[New Wave] Digital Content and Identity

Identity is the essence of existence or the characteristic that defines it. In modern society, it serves as an important criterion for defining the role of existence and evaluating that existence. Being faithful to the essence of existence makes one a good subject. Therefore, establishing the identity of a certain subject is important for building one’s status, and any instability in this is seen as undesirable. Terms like ‘identity confusion’ and ‘identity loss’ are easily understood to have negative connotations, even by those who are not experts in psychology.

As times change, people’s values and perspectives also change. While firmly establishing identity was an important task in the past, nowadays, with physical and psychological boundaries weakening, people tend to avoid explicitly displaying their identity. This is because setting boundaries of identity in advance would unnecessarily limit one’s potential range of activities.

Nowadays, successful domestic and international companies do not use business or industry names in their company names. Everyone knows that Google is no longer just a search engine company. Amazon started as an online bookstore but now operates various businesses including unmanned stores, telemedicine, and artificial intelligence. Starbucks removed coffee from its logo starting in 2011. Dunkin’ also removed its signature product, donuts, from its company name. The same applies domestically. Companies like Naver and Kakao, which cover business areas including search, shopping, finance, real estate, broadcasting, and mobility, are difficult to define by a single identity.

This change is also a market demand where companies must provide services beyond the functions customers require, as they are constantly connected to customers through digital devices. Being always connected to customers means customers can intervene at any time. When customer intervention occurs, change happens. Change varies from person to person. The development of artificial intelligence (AI) to meet individual tastes and demands is inevitable. Digital content is achieving rapid innovation in conjunction with AI. Beyond coloring webtoons and assisting in music production, AI has reached the level of coding games and editing images through natural language commands. Services like YouTube and Roblox share customer-created content. Content created by customers, not digital content providers, has become the core of added value.

Digital content changes daily, but the administrative systems supporting it have yet to break free from outdated frameworks. Game rating systems assess whether provided content is appropriate for certain age groups. The same video rating model from the past is still applied. If AI could identify the user’s age and appropriately modify the content and its expression accordingly, what age rating should such content receive? Should it be rated for all ages, or should it receive separate ratings for each age group?

Charles Darwin, who advocated evolution theory, once said that it is not the strongest or the smartest species that survive, but those that adapt to change. I believe this applies not only to the content industry but also to administrative services. Especially now, with a new government in place, if we do not change, when will we?

Jangju Lee, Author of ‘How to Communicate with My Child in the Gaming Generation’ and Director of Irak Digital Culture Research Institute