From: Giota Alevizou [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2000 11:43 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Fw: Triumph of Content--New Internet List

...
>
>                TRIUMPH OF CONTENT -- NEW INTERNET MAIL LIST
>
>                [log in to unmask]
>
>        Content as New Economic and Cultural Sector of Global Society
>
>                   To join, contact:  [log in to unmask]
>
>             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
>
>                [log in to unmask]
>
>  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:  [log in to unmask]
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>
>
> *******
>
>


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