Skip to main content

Content contained for contentment

Over the millennia human species has been defined as social.  Now we are redefining social as a channel of communication using technology to aid or so it seems.  In order for this social experiment to succeed it is important to understand that we love content.  Content defined as anything that has provided the needed mental nourishment for the times, be it information or entertainment or both.

A recent interview by Charlie Rose with a panel comprising of media folks triggered this thought that    clear trends now indicate the audience now has the power to control what to watch/consume, how and when.  From early times when you could actually decide which cousin to visit to seek out free entertainment, today you can use the power of the internet to achieve more or scale in techno geek.

All content is after all data and if it's data it's easy to package it and deliver it to a variety of platforms in terms of  form factors or channels.  Content can be simply a phone call to a relative which is a 1 on 1 or conference another friend and discover happiness to have connected to reminisce.

Then there is the same pipe that might bring a great TV-Show free of adverts that you can record and watch while sipping tea on a Sunday morning as I am wont to do.  Or then I can walk away and use the internet to connect to a cloud based bookshelf and add my trivia thoughts for some random guy or gal in 2050 to come find it and smirk at.

Underpinning all this is the broader notion that information democracy will truly bring out the best of the creative energies - authors, poets, film makers, scientists, tweeters perhaps for dissemination across borders and it's to be available to anyone who seeks.   That consumption will be driven also by computer analytical models that decide what content might get consumed where in terms of individual consumers of what race, culture, background, economic or social standing.  The personalizing might be what drives cost of the said content and the money is where content owners can actually deliver it in an auction like model across segments of the population.

It has opened the business to a whole lot of entrants from content producers to pipe owners aka cable or phone or broadcast companies, to content curators like Amazon, Google, to code based delivery companies like Netflix to the people that make the computing devices like the Microsoft and Apple where the end product is consumed.

Now if only this ends world hunger, malaria, and bombings we all might get time to enjoy this content some more.

Comments

  1. Obama seems a bit more sensible than Bush, so there is some hope. If arms manufacturers did flowers instead, that would be something.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A few good books

 On an informal mission to read one book a week as long as the eyes allow for such ambition. Fiction or non is not important as long as it entertains and /or educates. To that end the past few weeks have brought a bounty in the form of some wonderful and then not so engaging literature. Among the notables are - Non fiction category: 1. Good arguments by Bo Seo (how to handle a dispute or debate the most efficient way possible) 2. Genesis by Eric Schmidt (and former US Secy of State Henry Kissinger, who recently passed) - how AI might affect our lives as we know it 3. One in a billion - Zarna Garg (an autobiographical look at an Indian born American woman with a bindi narrated in a standup format - yes it is at times cliched but still funny) Fiction: 1. Personal by Lee Child (a vigilante story with Jack Reacher the giant, nomad protagonist of Child's novels goes hunting for a sniper) 2. Ramayana unraveled by Ami Ganatra (she might disagree about it being a work of fiction but oh wel...

Back in DC

This time for a tech conference in the realm of what else? AI. But applied to an oft neglected space called Knowledge Management. The latter is a community of practice that focuses on analyzing, organizing and making available reams of data that have been gathered over time by various functions within an organization for anyone in the company to utilize. This function or process is ripe for applying AI agents (or agentic AI framework) and optimize for better outcomes. It was informative. More rewarding was getting acquainted with folks who practice this craft as well as learning of what they see in the corporate or public sectors. Since the venue was Washington DC it also afforded me the chance to take evening strolls albeit the weather was trying. With wind chill in the single digit it still is a glamorous place to perambulate through history absorbing what this country has been through since its founding days. I was able to visit the place Lincoln was killed along with his monument t...

Costa Rica

 Our first foray into Central America. That elongated isthmus that forms the geographic boundary between two vast continents of North and South America. Specifically landing for NYE 2026 in San Jose, Costa Rica. Capital city for this region that does not have its own army, instead relying on its big bro the Estados Unidos to the north is a metropolis of approx. 500K people. Largely wilderness and with both a Pacific and Carribean/Atlantic coast the country is rich in bio diversity. In Spanish it means the rich coast so named by Columbus landing in early 16th century and being mesmerized by the local tribes sporting gold jewelry.   Our stay included visiting the foothills of a large strato volcano called Arenal and enjoying the naturally heated thermal baths for a while.  Lunching amidst lush forest and watching indigenous species of avian noise makers fly overhead. Toucans, some sort of pea hens, multiple song bird species completed the spectacle. Iguanas and a lonel...