly crazy about you.
**Predictions for the future of news:**
**1. The discourse power of traditional news media will weaken, and discourse power will be dispersed to various self-media strongholds. The news industry will in turn ask self-media for contributions.
2. The self-media model will surely find a viable profit point, and by then, more people in the news industry will leave to run self-media.
**6. Telecommunications**
It can be said that the telecommunications industry is destined to be OTT. Traditional telecommunications uses a toll-based model, such as sending letters and making calls, which open a path for you and then charge you. But the emergence of the Internet completely ignores these rules. The Internet requires closer connections between people, and every second can be contacted at the lowest cost. Therefore, the popularization of 3G also means the complete access of the Trojan horse.
**Predictions for the future of telecommunications:**
**1. The world may no longer need phone numbers but WiFi**, and dependence on calls and text messages will increasingly decrease until one day the technology of calls is completely sealed away, just like the telegraph back then. At the same time, words like mobile phone numbers and telephone numbers will appear in history textbooks. This is not alarmist.
**2. In the future, your phone will no longer need 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G... signals, but WiFi**. At that time, WiFi technology will also be upgraded and popularized, and WiFi technology will be seamlessly connected and ubiquitous. When wireless technology breaks through, wired broadband will also come to an end. And that will also be the time when humanity enters the comprehensive Internet of Things era. It will no longer be person-to-person communication, but more person-to-object, object-to-person, and object-to-object communication.
**7. Logistics**
E-commerce leverages the logistics industry. It can be said that the logistics industry is prosperous because of e-commerce. Who still remembers the former postal surface mail? Although the current prosperity of the logistics industry is a product of the Internet, this industry is still chaotic and uneven.
From the perspective of Internet requirements, consider the pressures facing the logistics industry:
**1. E-commerce requires logistics with more complete services.
2. The continuous prosperity of e-commerce determines that logistics will face greater carrying capacity.
3. The accountability mechanism established by the Internet will make the logistics industry survive the fittest.**
**Then predict the logistics industry:**
1. In the end, a situation of several strong players will emerge. Small fish will either be acquired by big fish or die out, and the surviving big fish will definitely establish a very complete set of processes.
2. The surviving logistics companies will also optimize their services to users with competition. Whether for senders or recipients, these surviving logistics companies will establish perfect services that surpass the past. This will be achieved without Alibaba's participation, but the time has not yet come. With the accumulation of time, these problems will naturally become non-problems, but we still need to be patient. It is the Internet that requires the rise of the logistics industry, and at the same time, the Internet also requires higher-quality prosperity.
**8. Hotel and Tourism**
The traditional hotel and tourism industries often have various rip-off phenomena due to information opacity. Due to the conflicts of interest of many groups, individual consumers' rights protection is difficult. When the Internet appeared, these things hidden in dark corners will be thoroughly dug out and exposed to the sun. The "Hainan 10,000 yuan lunch" incident is a good case of Internet exposure.
**Predictions for the future of the hotel and tourism industries:**
1. The Internet will establish a strong accountability system for both. In the future, there will definitely be a unified platform for detailed evaluation and assessment of these two industries. The possibility of consumer harm will be greatly reduced. At the same time, these two industries will also receive stronger supervision beyond that of the government, and they will not dare to do evil arbitrarily.
2. From the perspective of consumers, shifting to the industries themselves, the future of these two industries will definitely use Internet big data to determine consumer preferences. Hotels can customize corresponding unique personalized rooms for consumers, and even put consumers' Weibo travel moods on the wallpaper. Tourism can provide consumers with local specialty products, activities, small and beautiful niche attractions, etc. that they may like based on big data. Tourism can also push travel projects that consumers may like based on their travel time, location, and behavioral data during travel.
It is predicted that in the future, these two industries will not only self-regulate but also do better, using the big data accumulated by the Internet, with unlimited imagination.
**9. Catering**
Many U.S. states are cooperating with the restaurant review website Yelp to supervise the hygiene of the catering industry. The effect is very good. People no longer look through windows to see the situation in restaurants, but from comments on mobile apps!
In China, localized O2O review platforms such as Dianping, Fanqie Kuai Dian, and Taobao's latest Taobao Dian Dian, etc., allow consumers to evaluate any merchant, and merchants can also use these evaluations to improve their service capabilities.
**Predictions for the future of the catering industry:**
1. It will be completely driven by the Internet. More and more people will join in reviews, and restaurants will increasingly survive the fittest. Social media will completely amplify a matter. A truly good restaurant will gather into a small tribe on the Internet. A restaurant without characteristics will not even have the qualification to be commented on. Then a restaurant that cheats customers, no matter how many paid posters say good things, only needs a few reviews to completely destroy it. This is the rule of the Internet: make everything transparent, can lift you to heaven or send you to hell.
2. Optimize efficiency in the process. Improve the entire set of industry service patterns, one of the landmark features is zero waiting time for diners.
**10. Finance**
Most people did not understand why Alibaba spent such a high price to take back Alipay from Yahoo, until the recent uproar over Alipay's Yu'ebao incident. We suddenly realized that Ma Yun's layout was really big! Alibaba wants to enter the financial industry as an Internet disruptor. Use Internet thinking to let finance return to its essential service! As we all know, China is a power market economy. Based on the reason of power rent-seeking, power will strangle any sign that shakes its interest pattern.
In fact, without this ethical support, people would not establish communities and countries as fate communities. Ma Yun said at that time, "If banks do not change, then we will change banks!" In fact, as early as 2010, Alibaba had already established the "Taobao Small Loan" trial. This time, it just pushed history forward a bit. The financial industry itself faces a historical trend issue, which is no longer something that inherent power can resist. Some people think that the emergence of Internet finance may repeat the "Soviet-style tragedy," believing that people cannot self-discipline without supervision. These are all correct, but they ignore that their fatal weakness is ignoring the essence of the Internet!
The emergence of these situations in the past was nothing more than the concealment of information. But the world with the Internet is completely different from before. This is like the invention of papermaking, which allowed information to circulate again, breaking the authority of religious discourse, and ultimately triggering a revolution. The Internet will present all hidden information, and if there are errors, it will self-correct. This is not something that old history can fully explain; this is the author's blind spot.
**Predictions for the future of finance:**
First, it will be fully Internetized. Relying on big data, the Internet will require both parties to have extremely high transparency of information and establish trust in the shortest time.
Second, the trust issue between investors and investees will be directly established by the rules of the Internet game. At the same time, risk assessment will be more transparent, objective, and accurate.
Third, all information of each investee will be fully disclosed, from Weibo to home address to life experience, etc. In the future, even everyone's address will no longer be private. He cannot forge any false information, nor can he escape.
**11. Insurance**
Insurance is a type of financial industry, and I plan to discuss it separately here. The biggest opacity of the traditional insurance industry lies in the complexity of agency hierarchy and the disguised information upstream. A product needs to face the insured through many over-packaged means. For the insured, the true risk will be underestimated. For insurance companies, due to regional restrictions, insurance products cannot face more audiences, and insurance companies can only use the agency model as a means to promote products. China's insurance industry is peculiar, mixed with many human factors. It is more like dealing with people than with insurance products. Yes, the time for the insurance industry to return has come. We need simpler and more direct face-to-face contact.
**Predictions for the future of the insurance industry:**
First, it will gradually get rid of interpersonal relationships and face the insured in a more direct way. All risks and pros and cons will no longer be hidden, but will be transparently and more fairly interpreted by the swarm intelligence of the Internet. This will greatly reduce the energy of personal judgment and the possibility of misjudgment.
Second, based on big data, in the future, all human behaviors will be uploaded to the cloud, so the imagination of the insurance industry will definitely explode more. Now it is more like a stagnant pool. Future insurance will be more segmented and humane. Relying on the transformation of the advertising industry, insurance advertisements will also be more precise.
**12. Healthcare**
I will not complain about the traditional healthcare industry. When Beijing canceled Taobao registration, Kuai Dao Qing Yi, as a father, wrote a tearful article "A Dad's Personal Experience: Why I Support Taobao Registration Without Any Bottom Line!"
This is also a problem of power rent-seeking. Similarly, I believe these problems will be completely dismantled in the future. **Predict that the future healthcare industry will be fully integrated with the Internet.**
**From the patient's perspective:**
First, the reputation evaluations of various hospitals and doctors will be clear at a glance on the Internet. After you see a doctor, you can immediately evaluate the doctor and let everyone know.
Second, the user's illness big data will be permanently saved with electronic medical records until death.
Third, in the future IoT world, all your information will be networked. When you ate what, when you did what, and the day's calorie consumption will all be uploaded to the cloud. Doctors can make more accurate judgments based on your routine and diet.
Fourth, more often, patients can choose not to go to the hospital. Based on the reliability of big data, it can be solved remotely, and drugs will be delivered by logistics later.
**From the perspective of the healthcare industry:**
First, the time for patients to describe their condition will be shortened, and after communication costs are reduced, hospital efficiency will also greatly increase.
Second, the opacity of hospitals will be forced to open, and various drug prices will no longer be industry secrets.
Third, when regional technical resource problems are solved, hospitals will also enter the free market and become a survival of the fittest centered on serving users.
**13. Education**
The current education industry in the world can be said to be elitist education. This elitist education is not for the personalized development of people, but designed to cultivate university professors. This is a common problem in education worldwide. The value orientation is extremely boring and singular.
The reason for this pyramid model lies in the closure and authority of knowledge. But in the Internet era, the acquisition of these knowledge will no longer be a problem. The problem we face is how a person can not be alienated in education. The essence of education should not be the instillation of knowledge, but the establishment of an independent thinking personality. I want to talk not about how the Internet will do things that conform to the current educational values. More, in the future, the Internet will change the value orientation of all mankind.
Bring down the single and one-sided values from the altar, let various values return to society, and recognize people's talents in various ways. This is actually the "socialism" that Marx truly predicted.
**Predictions for the future of education:**
First, the Internet will change the value orientation of the education industry, transforming the single achievement-oriented education into a comprehensive recognition and excavation of human personality, from single to plural, and from competition to cooperation. The entire original pyramid education structure will be completely abandoned and transformed into a "morning star" form.
Second, at the same time, excavate big data, establish a big data psychological model of personality development, and carry out personalized development and long-term planning for people.
**14. TV Program Industry**
In the United States, the TV program industry has not been greatly impacted because of the original quality of its programs and the habitual dependence of Americans. But in China, it is not so lucky. For the vast majority of Chinese TV programs, I can only respond with "hehe." Although there are few successful programs, this cannot stop the trend of the Internet integrating all this. In the era of traditional TV programs, people were more like being forced to choose, but the Internet makes free choice possible. It turns the choice right upside down.
**Predictions for the future of the TV program industry:**
First, the Internet will make the TV program industry more survival of the fittest. The Internet is not to replace TV programs, but to revolutionize the TV program industry through survival of the fittest.
Second, various creative online programs will emerge and squeeze this market. (Currently, Sohu's self-made dramas are an example of squeezing this market.)
Third, the TV program industry may also have localized OTT situations. You will see a local person recording a localized dialect program. It doesn't matter whether it is good or bad; this is an inevitable product of the Internet's long tail. As long as the time comes, it will emerge.
**15. Film Industry**
The success of "To Youth" shows the official arrival of a new film era led by Internet carnival. Any film's marketing planning can no longer leave the Internet, and the success or failure of a film is completely tied to the Internet.
Talk about the requirements of the Internet:
First, the Internet requires the film industry, like the TV program industry, to be more survival of the fittest. Douban Film and Mtime are very good products that specifically comment on films, allowing consumers to control their choice time. This is actually a good case similar to Wikipedia.
Second, the Internet also requires breaking the pattern of all discourse hegemony, not sticking to one pattern, and pushing all innovative films to the market.
Third, the film industry will inevitably usher in niche and personalized needs. A hundred flowers bloom.
**Predictions for the future of the film industry:**
First, there will be various blowout states, and various outsiders will continue to intervene to disrupt the situation. The status of the original several hegemons will be reduced, and one hegemon will be replaced by hundreds of small hegemons.
Second, long-tail niche demand and tribal survival may be realized. The production cost of future films will be greatly reduced, and 1,000 fans are enough to make a film successful. Still as "The Technium" says, "Where attention goes, money follows."
**16. Publishing**
The traditional publishing industry is said to be lucrative by outsiders, but they say it is low-profit because the costs are quite high. A publisher once revealed that they can only earn 10% in the end. These things, I only heard by hearsay and do not know the truth. But the distribution cost of future e-books is almost a huge joke to them, close to 0! Dear!
The traditional publishing industry is miserable because in the future, except for marketing planning, there is basically nothing for them to do. But as long as they transform, they may still catch the last train of the era, and there is still a chance.
**Predictions for the future:**
First, only some paper books will continue to exist: 1. Classic works. 2. Personalized customization.
Second, publishers will be disrupted by Internet companies, and paper books will basically disappear.
Third, if traditional publishers enter the Internet publishing industry, they will appear more as marketing planners.
Fourth, legitimate books will receive due respect, and piracy will gradually disappear.
Fifth, since the publishing cost is almost 0, prices will generally decline.
Sixth, long-tail tribal survival, advertising publishing e-books is not enough to support authors, so a new profit model will definitely emerge.
**17. Monopolistic Industries**
I want to discuss this industry from the social and cultural level.
Huntington in "The Clash of Civilizations" said that the endurance of Chinese people comes from the influence of Confucian culture. I also respond to this view with "hehe." Xiong Peiyun in "Rediscovering Society" said that if Chinese orthodox culture were led by Mohism, it might be a different scene. I am still puzzled by this. Based on my understanding of human nature, I believe that no matter what culture the Chinese use as orthodoxy, it will be tampered with and used by rulers. Zhu Yuanzhang could delete Mencius's thought of "the people are the most important, the monarch is the least important"; scholar-officials could use Guo Xiang's annotated "Zhuangzi" to find a reasonable excuse for their servility.
Similarly, Hitler could use Nietzsche's manuscripts tampered with by Nietzsche's sister to promote Nazism, and the former Soviet Union could use Marx's works... we all understand. The fundamental reason is that in those eras when information exchange was underdeveloped, any information could be shielded and filtered by those in power, and the filtered one-sided information was sent out, causing the audience to forever know only that filtered information. The emergence of the Internet completely overturns such a state, making it impossible for any information to be filtered or shielded. No matter which country you are from, no matter which ethnic group, no matter which religion you believe in, as long as you want to know information, information will appear in front of you without hindrance. We have all witnessed the Internet rewriting various events in monopolistic industries, so I will not give examples.
And this kind of game will become more and more, information will become more and more transparent, and the checks and balances of power are silently and fiercely conducted on the Internet every day. The Internet requires transparency! Transparency! Transparency!
**Predictions for the future of monopolistic industries:**
First, based on pressure from the Internet, the headquarters will continuously disperse and disintegrate into various sub-departments, and some power will return to the market.
Second, forced to make transparent various so-called secrets, darkness has nowhere to hide. As long as the tip of the iceberg is dragged out, the will of the Internet will eventually drag the entire iceberg out of the water.
Article reposted from: Tonglu Kuai Jian
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