Digital World

Connectivity, Creativity and Rights

Gillian Youngs

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135021986
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Globalisation
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Internet and digital technologies have changed the world we live in and the ways we engage with one another and work and play. This is the starting point for this collection which takes analysis of the digital world to the next level exploring the frontiers of digital and creative transformations and mapping their future directions. It brings together a distinctive collection of leading academics, social innovators, activists, policy specialists and digital and creative practitioners to discuss and address the challenges and opportunities in the contemporary digital and creative economy.

Contributions explain the workings of the digital world through three main themes: connectivity, creativity and rights. They combine theoretical and conceptual discussions with real world examples of new technologies and technological and creative processes and their impacts. Discussions range across political, economic and cultural areas and assess national contexts including the UK and China. Areas covered include digital identity and empowerment, the Internet and the 'Fifth Estate', social media and the Arab Spring, digital storytelling, transmedia and audience, economic and social innovation, digital inclusion, community and online curation, cyberqueer activism. The volume developed out of a UK Economic and Social Research Council funded research seminar series.

Part I

Connectivity

1 Innovation challenges in the digital economy

Damian Radcliffe

Introduction

The digital revolution, promised for so long, is now finally upon us. Much of this digital change has happened at such a dazzling pace, especially over the past decade, that many governments, regulators and traditional media businesses are struggling to keep up. This is not surprising when you consider that the media has changed faster over the past decade than at any other time in history (Ofcom 2011: 27–36).

At the beginning of the last decade the launch of a new communications service was the beginning of a relatively slow adoption curve… mobile phones and multichannel television both took more than a decade to reach 50% penetration. From 2000 to 2010, when services such as social networks and online TV were launched, they reached 50% penetration within 4–5 years. Analysts expect smartphones to reach the same landmark equally quickly.

(Ofcom 2011: 36)

The pace of these developments makes it hard to predict even the short term digital future. Just 10 years ago who would have anticipated a niche computer manufacturer, Apple, would rise to become one of the world's most powerful brands and the highest-valued company of all time, with a market value of approximately US$623bn (£397bn) (BBC 2012a) thanks substantially to its distinctive part in the smartphone and tablet revolutions, giving users new levels of style and computing and multimedia power literally in their hands? AlongsideApple, many of the media and technology brands which now dominate our lives (Google, Amazon, Facebook and YouTube) were either born – or came of age – in the past decade. Connectivity is central to these developments. We are now able to connect to the Internet – and to one another – faster than ever and from a greater variety of devices than ever. Apple arguably owes its recent success to its ability to create new – and profitable – markets which capitalize on this 24/7 connectivity. The late Steve Jobs, Apple's co-founder and charismatic chief executive, did not necessarily originate the MP3 player, the online music store, the tablet or the smartphone (Gassée 2012). But through great design and marketing he made these devices – and the experiences they offer – highly desirable to consumers. The impact of this can be seen on the Apple website where: ‘Over a million people from all over the world have shared their memories, thoughts, and feelings about Steve. One thing they all have in common – from personal friends to colleagues to owners of Apple products – is how they've been touched by his passion and creativity’ (Apple 2012). Walter Isaacson's (2011) authorized biography of Jobs published 19 days after his death sold a total of 379,000 copies in its first week in America, outselling the next-best selling title, The Litigators by John Grisham, by more than three to one (Stone 2011). Those who were slower to innovate – such as Research in Motion, the makers of the Blackberry service – saw their market share, profits and staffing dramatically hit as other smartphones began to gain market share. In June 2012 the company reported plans to reduce its workforce by a third after a US$518m (£334m) net loss in the three months to 2 June, compared with a US$695m profit in the same period a year earlier (Research in Motion 2012).Reuters noted it was their first loss in eight years and that shares in the company had fallen by nearly 70 per cent over the past year. They dropped a further 18 per cent following this announcement (Sharp 2012). Other, more fleet-of-foot companies, such as Samsung, saw their stock rise, with analyst Horace Dediu (2012) reporting in November 2012 that the South Korean conglomerate had captured more than 50 per cent of the smartphone market in less than three years.

Speed of technological change

Technological innovations have been powered by ubiquitous connectivity and consumers have constantly increased their dependence on it. This is manifest in the volume of mobile data now transferred over the UK's mobile networks. Between 2007 and 2010 this increased 40-fold as ‘always on’ smartphones started to become increasingly mainstream (Ofcom 2011: 35). Both the speed of access to content and services, and the devices through which we consume them, have changed and continue to change so quickly that new technologies rapidly seem old and established. The Apple iPad tablet is a good example. It was launched only in 2010 but its success was so dramatic that within a year or so it was hard to imagine a pre-tablet world. Gartner (2012), an international research company, forecast that tablet sales in 2012 would total 118.9 million units, a 98 per cent increase from 2011 sales of 60 million units. Apple's iOS (operating system) – on which the iPad runs – was projected to account for 61.4 per cent of worldwide media tablet sales to end users in 2012. Writing for Digital Trends website in September 2012, communications consultant Louie Herr noted:

The rise of the tablet has heralded changes big and small across the tech ecosystem… If the computing industry was a stagnant pond in late 2009, the introduction of tablets a few months later was less akin to a pebble flicked from the shore and more like a boulder hurled from 10 feet up. The ripples have been widespread and lasting.

(Louie Herr 2012)

Given this rapid change of technological norms, owners of the Apple iPhone5 launched in 2012 would probably not have thought much about the fact that it was only five years since the original iPhone 1 (in those days simply known as the iPhone) was launched (Apple 2007). Or that rival Android phones emerged only in late 2008 (Google 2008). It is worth noting, however, that the length of time it took Apple to go from launching the iPhone to selling the iPhone5 (five years) is much the same as the legislative timetable for producing a new UK Communications Act, Secretary of State Jeremy Hunt having announced a Communications Review in May 2011 ‘with the review process culminating in a new communications framework by 2015’ (Department of Culture, Media and Sport 2011). Given the pace of technological change, manifest in the evolution of products like the iPhone – and the contrasting slow pace of the legislative and regulatory process – such legislation inevitably risks being out of date by the time it hits the statute book, or, worse, so vague that it offers nothing new of any real value. As Lewis Carroll (1871) wrote in Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There: ‘It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!’

Perhaps this is why initial proposals were quite light on detail, focusing instead on three broad themes: ‘growth, innovation and deregulation, a communications infrastructure that provides the foundations for growth, creating the right environment for the content industry to thrive’ (Department of Culture, Media and Sport 2011). While the challenges to the regulatory system from digital developments are likely to continue well into the future, consumers on the other hand have doubly benefited from expanding connectivity in being able to access a plethora of services as well as through competition driving down prices for some devices and services (Ofcom 2011: 28).

As an indication of how commonplace much of this digital technology has become, the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS) now includes smartphones and MP3 players in the virtual shopping basket used to calculate the cost of living. ONS statistician Phil Gooding explained the move by noting that ‘these new items show the way technology is changing our lives. Powerful smartphones and the applications that run on them have become essential for many when communicating or seeking information’ (Hawkes 2011). Communications devices now deemed essential would a decade ago often have been luxuries if they existed at all. The first versions of the Apple iPod digital music player launched in 2001 soon came to look like ancient technology they were so big and heavy, especially in comparison with the later Nano version. In the first decade of the twenty-first century the UK saw the transition from dial-up to broadband Internet to a point where the multichannel broadband, and increasingly high-definition (HD) and to a lesser extent 3D television, home was increasingly standard. Giant TVs, once a luxury product, were increasingly the norm. The average sized TV sold in North America was expected to exceed 40 inches in 2013 (DisplaySearch 2012). Meanwhile, cheaper, lighter and more portable mobile devices were allowing users to access a vast and growing library of content – music (for example iTunes), TV (for example iPlayer) and e-books – any time, any place.

Working lives also changed substantially, if incrementally. Improved connectivity saw the death of both the fax, replaced by attachments to email, and the international phone call, replaced by the Skype online video phone service, and significant substitution of the phone call itself by text messaging. Calls to landline phone connections were replaced by the increasingly dominant mode of mobile telephony.

Digital dependency

These transformations opened up possibilities for people for remote working, or teleworking, not previously practical, and altered the way businesses operated, academics and students conducted research, and everyday communications between people took place. Cisco's 2010 Connected World Technology Report, which surveyed 2,600 people from 13 countries, noted that: ‘Just over one-third of End Users indicate they need to be in the office to be more productive, while two-thirds of respondents find it unnecessary to be in the office to do their work’ (Cisco 2010: 16). Also that: ‘Given a scenario where End Users have to choose between a job opportunity with a slightly higher salary (+10%) that restricts remote access and an opportunity with a slightly lower salary (−10%) that allows flexible access, most would take the lower offer’ (Cisco 2010: 18). The impact of this new, ubiquitous connectivity changed expectations of technology and reliance upon it. Suddenly the slow speed of a web connection could cause major stress and frustration in everyday work and leisure situations, equally so the loss of mobile phone connection through a failure of the service or death of your phone.

Neurologist Susan Greenfield attracted some criticism for her claims that ‘living online is changing our brains’ (Swain 2011) but there was no doubt that technology was changing our social norms (Greenfield 2003). This was especially the case among young people seeing digital connectivity as essential for huge facets of their lives. A report by JWT Intelligence into Generation Z (those born after 1995) found that more than half said it was easier or more convenient to chat with friends digitally than face to face, and around four in 10 were more comfortable talking online than in real life and found it more fun (JWT 2012: 13). Face-to-face communication now seems unfashionable as technologically mediated connections have increasingly become the norm. In the UK, 68 per cent of teenagers claimed to do some activities less than before. ‘The activities teens claim to take part in less since getting a smartphone are: playing games on a console/PC (30%), taking photos with a camera (30%), using a PC to access the internet (28%), watching TV (23%), reading books (15%), using a paper map (14%), reading a printed newspaper (14%), socialising with friends (7%) and taking part in sport (6%)’ (Ofcom 2011: 58).

Teenagers were not alone in finding information and communication technologies (ICTs) and 24/7 connectivity essential to their lives. Ofcom found that among smartphone owners 37 per cent of adults and 60 per cent of teens admitted they were ‘highly addicted’ to their devices, leading to behaviours dividing modern manners, with nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of UK adults and a third (34 per cent) of teenagers admitting to having used their smartphone during mealtimes. That may not seem too serious, but when more than a fifth (22 per cent) of adults and nearly half (47 per cent) of teenage smartphone users admitted using or answering their handset in the bathroom or toilet (Ofcom 2011: 60–5) perhaps it is time to ask whether our need for connectivity has gone too far. Evidence made it clear that by the close of the first decade of the twenty-first century, people in wired societies like the UK had become used to being connected round the clock as well as relying on everyone else to be so. It was not surprising that with so much digital change in such a short time-span many – from consumers to businesses, governments to regulators – were struggling to keep up.

Government and regulators were at the forefront of understanding, however, the economic, citizen and consumer benefits unlocked through the new connectivity. ‘For example, Ericsson and Arthur D. Little have looked at the benefits of broadband and connectivity and found that for every 1,000 broadband connections, 80 new net jobs are created’ (Broadband Commission 2012: 18). Given these figures it was perhaps not surprising that most countries not only had a broadband plan, but that these plans looked extensively at the mechanisms for stimulating investment in networks as well as moves to get as many of the population as possible online. For example Brazil's national broadband initiative focused on both improving coverage and reducing the cost of broadband access to ensure it was available to low-income households, especially those in areas previously poorly served. Alongside plans to allocate up to R$1bn (US$600m) a year until 2014 to roll out broadband to 4,000 cities and towns which at the time did not have broadband services, the government also set the target to triple broadband uptake by 2014 and ensure that at least 40 million homes (68 per cent of the population) had access to speeds equal to or greater than 1Mbps (megabits per second) (Jensen 2011).

In this environment, discussions about digital inclusion had become as much a part of debates about economic growth and prosperity as they were about using ICTs to help combat social exclusion. Martha Lane Fox, the UK's Digital Champion, commissioned a study from consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers which made this economic case and argued that the total potential economic benefit from getting everyone in the UK online was in excess of £22bn. This figure included an observation that: ‘People with good ICT skills earn between 3% and 10% more than people without such skills.’ Also that: ‘Households offline are missing out on savings of £560 per year from shopping and paying bills online’ (Pricewa...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Abbreviations and acronyms
• Digital world Connectivity, creativity and rights
• Part 1 Connectivity
• Part 2 Creativity
• Part 3 Rights
• Index