Content 2.0: the change from the Copy Economy to the Attention & Access Economy

One of my key topics during my recent presentation at the Ars Electronica Symposium in Linz (podcast here) was the mind-rattling shift that the content industries - and the content creators, of course - have to make, right now, and that is the shift from the COPY to ATTENTION, Trust, Access, Permission, i.e. the shift from a hard product to a 'soft' service (and then, later, better products, too!).

Just as the inevitable shift from Control to Openness and Collaboration is a very tough challenge, so is this humangeous shift from copy=value to access=value. The bottom line is that we just don't really know how to do this yet, and we are worried about potential mine-fields and possible loss of previous monetization options. THIS is the challenge of the next 5 years, and we must learn to adapt quickly, since these changes are both inevitable as well as invariably for the better. Now, we simply must get wet so that we can learn how to swim - there is no other way.