The digital content landscape

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The arrival of the information age was marked by the arrival of the telegraph line and wireless transmission of information to a mass audience through radio and television. The advent of the IBM personal computer in 1981, followed by the World Wide Web in 1989, heralded the beginnings of a dramatic shift to a digital age.

Through transmission in digital form, information and knowledge – once costly and often slow to reproduce and communicate – became available instantaneously anywhere in the world.  The digital age enabled the exchange of ideas, information
and knowledge via a means as revolutionary as the invention of paper or the printing press.

Research for the Digital Content Strategy, public consultation and submissions, have led to the identification of four major influencing factors shaping the digital content environment now and over the next few years (Figure 3). 

These influencing factors are:

• High-speed broadband;
• Digital convergence;
• Content on demand; and
• The creation of the public digital space

Each of these factors contributes in turn to the current environment in which digital content is growing and changing.  We cannot fully understand digital content in the New Zealand context without taking these factors into account.

High-speed broadband

Access to, and use of, fast affordable broadband is the key to successful digital knowledge creation, and the building of virtual supply and distribution channels in a connected world. Broadband improves worker productivity, enables access to global markets, and increases opportunities for communication, research and collaboration. Without high-speed broadband, as a nation we will miss out on the benefits of the digital age, will fail to be technologically competitive, and will be greatly limited in our ability to present ourselves to, and engage with, the rest of the world.

Recognition of this important role of broadband is one of the fundamental drivers of the government’s Digital Strategy. In the year to December 2006, New Zealand had one of the highest growth rates in broadband uptake in the OECD.  However, as a nation we are still well behind our international counterparts in our adoption of broadband technology.  In December 2006, broadband subscriptions in New Zealand were just 14 per 100 people, and New Zealand’s overall OECD relative ranking was 21st out of 30 countries, between Portugal and Italy. In contrast, Australia was at 19.2%, the U.K. 21.6%, Canada 23.8% and Korea 29.1%. 3

Broadband technologies also have the potential to contribute to sustainable growth in our productivity by overcoming disadvantages of smallness in size and distance from market. New Zealand ranks 21st in the OECD in terms of income per capita, and our income per capita is more than 30 per cent below that of Australia. 4  The lack of scale in the New Zealand economy is seen by some as reducing incentives to invest, meaning some types of economic activity with large up-front costs are unlikely to be feasible.  Digital and broadband technologies, however, can provide the means to compete in a global marketplace, collaborate and undertake research internationally with larger partners, and take advantage of new technology based markets and knowledge creation.

Affordable broadband that is widely available is essential to enable the easy creation and exchange of content in a digital form.  Over half of New Zealand households with only dial-up Internet access cite cost as the reason for not adopting broadband, while over a third of rural households cite lack of availability as the reason. 5

As network convergence continues, distinctions will diminish between the content services provided across those networks. Wireless and satellite access, 3G mobile broadband, and fast (5 megabits plus) uncapped download and upload speeds on the local loop are also a vital part of the New Zealand digital content equation.

Digital convergence

In a digital age, New Zealanders will increasingly want to be able to access content in a way that is convenient to them, their work and their lifestyles.

During the 1990s, in New Zealand and most other parts of the world, direct public access to digital content was primarily through computer software and compact discs, with text based, static content being available via dial-up Internet connections (email, HTML web pages, news groups etc). 

The new millennium has since witnessed a rapid growth in a new range of digital technologies, including digital television, DVDs and high definition video, digital cameras, MP3 and mobile video players, along with high-speed broadband, cellular and wireless networks capable of delivering a vast array of interactive digital content and applications.  The personal computer is now just one of many devices on which digital content can be accessed or created on demand and to the taste of an individual user. A recent American study, for instance, showed that 30% of mobile phone users access the Internet on their device, and 75% of those conduct searches. 6  In New Zealand, 80% of the population had personal use of a mobile phone at some time during 2006. 7

Content users are no longer restricted to a particular network connection – wireless, cable, satellite, DSL, cellular. If they cannot access content by one channel, they can easily look to another.  As a rule, users want content to be available and to work on the devices of their choice, regardless of format or connection. 

Users also want the means to share the content that informs and entertains them with their colleagues, friends and families, who are part of an increasingly digital social network.  The digital social network, coupled with smart software and firmware applications, allows users to customise the experience of content that they have access to, and receive recommendations or suggestions from sources they value.

The anywhere, anytime nature of digital access means converged delivery channels, devices, and the content distributed through them, are at the centre of the digital age far more so than individual platforms, devices and technologies.  The distinctions between content distributors and telecommunications providers are disappearing: Vodafone recently acquired New Zealand’s third largest ISP ihug, while Telecom is developing capability for interactive triple play (telephone, Internet, television) with its next generation broadband.  These developments are becoming possible as economies of scale improve with greater broadband uptake and more cost-effective technologies become available.

 “There is no question in my mind that convergence is now coming to digital entertainment and consumer electronics. Consumer electronics products are being built using common hardware components from the computer industry, most of their capabilities are now being designed as software… and without a doubt, broadband Internet is emerging as the major communications and content distribution platform into the home.”
- Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IBM, 2006

Content on demand

With a growing pervasiveness of 24/7 networked devices, people have more opportunity than ever to communicate, query and search for content.  Accessing the Internet for purposes of search, whether through a desktop computer or laptop, a wireless PDA or mobile phone, is the most common form of search access. Two thirds of New Zealanders accessed the Internet at least once in 2006, and of those, 84.4% undertook general browsing for information, while 64.8% searched for information on goods and services. 8 The most popular websites visited by New Zealanders are sites owned by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, the three largest content search providers on the web, with between half and three quarters of online users visiting those sites at least once in a month period. 9

In a world attuned to fast on-demand results from Internet search engines, other forms of digital search such as database or catalogue search, television electronic programming guides, and geo-located mapping (GPS) tools are also becoming part of the first response to finding specialised or localised information, in preference to traditional means.  Subscriptions to RSS feeds, a format that provides syndicated summaries of changes to content, provide an increasingly popular method of tracking updates to information in almost real-time.

The invention of the hyperlink has also changed the way discovery of information occurs. No longer is a searcher required to look through an index, directory or contents page to find related information – the hyperlink allows them to move through areas of related and relevant content with ease. 

Specialised Internet search aggregators exist for collecting particular types of content, such as Google News, Technorati, Bloglines, Yahoo Video, while an increasing number of these services offer tagging of content by users for later reference or to improve search results (Figure 7).  A Pew study in late 2006 found that 28% of American Internet users, and 7% on any given day, have tagged or categorised online content such as photos, news stories or blog posts. 10

Ease of use and ease of discovery ranks highly among students, researchers and the general public when looking for information – if content is not visible or easily discovered, it is unlikely to be utilised.  Research on search engine user behaviour shows that 62% of searchers click on a search result within the first page, and 90% click within three pages. 11  However, web search engines are estimated to index far less than 0.1% of the total information available on the Internet 12 – the so-called ‘deep-web’ (database generated web-pages, as distinct from fixed web-pages) is seldom accessible through this means.

Furthermore, the amount of content online does not reflect the variety of offline content available and of potential value and significance to searchers.  There is significant concern internationally that large portions of nations’ histories, cultures and knowledge will effectively disappear from the collective memory in the digital age. 13

In a networked world, online and on-demand search is replacing directories, newspapers and reference desks as the means to find up to the minute information and content.  Ensuring comprehensive and accurate content is there to be found is essential to establish and maintain a New Zealand content presence in the search results.

Creation of the public digital space

While email communication and the computerisation of personal and company records have been some of the enduring uses of digital technologies, arguably the fastest growth in digital content in the first decade of the 21st century has been in the public digital space.

The advent of broadband and smart, powerful hardware and software applications, have dramatically changed the way users interact with digital content.  Users are becoming interactive creators, adding and sharing information and experiences in virtual communities based around social and family networks, or in a rich variety of educational, recreational, cultural and other interests.

Very often, information and knowledge is being freely shared and exchanged in this space, in some cases with the expectation of reciprocal benefit, in others with no expectation other than adding to the common good or providing an outlet of expression.  This public digital space can be viewed as distinct from the private space of email, instant messaging, customer records, propriety knowledge etc. (Figure 8).

The informal public digital space has been rapidly expanding with the advent of blogging, personal web-spaces, discussion boards, user reviews, wikis, podcasting, social tagging, and other socially oriented content creation.  Blogs, for instance, were estimated to number some 70 million in March 2007, and are continuing to grow worldwide at the rate of 120,000 a day. 14

For commercial content creators and providers, this informal space presents a lucrative area of activity, provided they can establish a revenue model that works for them.  Often this may involve linking a traditional business activity with a digital one.  For innovators, creatives and business start-ups, it provides a virtual testing space for trying out new ideas among willing users.

Digital technologies are also enabling the expansion of formal public knowledge into the digital space, where a far wider audience can access and benefit from it.  Publicly funded science and research, official information, heritage portals, geospatial mapping, online databases, archives and digital collections, are all filling the public digital space, providing an unprecedented level of access and openness to public information and research knowledge.  Much non-profit research and knowledge is becoming widely accessed in this way, providing a means for community groups and others to collate, collaborate and provide resources quickly and cheaply.

The growth of the digital space, and in particular the formal and informal public space, is both a result of, and a driver of demand for, better connection, access, and search.  In a digital age, these influencing factors are integral to understanding the digital content environment.  In turn, without addressing digital content, the nature of each of these factors cannot be fully appreciated.

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