Summary

The digital consumer society is evolving at a great pace as the communications and media landscape undergoes increasingly rapid changes. Many new information and communications technologies and linked applications are changing the way people seek out information, find entertainment and engage in civic and consumer transactions. The changes have altered the media marketplace and brought many new players into direct competition with established media operators. This has triggered exploration of new business models for the supply of information, today's primary currency across a range of commercial and social contexts. Predicting where current developments might take us is not easy. Digital consumers have more choices to make than ever before in terms of sources of information about commodities and services. They can also more readily become producers as well as consumers in the digital world with the spread of digital equipment and off-the-shelf tools that enable them to upload their own content online. The rapid evolution of new information and communications technologies has also been characterized by shrinkage in the time-lag between innovation, launch and reaching a critical mass or ‘tipping point’ beyond which it spreads dramatically from early adopters to the general population.

Introduction

The rapid evolution of computerized technologies and communications systems from the middle of the last decade of the 20th century has opened up a vast array of facilities and services to the public in general through which they can engage in a wide range of civic, commercial and consumer transactions. The internet has been the most prominent new communication system to emerge during this period. It provides people with access to vast quantities of information and entertainment on almost any topic imaginable and represents an important two-way communications medium for many.

In parallel to the rapid penetration of the internet, the emergence of digital technologies has wrought significant changes to longer established technologies, most notably to television and telephony, that have acquired much more diverse and interactive functionalities. In essence, the computerization of TV sets and telephony has transformed them from onedimensional communications devices into multifunctional hubs through which a variety of forms of information can be received and sent by users. Each of these formerly distinctive technologies has acquired the defining functions of the other. Users can receive television pictures via their mobile phones, while viewers can engage in two-way communications via their digital interactive TV sets.