Digitized Media: Effects on Economy and Society

Imagine the economy and society of a completely digitized media world in 2015. To predict such a world is difficult or rather impossible. Peer-to-peer systems such as Kazaa give an impression of how fast millions of users are able to threaten conventional ways of distribution and inflexible royalty systems. Traditional forecast methods cannot cope with such fast changing and highly uncertain environments. Scenario planning is a much more useful tool, as it does not assume one predictable future but moreover tries to determine which plausible outcomes of the future are possible. Main driving forces and key uncertainties predominant for the future are identified. A possibility space of the future is opened up and different scenarios are developed. The world will probably not actually turn out to be one of these proposed scenarios, their explanatory power, however, is undeniable.