Digital Creative Content for the EC

Background

DG Research of the EC had commissioned a project to develop future views of digital creative content, to underpin policy recommendations. The EPIS project was led by the Fraunhofer Institute, with support from Sussex University’s Science Policy Research Unit and the Austrian Foresight Institute. It had been running for two years and the SIO from IPTS, Ioannis Maghiros, asked for help in pulling the work together to underpin policy recommendations.

The Workshop

Over two days, the group of 9 people from the project plus 3 outsiders (from the University of Trieste – an expert on publishing, an entrepreneur from Maastricht – expert on digital media, and Gill Ringland from SAMI) met and explored futures scenarios for the digital creative content industry. The technical staff reacted well to setting a context for their work and considering the customer demand and industry structures as drivers of change.

The Scenarios

• “The Microsoft-Google world”,
          Closed and regulated market
          Dominated by a few globally active companies.

• “The open innovation society”
          all promises associated with user created content, social software
          and Web 2.0 are realised.

• “Society meets industry”
          Intermediate scenario
          Creative content sector is transformed rather than revolutionised.

• “IT is not cool”
          Negative effects affect public attitude
          Widespread loss of popularity for the Internet as a tool for communication
          and cultural expression.

Using the scenarios

The full writeup is available at epis.jrc.es/documents/POlicy%20WS/Scenarios%20180907.pdf, and the scenarios are being used by Fraunhofer and IPTS to actively discuss the issues and develop policy.