| Chapter 1: | Digital Media Defined |
|
|
same time, there is an implicit assumption that the impact of digital media is primarily a global phenomenon—the routine reporting of the number of global users of Facebook and YouTube illustrates this point—and can be best understood at the macro level. In Digital Media in East Asia, we seek to provide a comprehensive overview of the regional impact of the digital revolution and the impact of one important region, East Asia, on the sector itself. Our primary intellectual and theoretical foundation for this study rests in the fascinating body of literature on national innovation systems, for we see digital transformation as an excellent opportunity to explore the intersection of economic and technological innovation and government policy, with an overlay of the regional nature of this important transitional force and process.
This study is further influenced by our understanding that the digital revolution is itself at a major turning point. For the last quarter century, the digital economy and, logically, government policy related to the sector have focused on the technologies of the digital age: Internet delivery systems, mobile Internet capabilities, laptops, video game consoles, handheld devices, imaging equipment, servers, switches, computer chips, and the thousands of software and hardware innovations that lifted computers and digital communications from the laboratory and the military services and propelled the sector to the forefront of global innovation. The hardware remains important, as the 2010–2011 global competition over tablets demonstrated, but the digital economy and digital society have continued to change. Attention shifted, initially, to digital services (particularly e-commerce and e-government applications) and to the integration of new technologies into everyday life. More recently, the focus has been on digital content and on the targeted creation of stories, videos, music, and other cultural material that capitalizes on the technological capabilities of the twenty-first-century digital technologies.5
Transitions in the publishing industry show the impacts of digital innovation most readily. It is important to note that many of these shifts occurred in Japan before they were felt in North America and Europe.