Page 196 - AC/E's Digital Culture Annual Report 2015

Cultural business models on the Internet196ConclusionsIn conclusion, we can affirm that the Internet has modified and will continue to modify stories and how they are told, how they are read, why and by whom. To sum up:• many more stories are published now than before;• most are available for very low prices or are even free;• the average quality of the stories to which we have daily access is probably lower;• nonetheless, we have more possibilities of customising the stories we wish to access;• all of us, individuals and institutions, can publish more easily;• among the new publishers, brands have interesting budgets and create quality stories;• the boundary between advertising and independent stories is increasingly blurred, because the Internet requires greater atten- tion and respect for those who access stories;• stories are increasingly accessed through smartphones and tablets;• the spread of sensors relates physical and personal objects through smartphones and tablets; stories are often involved in this new relationship;• the aim of publishing stories is to make us interact with them, so that we leave the mark of our experience;• this mark is measured and stories are thus a powerful instrument for establishing profiles;At the beginning of 2015, Doc Searls and David Weinberger,58 two of the authors of a historic Internet document – the “Cluetrain Manifesto” published in 1999 – proposed updating it in the light of the experience of sixteen years of life, dissemination and development of the Internet. Made by Internet insiders, it is perhaps the best summary of the context we have attempted to describe and in which the major transformation of storytelling is taking place.This new version features 121 keys and many of them refer to the issues dealt with here.We will cite a few of them:19. The Net is not a medium any more than a conversation is a medium.20. On the Net, we are the medium. We are the ones who move messages. We do so every time we post or retweet, send a link in an email, or post it on a social network.52. We were right the first time:59 markets are conversations.53. A conversation isn’t your business tugging at our sleeve to shill a product we don’t want to hear about.The digital age is transforming storytelling