Capacity will continue to exceed demand for manufactured products. Opening Pacific Rim markets will supply a brief surge of demand. Manufactured products can best be produced in areas of low facilities, materials and labour cost. By the year 2010, our requirement for material things will be filled by largely automated manufacturing plants with few employees. New manufacturing facilities will be located near to market.
An info-economy is not an industry. It is a revolution. The product is the information not the multimedia playbacktechnology. In a revolutionary model we will have the opportunity to create personalised electronic newspapers for every subscriber. Learned works and research on the most obscure subjects can become readily available to anyone with access to the network. Printed books become an art form. Writers will electronically self-publish works from the trite to profound. The 500 hundred channel universe will in fact be a 500,000 channel system as technology will permit the transfer of real time video from computer to computer over a high- speed digital network.
One of the major challenges will be in sorting through the avalanche of information. Creators will be rewarded based on the desirability and number of accesses to their works.
There will not be a "Canadian" Information Highway. Rather Canadians can choose to be leaders and beneficiaries of the creation of the global Information Highway. Canada is ideally positioned to be a significant player in the 21st century info-economy. We enjoy a deserved reputation for expertise indevelopment of the communications technology which is the infrastructure of a hard-wired global economy. The educational system produces graduates of high ability. Our creators are willing and able to compete on the world market. The role of legislators is to exercise vision and leadership in the development of law.
The Information Highway is by definition a rapid transit system of visual, textual and audio works which may or may not be combined. These works will be created by a wide range of authors. It is certain that new forms of creation will develop from digital technology.
Conceptually there is no reason why a digital work could not be imbued with an Artificial Intelligence, a "personality" and an ability to learn. A work of art may be a "virtual reality" which interacts with the participant. Copyright legislation must be sufficiently visionary to adapt to new and unknown technology. We no longer possess the luxury of adopting a "wait and see" attitude to future technology.
The introduction and implementation of technology is (and always has been) exponential. Currently at least one major corporation in the United States is requiring the release of creators' rights" throughout the Universe" for works to be "published, reproduced, performed displayed or transmitted (including but not limited to electronic and optical versions and in any other media now in existence or hereafter developed) in whole or in part. " This isan indication of how rapidly we are moving.
Attempting to create a Canadian "industry" of new media producers on a 20th century corporate model is a recipe for disaster. Protection must be focused on the act of creation whatever the medium.
Consider a 21st century economy with weak and inconsistent copyright law. Failure to provide adequate protection to creators will result in the development of an "info-cracy" able to purchase the creative works of authors who carefully restrict access to their works. The mass of the population will have unlimited access to "info-waste", valueless material which can be provided cheaply by network information broadcasters.
The vast majority of info-products will be produced by individuals or small groups of creators seeking a market for their unique expression of ideas. They will use low-cost software which exceeds the capability of anything available today. The factory will be a single high-powered computer costing far less than a car. Distribution is by fibre-optic telecom network carrying gigabytes per second. Works will often include portions of other works licensed from their creators. Cooperative ventures will be common and will be produced by authors who meet electronically.
Copyright legislation supplies the "rules of the road" for theInformation Highway.
Canadian success in the 21st century info-economy demands the absolute economic protection of the intellectual property which will be the coin of the realm. Each creative contributor of the expression of an idea will share in the reward. The democratization of knowledge on the info-highway will occur when creators are assured that their contribution will be economically rewarded.