[Nettime-bold] LIST Triumph of Content

["Lessard, George" <GLessard@gov.nu.ca>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Agre [mailto:pagre@alpha.oac.ucla.edu]
Sent: Friday, April 28, 2000 6:06 PM
To: Red Rock Eater News Service
Subject: [RRE]Triumph of Content


[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 <beniger@rcf-fs.usc.edu>

[...]

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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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