Service Architecture and Content Provision: The Network Provider as Editor

This chapter explores a way in which service architecture may affect content provision: through the extent to which the network provider can play an editorial role in selecting the content made available to consumers. In an aware architecture, the provider can offer an editorial service; in a blind architecture, it cannot. The chapter characterizes different architectures, and considers the effects of architecture on the selection of already created content to be offered on the network. There are other important ways in which service architecture can affect content provision. The ways are: through technological and institutional delivery costs that vary across architectures, and through the extent to which architecture permits the network to differentiate transport prices for different goods. The effect of different types of cost on content provision depends on the network architecture. The chapter explores how network architecture affects content provision when users experience attention costs.