Digital scenarios for media: Imagine a future in which media consumers, empowered by new technology, demand everything for free.
What they can't get legitimately, they show no qualms about pirating. August names of film studios, television networks and newspapers lose their aura of trust and authority. TV viewers turn off advertising with nifty digital devices - or simply tune out apathetically, leaving marketers powerless and media companies with no way to finance their content.
Some media industries, particularly the music business, have already had to come to terms with such dystopian visions. Others may never have to, as new technologies offer more opportunities than threats. [...]
The Futurist: John Battelle, visiting professor, University of California at Berkeley.
From his perch on the "Left Coast of America," in the outskirts of Silicon Valley, Battelle feels the media industry is at a "chasm-crossing moment." The era when big media companies delivered news, information or entertainment to consumers via mass-market television or printed publications, financed by the sale of advertising, is rapidly drawing to a close, he says.
Media consumers will increasingly seek out the democracy of the Internet, getting their news from blogs instead of print on paper, and seek their entertainment from a limitless supply of quirky online content, he says.
