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Name: Robert Lock
From: North Carolina
Bio: Founder of COMPUTE! Publications (1979), Game Player's magazines, The PC Press, and ePlay Magazine
Area of Expertise: Pioneer/Originator
Topic: General, Overarching Remarks
Headline: Information enabling and content as data
Nutshell: Data streams will merge and content will be plucked out of the data flow as needed, when needed... but tracking will be omnipresent.
Vision:One of our primary tasks as publishers is to create new tools to facilitate and shape the presentation of content to users/readers/viewers in whatever data stream or form users choose to select, whether that be traditional ink-to-paper, or through the airwaves or cables via earphones, monitors, scrolling displays on the face of the refrigerator, the cell phone, or any number of handheld devices.
We as publishers and information enablers are concurrently creators of content, collectors of content and ultimately packagers and repackagers of streams of data as content. Some content as data is created for publication, some is captured in passing for publication.
The stream of data as content is pervasive; the Internet channel and other related channels are converging into one set of pipelines that will enable us to watch in real time who chooses what and when and (and we’re evolving the tools to infer why) and even what they do next with it. The transmission and presentation of original content and the observing of the behaviors surrounding the selection (who selects what, when, where, why, and how) has generated a whole new dimension of information.
We must provide and shape and nurture those content/data flows in responsible ways. This increasing ability to watch and monitor and amass and record the behaviors and actions of those utilizing published data streams will be one of the most powerful learning tools and one of the most potentially invasive capabilities of the 21st century.
The process itself and the ownership and control of the underlying data, whether data as content or data as behavior regarding content, will become significant issues in the future of publishing for both niche and mass market content provision and management and the privacy rights of users and viewers.
Date Submitted: January 12, 2005
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