Cultural services and markets: related professional profiles

The regional and local Cultural Heritage (to be defined in a broad sense, from museums to regional gastronomy and folklore) is one of Europe’s greatest economic assets, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and other advanced technologies can considerably increase the possibility of its exploitation. Nevertheless this potentiality is very far from being fully exploited. Up to now, experiences of use of ICT in Cultural Heritage sectors too often failed in providing valuable economic results due to a number of problems, and generated disappointment among the potential players and beneficiaries. The last couple of years have not been an easy period of time for the ICT industry. After a decade of strong growth, for the first time the sector has experienced a severe slowdown and stagnation, resulting from an exceptional combination of adverse factors, including a global economic slowdown after September eleven, uncertainty in the financial markets that followed the drop of blue chips and over-investment. Nevertheless, the ICT usage both by enterprises and SOHO has still increased. European enterprises have reached a maturity level in terms of their basic ICT infrastructure and their connectivity to the Internet. According to the most recent statistical data from Eurostat, 95 % of companies in the Member States use computers and more than 80 % have access to the web. These are average figures and local rates are even higher, in some countries as well as for larger enterprises the saturation level (almost 100 %) has been practically reached. Looking at the scenario from a different viewpoint we just began a revolution due to a set of converging technologies. If we consider previous innovations they took some years to reach the people, seventy years for printing, fifty for commercial flights and telephone, thirty years for Internet, fifteen years for PCs. Speaking about the use of different media we are probably in the middle ages of such a way to communicate, we are still looking for a proper MM format1. We probably do not know completely which will be the “final” result of such a path but we know we are experimenting a deep transformation due to the convergence of goals and technologies in the fields of communication, information technology and entertainment. First we faced the merge of IT and TLC then ICT merged with Entertainment. As usual in such technological trends, even on the occasion of fake revolutions2, at the beginning we overestimate technology and underestimate potential influences and transformation on culture and society, pointing toward stars with a finger we are still looking at the finger. As a consequence the general view is limited to a short term perspective with untimely or limited applications and effects. Just take into consideration the revolution due to the invention of the transistor, one of the most relevant and pervasive technology of the last century, it was originally developed and patent as a device to fight deafness. Wireless communication was developed in order to link ships crossing the oceans but a bug in the technology did not allow private communication at least for military purposes. The bug we call now broadcasting was the origin of radio-television services.