The Hypothesis

The logic of my hypothesis is fairly simple:

• Throughout history, technology has changed art and the business of entertaining people.
• Historically, these technology shifts impact different entertainment businesses in parallel without too much cross-over.  For example, a new print technology won’t change the music business, or a new film technology won’t change the theater.
• The shift to digital technologies, however, appears to be impacting ALL the entertainment businesses in much the same way.  Film, TV, publishing, music, radio and video games are all being impacted by digital technology.
• It follows then, that ALL entertainment businesses will soon become one single business of creating, distributing and consuming digital entertainment.  I refer to this as the era of “Freeflow Entertainment.”
• In the era of Freeflow Entertainment, the nature of the technology shift so radically changes the economic fundamentals of the entertainment business that old ways of making money and spurring investment will no longer work.
• The new challenge is how to make money by finding or manufacturing scarcity in a technological world designed for abundance.
• Today, in 2012, there are several new ways to manufacture scarcity that might show the way.  We are in a period of early disruption where we can examine bleeding edge innovations and see what might become the norm for all entertainment businesses going forward.

I’m going to use this basic logic as an outline for this blog.  It will no doubt change and evolve over time, but it provides a good reference model for situating discussions.  I’ve organized this hypothesis into several Chapters that I’ve made into Categories for filtering and viewing posts.  For now, we’ll start with:

• Technology Changes Art
• Freeflow Entertainment
• Entertainment Economics
• Manufacturing Scarcity in a World of Abundance