for packages whose content needs to be specified for special handling. A computer is a little bit different, in that the sending computer cannot assume that the receiving computer will be smart enough to figure out what’s inside. This is because humans use varied senses to establish context allowing for the recognition of differences of content. A letter doesn’t look like a picture and a check is different from, say, a box of candy. Today, computers use only one sense to see what’s inside an electronic message, that’s their electric signal detection capability; or, as we have previously expressed it, their basic sensori-motor facility. For computers, everything looks the same until told otherwise. Depending on the context, the same string of electric signals can be that for describing a letter, an image or a check (and no, computers don’t eat candy, yet). Computers need to be told how to interpret what is in the envelope.

How content is described for a computer has been specified by an organization called IANA, for Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, under the rather ominous name of Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. MIME for short. Such mail extensions describe what is in the e-mail. In other words, they indicate to a computer how to read the content of the e-mail. Another organization, OMA, for Open Mobile Alliance, has further partitioned the MIME types into discrete media and continuous media. Examples of discrete media are text and images. They are called discrete because they are read at once. Actually, text and images themselves can have different formats. One might be familiar with, for example, jpeg. This is a format for images that is used by digital cameras to store picture in an efficient manner. Another example of discrete media is termed application. The concept here is that there are so many ways to decide between private parties on specific information formats that it’s not worth trying to describe them all. Just let the private parties figure it out within the context of an application. For example, one party may decide in concert with another one to replace all letters by numbers. If that’s the way they like it, no one should be able to deny them to do so. However, if they do establish an essentially private standard, they are on their own in terms of decoding the content of the message. Someone not privy to their agreement may not be able to understand what’s going on. In fact, that’s the basis of private encryption codes where only the two parties in contact know the decoding scheme. A widely used application format that most of us now recognize is pdf, a format that computers using software from the Adobe Company can readily understand, making it a ubiquitous presence in most of the world’s computers.

Examples of continuous media are audio and video. At the present time, as various business models emerge on the Web, continuous media are particularly interesting because it is easy to attach an advertisement to them. More specifically, continuous media build their context progressively. As a result, we generally need to consume their contained content from beginning to end. This provides an excellent platform for a short commercial that must be viewed before one gets to the content of true interest. Anyway, they are termed continuous because they can be extended in time, perhaps to infinitum. It’s important for the receiving computer to understand that the media is continuous, because it’s not worth trying to store all the content at once. With, for example, non-stop streaming of music, there will never be enough memory in the receiving computer to store it all. Once the music is played, it can be discarded. Just as discrete media, continuous content can have different formats. Our readers are certainly familiar with the mp3 format for audio files; that’s what their iPod is using to display the music they love to hear. What then of the economics of content?

The value of computer content is sometime as baffling, as, for example, the cost of a painting by Basquiat or Rothko might be to someone not versed in art. However, we can, just as with art or with other forms of sustenance, try to understand the mechanisms that help to establish the value of content. While some people are just gifted and can evaluate art without too much specialized

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