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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

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