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``` [James Beniger at USC has been writing about the wired world longer than almost anyone; he is best known for his book "The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society" (Harvard University Press, 1986).]
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Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2000 11:24:54 -0700 (PDT)
From: James Beniger
[...]
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Announcing...
TRIUMPH OF CONTENT -- NEW INTERNET MAIL LIST
Triumph-of-Content-L@usc.edu
Content as New Economic and Cultural Sector of Global Society
To join, contact: beniger@rcf.usc.edu
Annenberg School for Communication University of Southern California Los Angeles, California
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The triumph of content--a triumph of text and graphics, speech and music, art and photography, video and games, but all of these as if now but a single generalized entity called "content"--constitutes a revolutionary and profound change in the world's economy. This change has also produced a new economic and cultural sector (if not the most important commercial sector) of global society, especially as global society is increasingly found on the Internet and World Wide Web.
That this profound change reflects a vast array of other societal changes--not the least being the increasing commodification of all creative expression--is reflected in even the recent and entirely new uses of the word "content" itself, as in: content provider, content industry, and content hole (the last-mentioned recently found in a major Website). Napster and other new online technologies for distributing music via the Web, as just one example, have already threatened the dominance of the music industry by the major record labels.
Because of the potential of the Internet and Web to absorb virtually all forms of creative content through digitization, it is impossible to consider content's triumph apart from the culture of globalization as represented on the Web. Mass-marketed content today also reflects tastes and influences not only national but increasingly global. While Beanie Babies are popular in Japan as well as in America, for example, Pokemon, a Japanese creation, continues to take American children by storm. While Disney blockbusters like "The Lion King" and "Beauty and the Beast" are appreciated by children throughout the world, Japanese animation like Hayao Miyazaki's "Kiki's Delivery Service" and "Princess Mononoke" are admired in American college anime circles no less than by American toddlers barely able to walk.
Soon everyone now suddenly in the content business--from the creative arts to marketing, academia to mass media, print to Web--will be struggling to understand these various and profound changes wrought by the sudden and simultaneous triumph and globalization of content.
And so we invite you to join us, at
Triumph-of-Content-L@usc.edu
along with other
academics editors poets advertising executives fashion designers producers agents filmmakers publicists animators graphic designers publishers architects illustrators social scientists artists industrial designers students broadcasters journalists theme park designers cartoonists marketers toy designers composers market researchers tv & cable executives copywriters musicians video game designers critics performing artists Web designers dramatists photographers writers
who choose to make an early start on attempting to understand the triumph of content--as both a new economic and cultural sector, and also as a central force toward an increasingly global society.
James Beniger Keiko Mori
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To join, contact: beniger@rcf.usc.edu
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