It's over 500 years later, and the shock of the New World has worn off. There are cities of towering concrete and glass, teeming with millions of people. There are interstate highways, fast-food chains, suburban subdivisions -- a whole American civilization.
That's great. But remember, Columbus just wanted to network with Asian content owners -- and was punished for failing.
In 1492, the opportunity to find a direct sea route to Asia had powerful allure. Skeptics said that if you sailed far enough west, you'd fall off the face of the earth. To Columbus, that was a risk worth taking. He understood the value of efficient global trade and the opportunity of direct access to Asian commerce.
Throughout history, civilizations increasingly have been built on the creation and sharing of "content." Taken broadly, content is the essence of anything of value. One of the original and enduring forms of content has been gold. As one version of the Golden Rule goes, "He who has the gold, rules."
Content can also be "intellectual property" -- a work of art or literature, for example. Prior to the invention of the printing press, books themselves were almost priceless, because each had to be scribed and bound by hand. In earlier times, the very paper (or papyrus) of books was priceless. But in modern times, as paper-making and printing have become commoditized, the "content" of books is understood to mean simply the words and images contained by the book.
Content can be expressed in any medium. It can be text, images, audio, animation or video. It can even be a wholly abstract construct, such as a demographic database. All that matters is that it has unique value.
Since value is negotiated through markets, content owners have incentive to increase the efficiency of their markets. The greater the efficiency, the greater the possibilities for content owners. For example, prior to the 18th century, there was essentially no market for novels. Taken to extremes, imagine the problems of an ancient Roman novelist: he'd have to make the paper by hand, hand-scribe each page, bind each book, travel house by house to sell each book, and teach the buyer to read.
In the modern world, a fairly decent marketing and distribution scheme has emerged for books. Book-making is commoditized; publishers and distributors move the books to stores and libraries; and schools implant access technology (reading skills) into the minds of readers.
But the content owner is still impatient. He's still paying a paper mill to make his paper, and a printer to make the books. Trucking firms, distributors and retailers pocket gobs of money from each sale. It takes months to get his works to market, and going to a global market can take years.
When the content owner goes to sleep at night, this is what he dreams about. He imagines that all his content -- his books, films, videos, images, audio recordings and so on -- reside in a magical library. This library can be visited by any person in the world, whenever they want, instantly. (There is a magical transporter system involved, the content owner dreams.)
Visitors first pass through a security check, which identifies each visitor and obtains credit card information. Visitors are then greeted by a reference librarian with a magical photographic memory. The librarian can help the visitor find any content in the library, even when the visitor can't remember the title. Mention the name of a character, and the librarian knows the novel; describe an image, and the librarian knows the painting -- as well as several others similar to it.
One of the most magical parts of the library is the way content is taken off the shelf. Just by touching a book, a copy is made; the visitor removes this copy from the shelf while the original remains where it was. The visitor can even select portions of content -- 30 seconds from a film, for example.
Once the visitor has selected the needed content, the next step is the magical legal desk. Here, a rights management attorney discusses how the visitor plans to use the content. For example, if the visitor plans to use those 30 seconds of video as part of a commercial product, the charges would be different from, say, the charges for use in a 7th grade school presentation. When the negotiation is complete, the attorney affixes a permanent tag on the content that identifies the source of the content, the buyer, and the use.
The visitor now steps up to the checkout counter. This is where the content owner dreams that he will work. He imagines that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he will ring up sales for his content, with buyers coming from all over the globe. With each sale, he has complete control over access and use of his content. Since this is a magical library, the originals for all his content always stay where they are; only the copies leave the premises. And the best part, dreams the content owner, is simple: all the profits are his.
Content owners now have the opportunity -- through the digitization and networking of their assets -- to broaden their markets, move closer to the customer, and reduce the cost of goods sold. For example, in the past, an encyclopedia publisher had relatively limited sales venues due to the unwieldy nature of a 20-volume encyclopedia set; was separated from the customer by a paper mill, printer, trucking firm, distributors and retailers; and owed hundreds of dollars per sale to all the middlemen between the publisher and the customer. But with a digital encyclopedia accessible on demand via network, an encyclopedia publisher can now serve the entire world as its market; can sell directly to the customer; and can reduce the cost of goods sold to almost zero.
One of the most valuable assets of your company today is content creation. I have seen many companies who didn't know their value or to store and to manage their content.
Quote "the story is what ultimately matters: technology doesn't"
Content has become an all-purpose buzzword to denote what's left of multimedia after the technology wears off. To Hollywood studios, it's the movie and all assets. To publishers, it's the book that could be "repurposed" (another overused term) into a CD-ROM title. To programmers, it's the stuff you pour into the interface shell. To Web cowboys, it's what makes the difference between a vital, virtual environment and a cobwebbed digital ghost town that people have stopped visiting. And to artists it's...well, it's what they do. The story is what ultimately matters; technology does not. People watch programs, they don't watch technology.
The technology of multimedia has too long been held supreme over the content. Perhaps that was necessary at first to jumpstart the innovations that were necessary for early progress. But it will be the artists, creators, and storytellers (and we are all storytellers, no?) who will define and extend the capabilities and meaningfulness of digital interactive multimedia. Technology will enable this human effort, but will not stand in and of itself.
What is it that makes multimedia so gripping now? Why are alliances being formed, and feeding frenzies rampant among media production and distribution companies? Because of the capabilities of digital technology. The reality of multimedia production is that there are constraints that encourage or inhibit selection of content elements. These constraints can be economic, practical, aesthetic, and of course legal. What is meant by "good content"? How does it reach the audience and express a purpose? It is important to study CD-ROM titles, Web applications and other projects to build a critical eye, trying to deconstruct the decisions that contributed to the content of particular applications.
Digital capabilities are sending traditional legal copyright rules on a tilt-a-whirl ride of varying interpretations. If we, are worked over completely by media as if it were the air we breathe, should we be allowed to freely appropriate the images in our culture to create new statements? Or should copyright law enforcement be tightened? There are no solid answers to legal questions at this time; we can only explore the work being done with different bodies such as the National Writers Union and National Information Infrastructure.
The technology of multimedia is in danger of being held supreme over content. Perhaps that approach was necessary to jump-start the innovations that resulted in early progress. However, it will be the artists, creators and storytellers who will define and extend the capabilities and meaningfulness of digital interactive multimedia. Technology will enable this human effort. "I think story will dominate any medium, however the medium can be a tremendously integral part of helping storytellers tell stories.
"Technology is useful in the production environment to expand what the creative talent is able to do. When all is sad and done, however, investing in new media is really investing in the people."
What are the new directions for content? What are the implications of massive media servers, high-bandwidth networks into the home, school, and office, and of course the Internet when it comes to content creation, distribution, and management? Such capabilities influence how content may be created once and used many times over, in multiple ways. The concept of "authoring" is evolving, as content creation and integration tools become simpler to use and object-oriented in structure, allowing disparate pieces to snap together like so many digital Lego pieces.
What does it take to manage the burgeoning sources of content so that it can be effectively utilized on a large scale? Emerging systems of multimedia asset management, multimedia databases, and large-scale structured systems attempt to accommodate this "content explosion." Developments in cognitive representation technology for media retrieval systems such as Query By Image Content, Visual Intelligence Retrieval, as well as some digital video recognition research from MIT reveal new possibilities.
Finally, where are the opportunities in the changing world of content? What needs are arising as we begin to look anew at the parts of our existence and think of new ways to represent and thus share how we live, where we live, and who we are?
Yes, of course, there are already answers to many of these questions. But it is our responsibility as digital pioneers to find, and in some cases even invent, solutions.
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