The internet is no longer seenmerely as an information gather-ing point and purchase space,thanks to the growing penetrationof broadband and sophistication

of the end user. Today it is as much an enter-tainment hub and is part of the digitalrevolution changing the face of entertainment.

In his book Convergence Culture HenryJenkins, professor of Media Studies at MIT,talks of the new ways our media and cultureworks, suggesting that we live in a world where“every brand, every message, every sound andevery image is spread across every media chan-nel, either legally or illegally”. On the one hand,this spread is shaped by boardroom decisions ascompanies try to maximise the spread of theirbrand messages by ensuring every franchiseplays across the overall vision of the company,while media companies try to maximise owner-ship of multimedia channels. It is also spreadby the consumer, who can now choose whatmedia they want, how they want it, when theywant it and in the forms they want it. If compa-nies don’t make it available to them legally, theywill take it illegally.

In tandem with this culture of convergencehas been the birth of Web 2.0, a second genera-tion of internet-based services such as socialnetworking sites, blogs, wikis and social com-munication tools that have led people tocollaborate and share information online inways previously unavailable.

THE ALL-POWERFUL CONSUMERWe now live in a world where the consumer cando anything they want with your brand, your

advertisement, your entertainment content.Companies have lost control. What is excitingright now is the degree to which companies arebeginning to realise the power these participa-tory audiences exert through what ProfessorJenkins calls “a world of collective intelligence”.Jenkins talks in terms of companies shiftingaway from an old prohibitionist model, whichsays, “Don’t touch my intellectual property, it’smine to control”, to a more collaborationistmodel, which actively seeks to engage the con-sumer by giving up this control and allowingconsumers to generate their own content onthe platform provided. And it is this thinkingthat is at the heart of Web 2.0 and the transfor-mation that is taking place in our media today.

In his book Lovemarks: The Future BeyondBrands Saatchi Worldwide CEO Kevin Robertstalks about the notion of ‘inspirational con-sumers’ who not only deeply care about brandsand products, but also will go out of their wayto advocate and publicise them. It is this group,

Jenkins argues, companies had better listen toand find ways to engage with.

The consumer in this context has a verypowerful role to play. If a blogger finds outsome information damaging to a company theycan spread this very quickly and what was abrand community one minute can turn out tobe your harshest critic the next.

This collective power prompted Time mag-azine to name its 2006 person of the year as‘You’. Not one powerful person but the collec-tive ‘You’, meaning your average Joe. The editorssee the dawning of a new era as “the small con-tributions of millions of people” result in You“seizing the reigns of global media… foundingand framing the new digital democracy”.

THE GROWTH OF USER-GENERATED CONTENTThe growth of digital video over the past yearhas been nothing short of phenomenal – culmi-nating in the acquisition of MySpace andYouTube by News Corp and Google respectively.Inevitably, the flood of creativity online fromsites like YouTube, MySpace, Google Video,Revver.com, Breaker.com, Lulu and Blip TV hasled to the interest of Hollywood, TV producersand advertisers. For example, US TV stationNBC has ordered web and TV scripts of two ofYouTube’s most popular video hits: Nobody’sWatching and the weekly wranglings of videopodcast, Ask a Ninja, starring two would-beactors spouting their philosophies on life.

A recent survey by the Pew Internet andAmerican Life Project found that 40 percent ofinternet users have posted content online andthat user-generated content is mostly driven by

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David Wesson is an internet media/marketing consultant and hasworked in the entertainment and advertising industries in Europeand Australia for the last 15 years. You can contact him via email:david.Wesson@iinet.net.au, call him on 0409 320 143 or subscribeto his blog at http://digient.blogspot.com/.

The future of digital.Wondering what the living room of the future will look like? David Wesson provides a window into the onlineentertainment space of tomorrow.

“If a blogger finds out some informationdamaging to a companythey can spread this veryquickly and what was abrand community oneminute can turn out tobe your harshest criticthe next.”

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the under 30s. Within this age group it wasnoted that 62 percent viewed content generatedby someone they knew.

Online platforms hosting user-generatedcontent have arguably already amassed audi-ences exceeding those for some traditionalmedia platforms. Clearly a new critical masshas been born.

THE BATTLE FOR THE LIVING ROOMThis transformation has led to media compa-nies scrambling to make their media contentavailable across a variety of platforms, anxiousto avoid a similar fate to that suffered by themusic industry. Last year in the US, the WaltDisney Company made its first foray into mak-ing its content available online in agroundbreaking deal with iTunes that madeDesperate Housewives, Lost and other Disneychannel programs available for download.

In conjunction with the iTunes deal, thecompany also developed its own online mediaplayer and during the ABC test it had 5.7 mil-lion streams of episodes with the number ofviewers far exceeding the number of streams. Incontrast, during the same period the Disneychannel had 37 million streams, which speaksvolumes about kids and technology.

At the moment it is still too difficult andcomplex for the average person to take contentfrom their PC and transfer it around the variousdevices in the home. But all that is set to change.

Currently standing in the way are compati-bility issues concerning file formats for digitalvideo and the question of how content will beprotected. On the one side is Apple’s rights-protected FairPlay system and on the otherMicrosoft’s Windows Media DRM. WhileiTunes has become the dominant player of legalmusic and video downloads, many media exec-utives prefer Windows DRM and Windows willbe supported by a wide variety of platformmanufacturers.

This year sees the battle to make the PC theentertainment hub of the home intensify withthe launch of Microsoft’s new ‘Vista’ operatingsystem. Designed to upgrade The MediaCentre Edition (MCE) of the XP Windowsoperating system, Vista is specifically designedto transform the PC into a living room enter-tainment device. There are now manymanufacturers of MCE-based computers andincreasingly they are designed to resemble con-sumer electronic devices rather thancomputers, so they appear more acceptable in

the living room environment. Apple has itsown version of the MCE for Macintosh com-puters, which it calls Front Row, andHewlett-Packard last year debuted its success-ful widescreen MediaSmart TV. Most recently,Apple has launched its iTV set-top box, able tosync TV sets to its iTunes portal – which meansany of the videos, music or films now availablethrough iTunes will play on your TV.

The development of game consoles alsorepresents another viable means of digitalentertainment for the living room with SonyPlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 bothconnecting to the internet and being marketedas home entertainment hubs to pipe movies,TV programming and music in addition togames. Incorporated into both new players is aHD DVD drive that is being touted as the next-generation format, providing six times theresolution of a standard DVD and a higherlevel of interactivity.

Either way you look at it, the battle for theliving room is showing no signs of abating andit’s anyone’s guess how things will pan out. Onething is certain: we are still a long way from oneblack box that will pipe all our entertainment;however, with advances in technology you willsee hardware become more robust, more pow-erful and more affordable at every level.

THE EVOLUTION OF ONLINEGAMING AND VIRTUAL REALITYWhen Tiger Woods showed up at an EA Gamescampus recently to view the latest version of theTiger Woods PGA Tour video game his initialreaction wasn’t quite what its designers wereexpecting. The golf great grew a little impatienton viewing TV images of his swing and askedwhen he could see the game. After a pause thedesigners said this was the game and that hewas looking at computer graphics.

Right now, computer-generated animationfor films, games and virtual reality (VR) onlygo 95 percent of the way towards photorealisticrendering, but with enormous advances invideo processing technology it is only a matterof time until that five percent gap is bridged.

Imagine being able to put your own face onyour avatar or player in an online game, com-plete with facial expressions. Where else canyou cross a reality TV show, MySpace, a per-sonalised website and day-to-day life? InSecond Life (www.secondlife.com), users cantravel through a virtual world and interact andshare experiences with other users. Eightiespop act Duran Duran, Suzanne Vega and the

BBC have done virtual concerts in Second Lifeand interacted with fans in unimaginable ways.Such has been the hype over Second Life in thepast six months that companies are literallyfalling over themselves to use it as a platformto promote their products and services andinteract with gamers.

With MySpace losing its cool factor amidprivacy issues, it will be interesting to see howvirtual reality sites like Second Life and MTV’snewly launched Virtual Laguna Beach(www.vlb.mtv.com) will continue to attract anever-growing audience. There is no reason whywe won’t be able to work in virtual realityspaces in the future. As the slogan for SecondLife reads: ‘Your world, your imagination’.

THE DIGITAL COPYRIGHTSHOWDOWNStriking the balance between owning intellec-tual property and giving consumers control iskey to the debate over copyright. There are twomain camps with widely divergent views. Onthe one hand are the traditional media compa-nies and hardware/software companies whobelieve information is a commodity that can bebought and its distribution controlled. On theother side are the computer companies likeGoogle, IBM and most consumers, who believethat information should be free and its distri-bution uncontrolled.

Kevin Kelly’s New Rules for the NewEconomy explains how traditional businessmodels have been transformed by the internet.Originally, wealth was based on physical objectsand value came from scarcity. In the newInformation Age value comes from abundance.The more people who have access to informa-tion, the more valuable that information is.Robert Metcalfe, the inventor of the Ethernetnetworking standard, explains it very well inwhat has become known as Metcalfe’s Law:“The utility of a network expands by thesquare of the number of users.” In other words,the more people on the network, the moreconversations are possible. Those who want torestrict the flow of information think of infor-mation as little atoms rather than as part of agreat network.

The ‘economics of abundance’ is also thepremise behind Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail,which demonstrates that endless choice is cre-ating unlimited demand for niche products andservices previously unavailable. The furore cur-rently surrounding YouTube is a classicexample. Numerous companies are engaged in

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litigation for copyright infringements andrequesting their content be removed from thesite. Little surprise Google set aside a consider-able legal contingency fund on its acquisition ofYouTube.

These people claim to be in the content-delivery business, but they do not understandit. There is a very good reason YouTube hasgrown from nothing to be sold for $US1.65 bil-lion in the space of 18 months – it’s because ofthe free flow of information.

DRM is another example that restricts theway information can be used in software orhardware. Advocates of this technology say thatit is necessary to protect the rights of artistsand publishers, but all the signs point to theinevitable demise of copyright. Defective byDesign (www.defectivebydesign.org) goes onestep further in the campaign against the con-trol of information. It is a grassrootsmovement against the absurdity of DRM tar-geting manufacturers. It argues DRM productshave built-in features that restrict what theycan do. These products have been intentionallycrippled by the user’s perspective, and aretherefore defective by design. Likewise theDigital Freedom Movement (www.digitalfree-dom.org) recognises that new technologies areessential to the creativity and innovation inour modern digital world.

GOOGTUBE:A NEW MEDIA MODELMoving towards a new media model, the com-bination of Google’s search savvy andYouTube’s handle on internet video yields thefirst viable new media successor to broadcastand cable TV. The union offers the interactiveinfrastructure and tools needed to manage andmonetise web-based digital video unmatchedby traditional media platforms. What it meansis that the ad dollars and creative content thathave sustained traditional media will increas-ingly shift to interactive platforms that can giveconsumers and advertisers more of what theywant on interchangeable screens.

The 6.2 million daily visitors to YouTubeare ripe for Google’s advertising-savvy technol-ogy, which gives immediate open access to mostcommercial and user-generated content. Itreflects the demands of a young audience thatwill broaden as it matures.

Clearly the emerging standard for videoand information is on-demand interactivity,being able to download and store contentacross any platform or device. The search

engine is the means to manage this content;one cannot exist without the other. Add to thisthe ability to charge consumers and advertisersand you have a ready-made new media model.Google can perfect ways of making moneyfrom content online by connecting the rightconsumers, advertisers, content producers, plat-forms and devices.

There is no reason why media companiescannot readily adopt this type of model by sim-ply giving up control of copyrighted works andmaking content that generates revenue fromadvertising available for free. A few sites like USwebsite www.brightcove.com already do thiswith video content and syndicate content toother sites, with all parties receiving a share ofrevenue.

THE FUTURE OF DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENTBy 2010, it is predicted all TV will be digital,your computer will be able to speak to a wholehost of portable and lounge room devices, andeven sing to you. Broadband penetration willbe 75 percent of all households and 50 percentof all advertising will be online.

Professor Jenkins talks of us being in anapprenticeship phase now where we are stilllearning to use the new consumer power at ourdisposal in an age of convergence. If we fast-track five years, we will have learned to harnessthis power and these skills will have spreadfrom niche fan-based communities to generalconsumers. As demand for content soars, moreconsumers are seeking out information inonline communities and engaging in mediacontent in new ways. We will no longer bewatching scheduled prime time shows; we willbe subscribing to TV programs in the sameway we subscribe to a magazine. The opportu-nity for niche programming via an

internet-based model will be significantlyincreased as those shows with a niche dedi-cated market and audience will be able tosupport and fully fund the show.

In his book The Long Tail, Chris Andersondemonstrates the renaissance being enjoyed byback-catalogue film, book and music titles andthat this can also be applied to other indus-tries. He cites the example of one USsubscription-based music website, Rhapsody,being able to sell each of its one million musictitles at least once a month; and out of its totalsales 40 percent of titles were previouslyunavailable. Likewise Amazon has done forbooks what Rhapsody has done for music andnow accounts for 20 percent of all book salesin the US.

Professor Jenkins says that in the futurethere will be more examples of transmedia sto-rytelling techniques, like The Matrix. That is,where stories are made up of a complex worldwith multiple characters, which in turn sup-port multiple platforms. The Matrix was madeup of a movie trilogy, a series of comics, ananimated feature and a video game, which allinteract together to make up a whole. Rightnow it is only really children’s content likePokémon that have this integrated storytellingtechnique, but we will reach the point wherethe West Wings of the future will be fully inte-grated across multiple TV shows and multipleweb platforms.

The notion of a quality drama will be onethat allows the viewer to go as deep as they likeand have as much complexity as they want withan online community based around it, activelydeciphering the pieces. Interactivity will there-fore become a more important part of the TVviewing experience, which means more realityTV programs, a concept driven more by theopportunity to participate in the decision-mak-ing process. The element of success for anyplatform is putting consumers in control sothey can watch what they want, where theywant and when they want. That will be realityin 10 years’ time.

Thomas Freidman’s best selling book TheWorld is Flat talks of a world where the powerof the internet makes it possible for individualsto collaborate and compete globally. He tells usthat by 2020 the free flow of information willcompletely blur national boundaries. These willbe replaced by corporation-based culturalgroupings and reconfigured human organisa-tions tied together by global networks. Maybethis isn’t so far from the truth. M

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Second Life is part ofthe new generation ofvirtual interactivity.

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