Digital Media in East Asia: National Innovation and the Transform ...

reduce the costs, increase the speed, and otherwise improve the capabilities of digital processing, graphics systems, data compression, and the like have helped democratize digital production. Only a decade ago, high-quality digital production required access to expensive equipment and elite production facilities. Comparable, if not more advanced, capabilities are now available at a comparatively small cost, due in large measure to the economies of scale created by East Asian manufacturers. Indeed, the integration of the technological proficiency of the East Asian digital manufacturers with regional content creation has been a key element in the area’s emergence as a major player in digital production capabilities.

Digital Creation

In the early days of computing, technologists used to refer to the “garbage in, garbage out” phenomenon, referring to the fact that computers were inanimate objects that respond only to the quality and character of the material entered into the system. The same holds to the present, albeit with a greatly expanded system that is many thousands of times faster, more reliable, and more capable of handling large volumes of material than the early computers. The Internet and the World Wide Web are only as good as the content that is created for distribution and use over the digital systems. Just twenty years ago, only computer aficionados, technicians, scientists, and a handful of government agencies (mostly in the military) made extensive use of the Internet. The development of browsers, search engines, file-sharing systems, greater storage capacity, and other such innovations—the most important being the rapidly diminishing cost of Internet systems and the equally rapid rise in the system’s transmission speeds—provided a platform of many times greater utility and capability.

It remained to be seen at that point if consumers, businesses, and creators would discover reasons to meet in cyberspace. But meet they did, with staggering results. Entire new industries emerged, ranging from pornography²² and retailing to delivery of movies and home surveillance