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May 1, 2000: This message was distributed by Papyrus News, a free e-mail distribution list on the global impact of information technology on language, literacy, and education. Feel free to forward this message to others, preferably with this introduction. For information on Papyrus News, including how to (un)subscribe or access archives, see <http://www.lll.hawaii.edu/web/faculty/markw/papyrus-news.html>.
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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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