January 09, 2006

DRM In A Different Age

What are your mental triggers to remember where you've been? What you've done? With whom?

In Japan stamps are a common way of providing proof of having been somewhere. Train stations, mountain huts, sea ports, and airports often have a work bench where you can add an additional stamp. The designs are often simple and perhaps because of the format have an element of 'classic' about them - the stamp for Chitose Airport, Hokkaido shown below.

The tools to take photographs are widely accessible. But what are the properties that make physical and digital photographs so accessible to communicate experiences? As more and more about how the human brain works is understood what will be the next major content format shift? Can and will experiences be piped more directly into and out of the brain? Assuming people will want to carry tangible triggers for those memories, what form will they take? Why? What is the essense of an experience to be captured and communicated? How will the essense change as the tools to communciate the experiences change? And in a world where this is possible is the ultimate DRM the ability to totally remove or add memories of experiences to enable us to have that first/most recent experience again and again?

Giving away (implanting) content/experiences for free may not seem like a great way to enforce DRM, but if the value of an experience is in doing something for the first time for example a watching a cliff-hanger movie or perhaps falling in love, users may well be willing to pay to have those experiences removed.

Posted by Jan at 11:17 AM | Comments (2)

January 08, 2006

Insights From Lack of Knowledge & Assumptions

In an exhibition in Chitose Airport highlighting road safety - mobile phone as trigger for accident. Whilst the artists were certainly given direction what can young children teach us about how the future turns out? What do we overlook because of our in-built assumptions, domain knowledge? What leads are missed for fear of asking 'dumb' questions in front of peers?

Chitose devotes a huge amount of space to retail activities - the entrance hall is more like a supermarket in Shinjuku than an airport. Kind of similar - cinemas that are in the fast-food business and the showing-film business, and McDonalds probably makes more money from financing franchisees or property rental than selling hamburgers.

Posted by Jan at 11:02 AM | Comments (0)