Recommendations for an ultra-free society 5: Quickly do the work for me

■Recommendations for an ultra-free society 5: Quickly do the work for me        

 

　The English word “content” started being used in Japanese in 1993, 25 years ago. With digitization, devices became multimedia, and distribution networks started to be bundled up into the Internet. Information services like those for movies, games, music, news, and books that had been scattered until then were now circulated as one. This concept was created based on that.

　High hopes are being set on the content industry. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry recognized that “the possibility of the content industry driving our country’s economy as a new leading industry is large” (2003: “Establishing a ‘Japan Brand’ based on the core of the content industry”); in 2004, the Cabinet Secretariat and the intellectual-property strategy headquarters assembled “Policies to Promote the Content Business”, which stated that the government would forge ahead and “turn promoting the content business into a pillar of our national strategy”.

　However, when I created an estimation based on past data, the scale of the content industry was a function of GDP. The coefficient of determination between the scale of the content industry and GDP was 0.988, and the elasticity coefficient of expansion of the content market when the GDP grew was close to 1. The likelihood of the content industry growing more than GDP had grown was low. That would be putting the cart before the horse; if GDP isn’t increased in the first place, the content industry won’t grow.

　In reality, despite the government’s expectations, the content industry is not showing growth sufficient to drive the economy; in fact, the effect of digitization after that has meant that the scale of the domestic content industry is not growing.

　On the other hand, what has increased in importance during this time is social media. After digitization - composed of PC phones, the Internet, and content - made its rounds, the transition to smart technology - composed of smartphones, the cloud, and social media - arrived, and the leading role in the category of services shifted on an industrial level as well as in terms of information traffic from content to the social dimension.

　This does not mean that the importance of content decreased; rather, as content continued to be the meat, the value of communication and community increased. From the perspective of content, social media was a platform as well as a lifeline for content to be active.

　Platforms such as Netflix and Amazon that are not social but that make content transmission their core business also became stronger. Japan’s transmission platforms put their efforts into being fair platforms, as had been their custom since Docomo’s i-mode, and were indifferent when it came to the creation of content.

　However, Netflix and Amazon pour huge amounts of funding into creating content in-house, and aim to operate as both platforms and content creators. In fact, it is precisely the combination of their platforms and their content that they see as the source of their competitiveness. This is a successful model that Nintendo has used since the NES era, and these companies have carried it out in the field of film and media.

　Incidentally, the two-sided model of hardware and software adopted by Apple (PC and iPhone -> iTunes) as well as Google (search engine -> Android) is the Nintendo/Sony model of creating gaming consoles as well as game software.

　Now, the transition to smart technology has created the product known as the share. It has created people who seek likes rather than possessions. And from sharing large items such as houses or cars, it has pushed us in the direction of sharing virtual things such as time or skills.

　To recognize your value, turn yourself into content, and provide your time and skills in a modular manner. To take off your many pairs of straw sandals all around the place. That will become the way we work and play in an ultra-free society.

　How can we design portfolios of the skills and time we are providing and share them on social platforms? Providing specialized skills for eight hours a day, five days a week; having two jobs and working on them for four hours each per day; dividing eight hours into blocks of three days and two days per week; having five jobs and changing the work you do every day - what? These are all what ants do. No, the standard will probably be to work for only one day a week, and to freely put AI to work for us for the other days.

　When this happens, it’s exactly the ability to manage AI that will become people’s content value.

　That will be influenced by the AI’s algorithms, the functionality of the machines, as well as the quality of the learning models. It’ll be about how much the AI assistants that are your subordinates will work for you.