PROJECT INTRODUCTION

EMBRACING A CLIMATE OF TECHNOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION

In the new millennium, an industrialized society, a manufacturing and service-based economy, and a Cold War-driven international relations system have given way to an information society and global economy in which intellectual property is a key resource. Much has been written and thought and predicted about the technological developments that are driving this transformation. Various sectors of American society, including business, communications, government, entertainment, science, medicine, and education are racing to accommodate these changes and to anticipate their consequences. However, the nonprofit part of the arts and culture sector, although it encompasses significant technological resources and content, is seldom more than an afterthought in this transformation or in discussions of intellectual property, of the national information infrastructure, or of the increasingly technological global economy.

INNOVATION AS A CATALYST FOR CONTENT AND ECONOMICS

The arts and cultural sector has great potential to prompt further technological innovations, to provide meaningful content as well as economic assets through technology, and to disseminate creative and intellectual products. None of this can be appropriately achieved without the close examination of intellectual property issues.

SHARED CONCERNS AND SHARED CREATIVE ASSETS

Attention to this subject by nonprofits has been piecemeal and scattered within the existing legal, technological, and policy frameworks. Though individual cultural organizations, some discipline and trade organizations, as well as ad hoc groups have taken up specific issues, these have been relatively isolated from each other, reactive to external developments, and unguided by a sectoral vision of the place and function of the arts and culture in an information society or a technologically driven economy. In contrast, various for-profit cultural industries have actively pursued their intellectual property interests and technological opportunities. Certainly, both the not-for-profit and the for-profit parts of the arts and cultural sector share concerns about issues at the intersection of art, technology, and intellectual property, but they often bring different perspectives, priorities, interests, values, and resources to bear in policy debates and development deals. Understanding both common causes and varying interests is essential to the wise and productive development of America's creative assets in the twenty-first century.