Page 21 - AC/E's Digital Culture Annual Report 2015

AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 201521there was nothing. This type of offer changes the distribution formats, the partners we need at each time and the characteristics of the required employees, and we must therefore realise that doing the same as always is simply no longer an option.If we do not have people capable of innovating, if we carry on doing the same as ever and treat our employees in the same way as before, we will soon cease to be a growing business and will function at the slowing pace of the old business- es which are dying out, some faster than others.Whereas traditional sponsors are becoming much more selective and miserly, dozens ofnew formats for raising funds for culture are emerging and most of them involve the Internet and the solutions it provides, among them new forms of payment that are gradually catering to person-to-person businesses, micropayments and crowdfunding.I am convinced that crowdfunding will be increasingly important in the novel approaches of new cultural actions of all kinds. Its problem lies in the first part of its definition, “crowd”, which is very difficult to achieve unless in global environments with users from anywhere inthe world and in several languages. Limiting ourselves to Spain will not get us far, as the communities generated will be too small to fund ambitious projects.We are starting to witness the use of intelligent agents. Although they are too basic today,we will very soon have digital and personal intelligent agents that will “get to know” usin depth, will be familiar with our culturaland leisure tastes of all kinds and will surf the Internet independently, gathering information and offering us suggestions of what to do with our leisure and learning time.Very soon we will have digital intelligent agents that will give us suggestions on what to do with our leisure time.These agents will be a key factor in second-gen- eration crowdfunding environments because they will allow us, without having to do anything directly, to interact with people with the same tastes as us and even negotiate whatwe wish to invest in a great idea that has few possibilities of success. These agents will be capable of “negotiating” on our behalf discounts, special conditions, payments of services and practically anything else that today can only be done with a physical agent.Contrary to what occurs with current agents– who, after all, are people with their own personal agenda – these digital agents will be aimed solely at improving our personal lives in any of their areas of business, leisure and culture and they will be offered at different levels. An agent that only searches for articles that interest me will be much cheaper than another that is capable of negotiating discounts for me or even a contract as a university lecturer.We must prepare for a future that will very soon draw on artificial intelligence and advances in the understanding of biological processes of all kinds in order to migrate much of the workRodolfo Carpintier