On November 18th, 2015, a talk event on the theme “The Future on Digital Media” was held at the Apple Store Omotesando. Speakers were Hiroshi Fujiwara, Yoshikage Kajiwara (creative director) and Issey Enomoto (editor, writer). Now that technology has evolved with the spread of developing social media networks, what kind of changes might digital media achieve from now on, and what is the direction for future digital media? This report covers that day’s conversation with a full transcript.

Photo_Apple Store, Omotesando (c) Kensuke Tomuro | Text_RoC Staff

Hiroshi Fujiwara, Yuki Kajihara (Creative Director), Kazuo Enomoto (Editor · Writer) from the podium on the stage.

Fujiwara: Good evening. I am planning to talk about the future of digital media today, but first of all I would like to tell you a little bit about the history of the digital media and the current situation.

Let's see how the technology indispensable for digital media has evolved. Amidst our lives, what is the most advanced technology evolution? Even if I live alone, the robot talks to me when I go home? What do you all feel? How are you there?

(Venue): I feel hope and fear. I guess the robot will dominate.

Fujiwara: ...... It is completely different from the answer I thought (laugh). The most obvious thing about the evolution of technology is "things get smaller". For example, in music, in the days when there was no recording technology originally, we had to go to halls, go to live and actually visit the spot. One day it came to home as a 30 cm record board, then became a 12 cm CD, became MP3, and became a thing without anything now. It is the evolution of technology that big things become smaller like that.

So what is the evolution of media? It gradually became smaller from the newspaper, and now you can read the latest news on the iPhone. And not only has things become smaller, but also the speed is getting faster. In the past, in order to communicate information, the hikyaku was running with a letter, the development of mail and the spread of e - mails, now the information that I want to deliver now can be delivered instantly. Recently, when there was terrorism in Paris, looking at the morning edition, nothing is written about it. I felt it again that there is a very time lag between the information that everyone is talking about and the information written in the newspaper.

Well, I think that there are various digital media now, but I would like to talk about what kind of media is interesting to us today with three people. Kajiwara-kun and Enomoto-kun came to visit. Thank you.

Kajiwara, Enomoto: Thank you.

Fujiwara: I think that there are various good and bad points in the current digital media, how is it?

Enomoto: Even with a digital media and a single mouth, there are web magazines, official media that magazines and newspapers are doing, viral media, curation media, etc. There are various forms. Originally I was a magazine man and I am working as a web magazine as an extension of the magazine, but I'm afraid that web magazine is still at the stage of trial and error, this is the correct answer . It is feeling that it is doing optimization according to the evolution of the technology every now.

Fujiwara: How are you? Kajiwara-kun is.

Kajiwara: I do not think that e-books are so aggressive, I think that there are still a lot of advantages of being paper as well as magazines and books. Randomly accessible, easy to locate the desired page, light or something. Recently, however, I am using the fixed rate distribution service of magazines, but I feel quite a bit of the merit that I can read magazines that I have not bothered to buy or even read. That is funny with that one. Looking at a big screen like the iPad Pro is easier to read.

Fujiwara: You feel a sense of speed after all. With regard to speed, paper magazines can not compete with digital media. I think speeding fast is a very good thing.

About the so-called web magazine, it was almost one hundred percent nearly 100% until about three or four years ago, like reading everything we made here. It became "participatory type" like everyone sharing one thing and handling information by the spread of SNS such as フ ェ イ ス ブ ッ ク and ツ イ ッ タ ー. How? Does Enomoto use フ ェ イ ス ブ ッ ク?

Enomoto: I am using it, but it is an honest place to keep a distance. Hiroshi is also like that, is not it?

Fujiwara: I am doing facebook and instagrams, but I think that such SNS and blog such as honeycomb etc. are obviously different.

Enomoto: It may be because I am an old person, but as for the reliability of information, what is called traditional media is more reliable. I just talked with Mr. Kajiwara the other day.

Kajiwara: Regarding reliability, rather than the characteristics of the media, the layer of people working there is still thicker on paper. Knowledge is accumulated, there are sources that can be trusted. Of course it is the same when paper publishers work on digital ones. Also, since the media originating from the net is basically free and the price is cheap, there are circumstances that the production side can not use much money.

Fujiwara: In terms of money, I talked about the evolution of technology for the first time, but music that I could only listen to live at first became available on record and CD, became more and more small and became data, The fact that things themselves disappear means that the income obtained from them gets steadily gone. That means that "evolution of technology = degeneration of artisticism" will lead to. It is a very useless part.

As far as music is concerned, the story diverts, but before this time, the manager of Frank Ocean came to Japan, I had a little tea and talked about it, after he saw Mr. Takashi Murakami's exhibition I know. Mr. Murakami is also an artist, Frank is also an artist. Mr. Murakami performs exhibitions all over the world and Frank lives around the world. Murakami sells posters and Frank sells CDs. However, in the case of Mr. Murakami, one masterpiece will cost 100 million, one billion, but in the case of Frank it will not cost 100 million, one billion for one song. Because that is a big difference, I was talking about now that I have to think about new ways.

Kajiwara: There is also a uniform uniform distribution of music on a flat basis, and there is a frame depending on the proportion delivered among them. But if the frame is small.

Fujiwara: That 's right. As soon as it becomes "proportion", the rival will be the Beatles or Elvis Presley. That's why it is hard to make money as new comers come out. Well, today is not a place to talk about money, (laugh), let's return the story.

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