PC Forum 2001 Transcript Shirky One of the big losers here is the IT department. They have been given the task of controlling their network, so they've created an illusionary world for themselves, where they think that the company intranet plus a firewall will give them sharply reduced information flow at the borders the network. Well, forget it - people use instant messaging and email all day long. The workers have bypassed this model. Businesses that are predicated on the control of intellectual property at the edges of the network are being slowly dragged into a regime where those borders are officially semi-permeable. Any hierarchically organized business is going to have a problem when I can set up an ad hoc workgroup of five people from five different companies and build a space for us to share files, without having to go down the hall and bug the IT guys. Big server companies and ASPs are challenged by this, but the bigger challenge is that within the culture of individual businesses, centralized control of networking is coming up against the users' ability to build their own stuff, on the fly, without having to tell anybody. That change in business culture is going to be the big thing in the next five years.