10:00 AM
The next speaker is Jon Miller of AOL, to talk about "emerging technologies and trends in online entertainment and business." His first point is that there has been a huge explosion during the last 40 years in media choices. People are shifting their primary consumption from TV to the Internet. Another shift is to multi-tasking and simultaneous multi-media use. Broadband is no longer a niche market; it is becoming mainstream.
"Always on" and "always with you" are changing the way people use the Internet. Use of search is now almost equal to email as the #1 reason why people use the Internet. Compared to 40 years ago, with CBS-NBC-ABC, today there are "nearly limitless distribution channels", an unparalleled explosion of choice. Another huge shift is toward low cost content development; so we have a proliferation of content, distribution, and usage, especially in video.
Fragmentation is affecting not only "old media" but also "new media", so providers like AOL and Yahoo are now reaching a smaller percentage of all users than just a few years ago. Consumers are gaining control over media, instead of the other way around; consumers are driving choice more than ever before. We're now in the age of an on-demand medium. It's a shift from remote control to in control.
Miller has now shifted his message to how traditional media is responding to the challanges noted above. He says today is the Golden Age of entertainment. He says TV programming is better now than it's ever been. (I might argue with that.)
That's the end of Miller's prepared remarks.
10:30 AM
Now we get an onstage conversation between Miller and David Faber, Anchor of CNBC's "Faber Report." In answer to a question, Miller says that if you follow the money, you'll see that most of the profit is still in the hands of the big traditional media companies. Part of that is due to acquisitions of up and coming players; he predicted that YouTube, for example, will not be an independent company for much longer.
An audience member asked about the rise of cell phones as a new medium. Miller says we need to think of "mobile" as separate from traditional media and Internet, and that mobile could become as big in its own right as a content provider and distributor.
Next comes a keynote panel in which "the world’s most prominent innovators and inventors discuss their latest work and how to create technology that will change the face of business, entertainment, healthcare, transportation, and more." Stay tuned for Part 3.
Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog tretc
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