Content up to the present

  I was asked to give a small presentation on the history of content to a meeting that was considering new policies for IP assets.

 The first musical instrument was made from the femur of a badger 43,000 years ago in Slovenia. It all starts with music. Next we had Altamira 18,500 years ago, and Lascaux 15,000 years ago. At the time, people thought and expressed themselves with images.

Letters weren’t invented until around 7000 B.C. So content developed from music to pictures to letters, and was limited to concerts or cave walls; single locations.

  Popularization of text was made possible by the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in 1455; of pictures by Niepce in 1826; and of music in 1877 with Edison’s invention of the phonograph. Basically, this took place in the reverse order of appearance. Moving pictures came on the scene in 1895 with the films of the Lumière brothers.

 The 20^th century was the era of telecommunications. With telephone and television, content and communication were freed from the constraints of time and place.

 The next transition period was 30 years ago. Nintendo’s famicon made it possible to play with pictures. Media continued to diversity from 1983 to 1985. In Japan it was called the New Media Boom. Media other than TV and telephone began to diversify and advance. Analog media diversified. In 1984, Steve Jobs released the Macintosh computer, beginning the age of the personal computer. Now anyone could create content with their desktop computer.

 Ten years later, in the 90s, a new movement emerged. In Japan it was called the multimedia boom.  Personal computers and mobile phones were popularized, and the internet spread.

 Information, movies, books, TV programs, music, and games all began to flow on top of the network, and the concept of “content” was born.

 The content industry was expected to be one of growth, but it didn’t live up to expectations. From 1995 to 2005 the market growth in Japan was 5.8%, which was equal to the growth of the GDP and not something one would necessarily call a “growth” industry. In recent days it has even begun to contract. On the other hand, the amount of data produced, by my calculations, has increased 21 fold.

 Now, in recent years, media is again in the midst of an upheaval for the first time in 20 years. 1) Devices have moved from TVs, PCs and mobile phones to smartphones, tablets, digital signage, and smart TVs. 2) The 20 year plan to digitize the domestic network has succeeded with terrestrial digital broadcasting and the cloud has been born. 3) While content as a service has been sluggish, social media has come to dominate.

 These three factors have changed the face of the world. In the face of this, we must wait to see what will become of intellectual property and content.