Mitch Ratcliffe ... Realities of Interactive Television and Telecommunications Networks ... Doors 2
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I n t r o d u c t i o n
My talk today is about the realities of the interactive television and telecommunications networks. It seems my lot in life to be a skeptic, but after having written books about Newton and the EO Personal Communicator, I've learned the highest hopes are not where the coats of industry are hanging.
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The
press surrounding the emergence of interactive networks has been frantic. Even
the skeptical articles I read about the information superhighway are based on
the exaggerated claims made by telephone, computer, software, cable and
wireless companies about the potential for digital technology. We are promised
video communications to and from the home, the ability to live and work
anywhere through intelligent networks, a universally-accessible life-long
learning resource in networked information and, basically, the world at our
fingertips. Amazingly, even the most informed press measures new technology
against its publicity. In fact, none of the systems under development today
will offer the kinds of services presented in ads from AT&T, MCI, IBM,
Apple and Microsoft.
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The
idea that society is about to demolish the economic, social and philosophical
foundations of the past to erect a shiny new future are ludicrous. The
companies which are dominant in today's markets will not function in these
twisted planes of digital existence. Rather, the giants of today's
telecommunications and computing world want to establish a careful balance
between the past and present. By combining new technology with existing
broadcasting and advertising business models, they are preparing not a 21st
Century economy, but a digital riff on the late-20th Century's most pervasive
media paradigm: the massification of information and entertainment. They will
offer the same old bites of Dallas, Wheel of Fortune and Baywatch, but we'll be
freed from the confines of the programming schedule.
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Why?
The facts speak for themselves. As long as many competing data formats exist on
the networks, the cost of developing programming will be concentrated in the
hands of a few large companies with ample resources. Video server tests, while
they succeed in delivering a stream of video content to a few homes now and
again, are essentially closed, one-way systems. Servers will not be able to
communicate with one another for many years -- it's not a priority; what the
network owners need to do is make money by selling content to viewers and
advertisers. Video dial tone is a modified broadcast business that shifts the
work of programming to the consumer.
So, in the meantime, we'll have as much interaction as can be built into the list of available programming. We won't be talking to one another through these networks. We won't be earning our living in new ways. We won't be learning from resources which are not stored locally -- at least, thank the gods, we have the Internet, where information seems to be flourishing.
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Digital
technology will be used to contest the revenues of existing markets. We're not
seeing new business initiatives, because when the business plans are written
they all aim for known sources of revenue, like today's newspaper industry,
long distance calling, cable television and advertising.
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Granted,
we are approaching a huge shift in the distribution of spending across existing
channels and new digital channels.
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