HE 2006

HE2006's official keynote address was delivered by Gary Sasaki, president of DIGDIA, a company that helps companies understand the ways that digital entertainment creates growth opportunities for savvy businesspeople.

Mr. Sasaki explained that mature technologies, such as analog TV, have limited growth potential, but entrenched audiences, whereas emerging technologies frequently offer more potential than genuine growth—that is, until an unanticipated development generates mainstream interest in what had previously seemed an unlikely direction. Take the Web explosion of the last 10 years, he observed—no one could have imagined how mainstream surfing the Web would become before eBay, Google, and Amazon.

Mr. Sasaki predicted that digital entertainment is at a tipping point now that computer companies, software corporations, and the content industry were mainstreaming processor intensive entertainment options—and, to this ear, he ever so delicately hinted that the increased friction between fair-use and restrictive formats is the glitch that preceeds a real growth spurt.