CFF suggests that businesses have become too preoccupied with their competitors for existing markets, rather than seeking to create new markets where they can occupy the competitive advantage simply by being the first ones to get there. Rather than focusing on the minutiae of market tests and product surveys, the goal of companies should be to anticipate the needs of consumers - even if they're not yet aware that those needs exist! CFF claims that the success of a new product depends on a future where people can't even consider functioning without one -- and point to the telephone and the Microsoft Windows OS as successful examples.
Although CFF is not aimed specifically at media, telecommunications, computer, or consumer electronics businesses, it certainly focuses heavily on such "new edge" companies when it lists the "visionary" businesses that are worth emulating. It also contains advice for companies in financial services, biotechnology, or anyone willing to seize the "knowledge advantage" in their market niche. Obviously, CFF is targeting "Second Wave" businesses with its advice; businesses stuck in the past, manufacturing things the same way they did one hundred years ago, probably won't find much of use in the guidance offered here.
Companies are not just merely competing for profits or for consumer loyalty, CFF claims. Their stakeholders are more than just their shareholders or their associated industries. What companies are competing for is actually a share of the future -- the opportunity to be a key player in what life in the future is like, and to guide the "conventional wisdom" of what's possible and permissible. Companies are challenging each other over who will be able to shape the future and the vectors of technology, society, and business. Even beyond the bottom line, it becomes a question of who has the "vision thing." Those who aren't willing to "re-engineer" themselves to compete in this way risk obsolescence, irrelevance, and, ultimately, bankruptcy.
Thus, the role in business firms of divisions that do forecasting will become ever more critical. Rather than leaving forecasting to out-of-touch egghead futurist "wizards," companies will have to make long-range planning a central part of everything they do. Rather than acting like a overblown fortress of solitude, guarding its present competitive advantages jealously and zealously, CFF's "cutting edge" company is constantly searching for new areas to expand into and dominate. Instead of protecting 25 year-old formulas and time-tested ways of doing things, companies need to be constantly inventing the methods of tomorrow.
CFF proposes a "synthesis" for companies to follow which avoids complete lack of structure or anarchy, and also avoids excessive rigidity or bureaucracy. Balance is the key -- management and employees should be forward-thinking, innovative "activists" rather than mindless, yes-men "clones" or loose-cannon, play-it-by-ear "renegades." Companies, rather than being led around by the day-to-day whims of consumers or the technical and engineering imperatives of their technology, should be "benefits-led," trying to imagine ways in which they can create new benefits for customers (such as more control over their time, more mobility, etc.) Successful firms should combine a willingness to experiment and revise assumptions, with a precise timetable and vision for the future.
Hamel and Pralahad want business managers to "think differently" about what competitiveness means. It's meaningless, they suggest, to look at 'national' competitiveness (U.S. firms vs. Japanese firms), because now almost all industries are global, interconnected, and interdependent. Capital and ideas cross national borders too quickly. Furthermore, who your competitors are at any given moment in a particular industry may not be as important as who your competitors will be in the future. They suggest that established companies often ignore young upstarts at their own peril and also fail to see how past allies now have become adversaries and vice versa (as happened when IBM joined forces with Apple against Microsoft and Intel.)
The key to "competitive restructuring," CFF suggests, is reexamining a company's "genetic code" or industry structure, and one of the key things in this "code" is how managers think about the roles and functions of their companies. The key to the global marketplace involves the external policy of forming coalitions and consortiums, and the internal policy of "empowering" business units and teams to pursue objectives without cutting them off from the technical expertise contained within other units of the firm. Businesses need to re-think "what business they're in," and start thinking of a new business world without boundaries, where people will increasingly start encroaching on each other's "turf."
CFF suggests companies need to go beyond simply "strategic planning" and embrace "strategic architecture building" -- planning that doesn't just focus on the short term of a point of market share here or there, but that also doesn't get lost in the wildly abstract forecasting and pontificating of impossible dreams. The proper strategy, CFF proposes, is to look at ways to constantly enhance and build upon functionalities, opportunities, and competencies; to consider ways to increase the companies productivity well into the future, so that when new demands arise from consumers, the company will also be able to rise to the challenge.
The public doesn't know what's possible...? Where, then, do companies get their ideas from? Are their managers, R & D teams, and employees not part of the "public?" This paragraph begins to point to what I see as the main problem with CFF... does the future belong to elite corporate think tanks, or to society?
Unfortunately, while CFF may be of considerable advantage to business students and corporate executives, for scholars interested in telecommunications, technological forecasting, and the impacts of new media technologies on society, it's of limited utility. Hamel and Pralahad can't be faulted for this, as their book was aimed at the type of people who go to $5000 seminars on "reimagining" their companies. Still, as someone who's interested in the human aspects of technological change, and who thinks that there are "activists" without white collars, my critique will necessarily focus on the scholarly shortcomings of this book.
While it seems unfair to protest the "business-centric" perspective of a book aimed at businesses, I think Hamel and Pralahad are still doing a disservice to CEOs by minimizing the role of governments, universities, nonprofit organizations, advocacy groups, and non-Western perspectives (Islamic cultures, indigenous groups, multicultural populations in the U.S.) in "competing for the future." Any business that pays attention only to the business pages and the Wall Street Journal, no matter how visionary in their corporate practices, is missing a big part of a rapidly changing world.
Bill Gates admitted that Microsoft failed to foresee the rapid growth and exploding popularity of the World Wide Web. Why? CFF won't talk about this, but part of it, as Gates admitted in a TV interview, was that the W3 initiative and the Mosaic graphical browser were both produced in a university setting; and the Internet itself was largely originally a noncommercial, academic network, where the protocols and early client-server software were all mostly nonproprietary and based on open standards. Something like the W3 initiative could not have been developed at Microsoft.
In an organized anarchy like the Internet, there was no way that a single operating system or way of doing things could ever dominate. So Gates and Microsoft can't necessarily be faulted for a lack of vision or foresight; but they can be faulted for fundamentally misunderstanding, and underestimating, the culture of the Internet. The same can be said about companies who think that just because some technologies will benefit some segment of people, they won't sometimes cause a great deal of harm to others. Ultimately, the problem may lie in the very idea of "competing for the future" itself. Already that prevents one way of thinking about the future.
The corporation in its modern form is only about a century and a half old, and multinational corporations are far younger than that. In the present, they do seem to be one of the dominant forces shaping social life and expectations, about leisure, work, and life. So it makes sense to challenge them, as CFF does, to shape the future. But an honest 'visionary' futurist might also be willing to see that in the future, multinational corporations might be sharing this role with a lot of other interests (artists, hackers, religious prophets, terrorists, who knows?), or that the very idea of the corporation itself could metamorphosize into something else, or that the capitalism we know today could become quite different.
Some companies, like the Mondragon Cooperative in Spain or Scott Paper, are making the truly revolutionary step of becoming totally employee-owned and operated. Others are seizing upon the Tofflerian "Third Wave" idea of prosumption - instead of looking at customers as "consumers" with standardized needs to meet, they are empowering individuals with the tools to produce things that meet unique and special needs. Still other companies, like Ben and Jerry's, are questioning whether a business' only responsibility is to its shareholders, or whether it also has some obligations to its employees, to the community, and to society as a whole. To me, these companies are truly "seizing the future" - daring to do things unexpected and unexamined by the 'business community'.
Technology is changing the very way in which some things have to be done by "corporations." Time was when in order to produce television you needed a major capital investment - in major technology for filming, editing, and transmission. You created a "product" (programming) which was "sold" to advertisers and consumers. You had to be in the "media business." Now, with cheap camcorders, desktop editing, and micropower TV transmitters, an individual can do it all from their basement with a small investment, and as a hobby rather than a "business". It may not reach a mass audience - but this may be an inevitable result of the "demassification" of media that Alvin Toffler predicts will occur in the future.
A lot of "new media" professionals are interested in the ways that this "stuff" can make lots of money. But the problem again is a lack of vision: there's more to be done than just make money. We're replacing the old technology of one-way broadcasting with interactive 'multicasting'; potentially everyone becomes a producer and/or a consumer. Instead of companies "selling" media to people, we may become involved in a more internetwork-like series of "microexchanges" of capital and media. Some of the new technology is a vast leveller; Kodak or PepsiCo may have more money to throw around in making a Web site, but a 14 year-old kid can still potentially make a site that's equally as interesting and compelling, even though it has nothing to sell.
We don't just have to rethink how we do business; we need to rethink how and why we do business. There are other ways to think, to work, to earn a living, and to live a life. I'm not suggesting capitalism is going to disappear or be replaced by socialism, but its "genetic code" may undergo some restructuring soon too. Fordism was based on the idea that you came up with a cheap, standardized product for the masses, and then the masses could have it in any color that they liked, "as long as it was black." Second and third-wave industries, moving into the service, information, and 'human growth' sectors, are challenging this model. Rather than asking forecasters, marketers, and business school experts for blueprints, they're opening up various kinds of outside participation and "economic democracy," allowing people (not just 'consumers') to work with them in shaping the future.
CFF wants corporate managers to focus on long-term planning rather than short-term analyses, but they don't seem to want to acknowledge that the profit motive is a strong disincentive for thinking this way. The shareholders are interested in the profits for this quarter, and it probably won't appease them to suggest that they forego their dividends now so that twenty years down the road they will be raking it in. Measures that are supposed to raise corporate productivity and competitiveness (electronic surveillance/employee monitoring, Taylorist "scientific management", etc.) in the short run only produce demoralized, burned out employees in the long run. Business as we know it discourages long-term thinking, and may even hinder technological advances.
Again, it might seem like to some people these criticisms of CFF are attacks on a "straw man." As members of a business school talking to business managers, they're not going to talk about things outside of the universe of business. What I'm suggesting, however, is that they are doing businessmen who are readers of this book a vast disservice by not asking them to think about and consider a larger and more complex world that exists outside of Wall Street, Madison Avenue, and corporate think tanks and research parks. Hamel and Pralahad provide a theory for producing a more efficient, more adaptive, more dynamic form of Fordism. They've made a rusty model T all bright, shiny, and elaborate, but it's still a model T.
Hamel and Pralahad want to chastise businesses for being stuck in hidebound, stodgy, outdated ways of thinking about their industry. Now I want to chastise them for failing to reinvent, rethink, and reposition "business" itself. Is it always right for a business to cause consumers to think of something they originally considered a luxury to now be a necessity? Someday, marketers will pat themselves on the back when everyone in society comes to believe that they couldn't possibly live without a universal phone number that follows them everywhere. Thousands of U-phones will be sold. They will have given people a new "customer benefit." But, as people find themselves pursued relentlessly everywhere they go by telemarketers, will they really be happier? Really have a better quality of life?
CFF considers examples of business triumphs the fact that some people refuse to do without (and hence have come to own) what some people consider a highly mediocre and poorly designed computer operating system (Microsoft Windows), what some people consider a device for the "dumbing of America" (broadcast television), and what a good portion of the population of the world still manages without (a telephone in the home.) Convincing people that they can't live without these things is a remarkable result of modern advertising and targeted marketing, and not necessarily good technical engineering or "human factors" (ergonomics) research. I'm not doubting that television, Windows, and telephones have transformed the world. It's just that only history will really be the judge as to whether they, on balance, did so for the better. As technologies go, each of them could have been designed better.
Hamel and Pralahad want to come across as bold visionaries, sweeping away the past, embracing the future. But the future they are asking companies to compete for is like the world of Jules Verne or the Jetsons. A future of bright, shiny technofetishes and Wired electrogoodies mass-produced for continually conspicuous consumption. It's not the only future we could imagine, and lots of other people (like feminists, hackers, and other weirdos) have imagined others. (Like Howard Rheingold, some people are thinking about how to transform human civilization itself, revitalizing democracy and strengthening community, even without making bucks at it.) CFF gives us the future as some people imagined it to be decades ago (beginning probably with Walt Disney) - a future that's already become stale and out of date.
2. The future of satellite and cable systems in 2020
Technological Changes
Deployment of Iridium and "Gates-McCaw Net" LEO satellites provides personal, interactive, and two-way Internet, videoconferencing, telephony, and other communication services for individuals via satellite
This prediction assumes several basic factors, namely that it in fact proves feasible and affordable to put 63 or 840 low-earth orbit satellites into orbit, and that they don’t get destroyed on the launchpad by a malfunctioning rocket engine or blasted out of the sky by space junk or a wayward Strategic Defense Initiative test. Because the low-earth orbit satellites tend to be cheaper to build and put into orbit, it begins to change the economies of scale.
By 2005, "sattphones" (basically personal digital assistants [PDAs] or personal communication units [PCUs] with built-in satellite uplink and downlink - the dish gets carried around in a backpack or maybe on top of an Al Franken-style helmet) begin to replace cellular phones as they become smaller and more affordable. The sattphone might at some point offer videophone service; access to the Internet, corporate intranets, and online services; GIS services for locating yourself on a map of where you are and finding nearby roads, restaurants, hotels, etc.; remote access to your PC; and multi-person voice conferencing and voice mail.
The Third/developing/peripheral world begins to realize that they will never be able to develop the wired-telecommunications infrastructure of the First/developed/core world (in many parts of China, there may one telephone line for an entire village), so they begin turning to "sattphony" as a feasible alternative for asserting their "right to communicate." As part of their initiatives for local development, more and more Third World countries like India and China begin investing in their own initiatives for satellite construction, launching, and repairing (i.e. they begin focusing on developing their own national space programs.)
Rupert Murdoch’s "SkyNet" and similar services bring satellite DBS television into more households, displacing cable and big dishes as the primary source of television in rural areas
The smaller CU-band dishes become more and more attractive options for consumers, since by 2005 they are already considerably more and more unobtrusive and easier to install. Murdoch and others begin to realize that the money is in the software, not the hardware, so they begin giving away the dishes and indoor electronics for next to nothing, while collecting their revenue from monthly fees. They come up with more and more clever solutions for making the dishes next to invisible when installed properly, eliminating many of the "aesthetic" restrictions that some communities have imposed. By 2005, DBS is catching up with cable boxes in many households.
Technological solutions are developed (because consumers demand them) to solve many of the problems with DBS, including "spotcasting" to provide local affiliate network channels, cyclic redundancy checks to reduce the "noise" from weather interference, "multicasting" to allow multiple TVs in one home to be tuned to different channels, and built-in interactive programming guides to allow people to find and watch "what’s on satt-TV tonight," which becomes even more a problem of massive information overload.
Because DBS is already digital, it’s "ahead of the game" as other media (such as wireless digital-HDTV broadcast, DVD players, digital cable radio, digital camcorders, etc.) begin to be phased into this format. This will produce a small sector of people nostalgiac for the more "authentic" feel of "old-style" analog transmission, just like there are lots of people who claim it’s a more "real" experience to listen to vinyl records instead of Compact Discs.
Cable TV providers, realizing they cannot compete with DBS in certain areas, begin upgrading their network for two-way broadband transmission, and begin providing a new generation of services such as video-on-demand, interactive television, tele-shopping,"WebTV," and Internet service through cable "modems"
Although various kinds of two-way satt-services are underway by 2005, the cable companies are ahead of them because they began moving toward two-way broadband in the early 1990s. This required a large investment because it was necessary to upgrade much of the copper cable they put down years before (the back-channel for "uploading" of information was much narrower than the channel carrying programming "download" to the home), and to start putting in "smart" video servers that were able to respond to requests from the consumer as well as transmitting programming to the home.
Because of the incredible frustration Internet users face over download times for their favorite sites, and the inability of "streaming video" to reduce the overall wait time to watch video over the Net, many begin turning to "cable modems" (which are not really modems at all) as a better alternative to "ISDN modems" and true telephone modems. In addition to the vast, anarchic Internet, the cable companies start realizing that consumers may want more focused kinds of online services where they can do tele-shopping, tele-voting, online multi-person video gaming, etc. People give up on a busy AOL dialtone and 56 Kbps downloads, for faster, more responsive cable-based online services.
By 2005, there are various kinds of "interactive television" systems, but there’s no uniform agreement over what precisely that means. Each takes a slightly different take on what it means to be interactive. Is it the ability to watch the same sports game or news event from multiple perspectives? To offer instant feedback to "cable-back live" talk shows? To have a personalized newspaper or news program which covers only the kinds of stories you want to know about? To contribute your own video, a la "America’s Funniest Home Videos," but perhaps instantaneously? To have a truly personalized story where you can choose the characters you want to live and die, prosper and fail? Companies with interactive-TV projects struggle over the fact that there are many competing definitions of "interactivity."
Cable broadcasters begin migrating their signals from analog to digital since wireless broadcasters have begun adopting a digital-HDTV standarddigital compression means that the now 500+ cable channels become more "narrowcasted," in fact, not even like TV channels as we know them now.
The idea of a TV "channel" per se comes under question. One way that many cable systems will respond to a universe of 500+ channels is to continue the already accelerating trend of "narrowcasting" thus, in addition to a comedy channel, cartoon channel, music video channel, sports channel, news channel, arts channel, etc., we might see by 2005 such things as a 24-hour cooking channel, fishing and golf channels (I think these already exist), a computer/technology channel, a gay and lesbian channel; in short channels dedicated to programming having to do with nothing other than one particular hobby, interest group, leisure activity, lifestyle, or social faction.
But the other way that some cable systems respond to this situation is to adopt Olympic-style "multi-casts." In this sense, channels become simply one different mode of accessing an event or situation. Thus, if you were broadcasting coverage of a local music festival, you could have one ‘channel’ carrying the main stage performances, another ‘channel’ carrying interviews with the performers, another ‘channel’ catching backstage gossip, and another ‘channel’ focused on side events or on the audience. Thus, the meaning of a ‘channel’ switches in this sense.
What it means to "flip the channel," "use the remote," etc. may change in this sense. How people choose what they want to see, how they want to see it, and when they want to see it may change radically by 2005. This will put more hands in the power of the watcher/consumer, who now has a greater degree of choice and control over his idiot box, but it will be a nightmare for advertisers, who will respond to it in ways suggested below.
As sattelite uplink earth stations become more mobile and affordable, more and more individuals, independent video producers, and small organizations begin using LEO satellite for local "microcasting."
The process that Alvin Toffler described as the "demassification" of media began in earnest in the 1990s, and is well underway in 2005. Basically, its origins lie with the original pirate radio stations of the 1960s, who tried to offer an alternative to mass-produced, corporate-controlled, Top40-homogenized music stations. The first experiments in this area were with low-power or "micropower" FM radio and TV broadcasting, designed to be picked up over a small neighborhood area from a shoestring-budget basement transmitter.
However, micro-satt-casting offers the potential of reaching an entire city, megalopolis, county, or even region with locally produced, independently controlled programming, and for this reason the next generation of "pirates" will begin experimenting with it by 2005. Many nonprofits and NGOs already have had some experience with it because of earlier experiments with sattelite teleconferences, and they will turn to satellite as a way of offering non-corporate points of view.
"Demassification" leads to a considerable boom in all kinds of DIY media, a trend that had already begun with such things as desktop publishing of ‘zines and Web publishing of electronic journal. DIY satt-video becomes one more way of people making heard points of view that get ignored in the mass-produced, corporate media. Like shortwave radio or Soviet samizdats, it begins to lead to a proliferation of all kinds of unheard voices, ranging from political extremists and dissidents to counterculturalists and other subcultures.
Media Changes
In general, the nature of media changes from a "broadcast" model to a "many-to-many" model. The centralized broadcast system gives way to a more decentered exchange system. Media passive consumption begins to shift toward personalized media prosumption and collaboration.
The broadcast model is based on the idea that you gather images from all over the world, assemble them in one place, and then transmit that assemblage from one place back out to receivers all over the world. But "the Internet is not television," and in the network model, media of various kinds (audio, video, software, text, data) go from many to many. The network makes possible novel means of exchange and payment for services, and in software we see such things as "shareware" where you get to try before you buy. In the future, people may have the same expectation with regard to other kinds of media. Or per-person per-use "micropayments." Or exchanges-in-kind, where media are traded for other media: "you show me your video and I’ll show you mine."
In a network, there is no one central point from which media originate, and anywhere along the "stream" media can be changed and altered. This makes media creation a more unusual decentralized collaborative process. Examples of this include some of the recent "E-Jam" sessions of scattered global musical artists over CU-SeeMe, or some of the collaborative stories written by multiple authors on bulletin board systems, or multiple-artist images created on collaborative "whiteboards". The idea of media being the work of one producer or one point of view may be replaced by that of media as a melange or pastiche.
Since in the network there is no real terminal point, no one is really a "media consumer" anymore. After I’m done watching something, I can take it and add my feedback to it, or even change it around or add a new segment or feature and send it to someone else. Todd Rundgren has started distributing music this way - where the "prosumer" can remix the tracks, change the tempo, add or delete instruments, etc. People’s relationship to media becomes less passive and more active.
Along with programming, advertising begins to become more "interactive" and targeted at particular groups of consumers.
Because of these changes, advertisers are forced to utilize even more extreme techniques to get your attention and buy their products. Through getting a hold of data as to people’s personal preferences or demographics (perhaps out of what they watch - just like Netscape "cookies" tell sites where you like to surf) advertisers will begin to try out various kinds of targeted advertising. Networks already do this to a limited extent by evaluating what age groups are likely to be watching TV at a particular time of day, and aiming commercials at that demographic.
Still, the more targeted, the more effective, as far as ad agencies are concerned. So perhaps we might have advertising "intelligent agents" that search for Ford owners and try to convince them to buy Toyotas, or try and sell umbrellas and aluminum siding to people who watch a lot of weather-related programming. There may be several versions of a single ad developed for different groups (blacks, women, Asians, Jews, etc.) with each member of said group getting the "version" developed specifically for them.
Of course, this presumes that media-makers will still be reliant on advertising (rather than the consumer) for revenue, but this is a situation I suspect will very much still be in effect in 2005. Especially in the telecommunication world, where every company will be seeking to get into every other company’s business and steal away its customers, the next wave of advertising tech may put the nuisance of telemarketing to shame.
Media companies embrace the Internet in various ways, ranging from Web sites that are a "front door" to the public to the use of "push" technologies like BackWeb which tell users a continual list of upcoming programming on their desktop.
Certainly, there are plenty of examples that already exist of the former. CNN, the Sci Fi Channel, the Discovery Channel, and even many TV programs or producers (like POV) have their own Web siteand then there are the strange hybrids like MSNBC which attempt to seamlessly integrate a TV channel and a Web site. Things like MSNBC probably work best on WebTV, where you can watch a story and then effortlessly surf to the area on the web site which goes more into detail on that subject, but they’re certainly not the last word on the subject.
Much better might be some version of BackWeb-style "push" technology. Many computers now have TV-tuner video boards that allow you to watch TV on your monitor. There are already continually running "pushing"/streaming stock tickers, news tickers, etc. Why not have a server which constantly "pushes" on to your PC what’s on TV at any given time. You click it, then you go see itthus giving people yet one more way to waste time on their computers while at work.
People could also use Internet "agents" to act on their behalf and look for TV programs of interest to them while they’re working on something else. Thus they could spend less time channel surfing, and more time doing other things. Also, watching TV through the Internet allows parents to employ receiver-based solutions to objectionable material like SurfWatch, rather than relying on producer-based solutions such as the V-Chip.
The ready ability of "souped-up" movies on Digital Video Disc makes people more reluctant to turn to cable or satellite for movie programming, and more interested in more specialized kinds of programminggame shows, talk shows, documentaries, news, etc.
It’s certainly widely expected that by 2005 the DVD player will have replaced the CD player and the VCR. Because of its storage format and capacity, it will be the hands-down favorite for movies, far better than the VHS tape, CD-V, or laserdisc. There will be some initial drawbacks - the lack of a recordable DVD format, for example - that will very likely be corrected by then. Because of its capacity and ease of use, DVD will probably also replace DAT/DCC and we’re likely to see DMD (music discs) and DVD-ROMs in the near future.
DVD will offer a lot of value-added features to movies that broadcast or even "intercast" simply can’t duplicate. The movie can be completely accessed nonlinearly - you can watch whatever point you wantwithout the difficulties of doing this using fastforward and rewind on VCR. It could be in several languages, maybe several formats (letterbox and standard screen, etc.) On a DVD, a movie becomes "navigable," you could go to a scene, watch it, then "click over" to an interview with the actor about doing the scene. Ultimately, like "Clue," you might see movies with several endings, with the user selecting how the movie ends.
Because of this fact, I suspect that "movie channels" will disappear, because people will prefer to watch movies this way, but video-on-demand may give DVD a run for its money. It all depends on whether people want to run to the DVD store to rent a new disc or are too lazy to do it. But in any case, traditional cable and satellite delivery may have to turn to other kinds of programming other than movie channels if they’re going to keep their consumers happy.
The fact that all media are going digital (‘convergence’) means that the computer may replace the television, stereo, and telephone as the receiving unit of choice for all kinds of media. Media companies get into the computer business and vice versa.
This is a no-brainer of sorts, one that has been talked about quite a bit lately. In various ways, the computer is already taking over the functions of other electronic devices in the home. Using voice modems, FM tuner cards, and video capture boards, people today can already use their computer as a "smarter" telephone, radio/audio receiver, and television. By 2005, many people will basically have chucked specialized telecommunication devices in favor of a general-purpose computer which handles all their incoming and outgoing digital media. That computer will have to have a lot more memory, storage, and processing power than the ones that exist today; but due to exponential growth in all these areas in the computer field, this is a reasonable prediction for 2005.
Again, the reason for this is because using a computer allows the person to change their media experience from a passive to an active one. The computer gives the person more control. And it’s a lot more reprogrammable than specialized devices. You could have an agent program running on your computer that delivers to you a "personalized" TV guide which shows only those things which are on that day which are of interest to you. Or another program which blocks out certain kind of scenes when the children in your family are logged in. You can quickly send QuickTime clips of your favorite "Melrose Place" scenes to your friends.
Your computer could be equipped with voice control or some of other kind of interface which makes it even more responsive than existing TV remotes. By 2005, it may even interact with other devices in your home through an artificially intelligent RS-232 device, turning on and off your coffee maker whenever you decide to watch "Coffee Talk!" or putting on a home repair channel when something goes wrong with a home appliance. The possibilities are endless
Social Changes
In the new era of digital media, the ease of copying and retransmission makes questions of copyright and intellectual property more and more thorny.
It’s these problems of copyright that are currently holding up development of DVD and digital camcorders, just like what happened with DAT. Media producers are not altogether comfortable with the ease of copying media that these technology provide. Ultimately, I think they’re going to have to come to the realization that John Perry Barlow suggested people adopt in Wired magazine: "Everything You Know about Intellectual Property is Wrong." By 2005, for better or worse, the technology will be here, although various kinds of ineffective anti-piracy schemes (just like the bogus copy protection used by software manufacturers in the early 80s) will be attempted.
Barlow and others suggest that intellectual property laws in the U.S. need a major revamping. Copyright itself is based on the era of the printing press, when making a copy of a book took considerable time and effort. Today, a book-length text can be sent across the Internet in seconds. There will be two simultaneous pressures. Media producers will push for stronger, updated laws, while some new media avant-garde independent producers will push for the abolition of copyright altogether, arguing that there is no such thing as originality and no basis for ownership of information.
In the multi-media environment of 2005, where digital media can be rapidly morphed, remixed, altered, retransmitted, reoriented, and reproduced, copyright may not even be enforceable. In particular, the issue of "use of part or whole of the original" may become unworkable, as it already has with regard to sampling in the music industry. When does a sample become a violation of the artist’s copyright? If that sample is totally reworked and redesigned, does it belong to the original artist? Is it a violation of software copyright to borrow a small section of object code? Is it "fair use" to use a 2-second QuickTime clip of "Star Wars" on an educational CD-ROM? These types of questions will be increasingly asked with regard to other kinds of media in the future as well.
Since digital media are also more manipulable, the validity, truthfulness, and accuracy of how media represent the world becomes more and more problematic.
Although the validity of the photograph has been in question ever since the technology was developed, it still required some fairly detailed darkroom knowledge to alter photographs significantly and convincingly. What makes digital imaging far more dangerous is that now more than ever it’s become incredibly easy for just about anyone to quickly and effortlessly change images. Using Photoshop, pounds can be melted off of models, pyramids can be moved a few inches, OJ Simpson made a little more darker and more menacing, and people’s faces can be put on the bodies of others.
The use of the image as proof will become more and more questionable. By 2005, people will have to question considerably the aphorism "seeing is believing." Considering the increasing growth of video surveillance and the use of video evidence in courtrooms, there are likely to be some growing areas of contention with regard to "video truth." Although people have always doubted the bias or accuracy of television news, now they will start questioning its basic truth-value altogether.
The issue of trust in media will grow to larger proportions. If we had a populace that was well educated in critical thinking, I suspect they would not fall for some of the new media digital tricks. However, there will be propagandists aplenty who will seize on the opportunity to use this for persuasion, just as they did with analog television and radio.
Society begins to shift from print literacy to a more synaesthetic kind of "teleliteracy" or "visual literacy." A new grammar of the visual and the moving image begins to be developed.
Although we are not entering an era of the death of the book, or an end to the era of print literacy, there are some realities to be aware of. Marshall McLuhan knew it back in the 60s: just as print literacy created a certain kind of socialization and personal consciousness, we have a whole new generation being raised on electronic media, and this has changed the way they relate to their senses, to information, and to knowledge and memory. Print is static, linear, and fixed. The electronic media are nonlinear, dynamic, and increasingly interactive. They are more experiential.
Although the electronic media are often accused of being more superficial and visceral than print, creating short attention spans and lack of self-control, the children of electronic media in fact are often savvier than their predecessors because a) they’re used to receiving data from multiple sources at one time b) they’re used to rapidly sifting and sorting through information in quick "bytes" and c) they more used to tracking the moving image. Ultimately, in hypermedia, text has not gone away, but it’s just become one form of data along with still and moving images, audio, and 3D animations.
By 2005, the implicit visual knowledge we have will start to become more explicit. We know how to evaluate and analyze text and its underlying grammatical structures. In the digital future, people will attempt more and more to create such "grammars" for the media, as a way of developing this new kind of teleliteracy. We know what images are good and which are bad, which persuade and which repel. But right now those reactions are still unconscious and personal; we don’t discuss them. This will change.
In the new information economy, control over the means of information becomes key, and there are more and more kinds of "media terrorism," hacking, and piracy
There have already been numerous examples of "media terrorism" in the 80s and 90s. "Captain Midnight" taking over the HBO signal. Gunmen taking over TV stations to give their demands. Clandestine radio stations attempting to overturn governments. Terrorism is already largely a media phenomenon, with various political factions using TV as a means to transmit fear and propaganda. But what will happen in the future, probably already by next decade, is terrorism with control of the media (rather than the government) as its goal.
There was a famous "Bloom County" cartoon in the 80s in which a young hacker hacked into Pravda in the Soviet Union and changed around the stories to make them more humorous. This type of incident may become more serious and more likely in the near future. Denied acess to media technology, media "have-nots" may attempt to seize the technology of others and hijack it for their own purposes. Already, intelligence agencies use media "disinformation" (leaking false stories) to accomplish political objectives. By 2005, we will probably see other groups doing this as well.
Others may simply attempt various kinds of media sabotage, ranging from jamming the signals of transmissions they don’t like, to maliciously altering that signal so as to embarrass the network or convey an opposite ironic message. This kind of media prank, known as "detournement," was widely used by the Situationists in the 1960s when they took comics and changed their captions in order to critique their ideological assumptions. In the digital new media environment, it will also be easy to do with video and television as well.
New virtual communities form around the new media's traditional neighborhoods and other forms of geographic and locally-based cultural identities begin to wane.
Satellites don’t respect national borders, and cables often pass underneath them with nary a tariff or checkpoint. One aspect of our wired "global village" is that people are forming new kinds of associations that are not based on geography or "accidents of birth" (race, religion, ethnicity, language, culture) but are instead based on mutual interest and desire for affiliation. By 2005, these ‘virtual communities’ will be well-established, and grappling with many of the problems that non-virtual communities have faced up until that point: who do you invite? Who do you keep out? How do you survive? What obligations do we have to our members?
There are already "media tribes" of various kinds, ranging from Star Trek fans (Trekkies) to "CNN junkies" who meet to gather and talk about what was on CNN that day. While some people are predicting that new media are increasingly isolating and alienating people, what they may in fact be doing is eating away at some kinds of community (those based on where you live or where you were born) while creating new kinds of identities, affiliations, and associations to replace them. Communities based on mediated rather than face-to-face interaction will become more acceptable and more influential.
While some also suggest the global electronic media are a homogenizing force, I think that there will be a countervailing tendency, because people will turn to the media to assert their own sense of uniqueness and particularity. Traditional culture will not disappear altogether, but there will be new kinds of hybrid identities, as various subcultures develop along lines of fusion created by the media.
3. Telecom systems in 2020
Technological Changes - Wireless (Broadcast)
The roll-out of Digital Audio Radio Service (DARs)
Little is known about DARs, which was just recently approved by the FCC. Many communities, including Gainesville, already have digital cable radio (DCR). DARs is likely to be quite similar, offering 30 or more channels through a "non-tuned" transceiver (you just pick the channel number) which cover almost any possible musical taste. Cox Cable's DCR offers Latin, dance, R & B, classical, New Age, and five varieties of rock, enough to satisfy even the most jaded local radio listener who complains of the Top 40 crap they get through Rock 104. However, unlike Rock104 listeners, DCR listeners are paying a fee each month for the transceiver and service, and they don't ever hear a single DJ, ad, or any interruption at all.
This abject lack of talk is possibly the primary flaw of DCR, because people don't know what songs are going to be played since the titles are never announced. Further, DCR features no news shows, talk radio, community announcements, radio call-ins or requests, or the many contests and DJ gags which have made some stations famous. It has no personalities of the caliber of Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, or other "shock jocks." (It has no people, period.) And you can't listen to it in any mobile fashion (in your car, in your headphones while jogging, or at the beach) which is where most people do their radio listening today.
DARs may be more popular than DCR because it may return the talk and the mobility while preserving the variety of digital radio. It might also be free to the listener, because it could have advertising. Very likely, some DARs services will work in conjunction with the GPS-mapping systems already appearing in automobiles, so that in addition to seeing where you are on a map, and possible routes you can take to your destination, you will be able to hear where to stop for good eating, shopping, and tourist gawking, or customized traffic reports specifically describing the area of town you are driving through. "Smart roads" and "smart cars" will work with DARS as intelligent guides!
Experiments in "amateur TV" (local 'micro-power' microcasting)
While nowadays you can buy a simple pirate radio transmitter kit, with instructions included, for about $500, this has never really been an option for TV transmission. Until now. Stephen Dunifer of Radio Free Berkeley has been selling "micro-power" TV kits for less than $1000, which actually can transmit a halfway decent picture and sound to an entire neighborhood. He is in the middle of litigation with the FCC over the propriety of this enterprise, but in the meantime, many people have jumped on the bandwagon, transmitting happily away while the powers that be deliberate.
A black activist in Chicago uses a "micro-power" system to transmit his Black Liberation Media service to the city's South Side (he transmits radio 24 hours a day, TV 3 hours a day.) In the Midwest, some Native American reservations are setting up their own "micro-power" systems to carry local tribal news and affairs. Many ethnic groups who live in relatively dense urban enclaves see this as a tremendous opportunity to tune in to "something different" than the ordinary majority mass media.
Will Amateur TV merely mean a thousand "Wayne's World" broadcasts from the basement of overeager teenagers? As other deregulated outlet systems begin to restrict local public-access, and local affiliate stations disappear, people may begin to turn to Amateur TV to see what's going on right now, right where they live -- because they can't get it from anywhere else. In 2005, there will probably be a good number of these "micropower" stations, because if Reed Hundt rules against them, he will be assassinated by a radical black militant, and they'll all go pirate anyway.
TV broadcasters move into Digital-HDTV broadcast
This one has obviously been all over the existing media recently. Based on the FCC's ruling, every analog broadcast station has gotten a second digital channel, and within nine years, they have to give their analog frequency back. Anyone who still has an analog TV in 2005 will have to buy a digital converter box. The stations could use this digital channel to send the same-old NTSC picture (four different ways), but most of them are likely to use it to transmit the newer HDTV standard. This HDTV standard will unfortunately be interlaced, as current TV signals are, rather than sequential, which is how computer monitors draw their screen.
New digital-HDTV TVs are likely to be wider, flatter (they can use a vertically activated liquid crystal display rather than a rear-firing electron gun), and to have a sharper, crystal clear picture with hi-fi CD-like sound. They will also probably be more complex and more expensive (the first sets, projected for release in Christmas 1998, will run between $2000 and $5000.) "Early adopters" with a lot of pocket cash will grab them. The advantages of digital are there for the broadcaster - encryption, better signal transmission and error-checking, etc. - but the average consumer is likely to balk at all of it in 1998 because, after all, they "have a TV which already works just fine and costs a lot less."
By 2005, however, fewer stores will be selling analog TVs, and fewer stations will be sending analog broadcasts. The recalcitrant will be dragged along, perhaps kicking and screaming. The price may have fallen considerably by then, easing their discomfort. Some will begin to see the curious advantages of digital. They can grab a frame from their favorite episode of "Seinfeld 2000," put it on a DVD-WORM disc, open it in Adobe Photoshop 12.0, paste their picture from a digital camera into it, and then go and tell all their friends they were on the show. Or pause their nightly news, use the "digital zoom" feature to look at that mysterious blob behind Dan Rather Jr., and then resume the broadcast...
Telephony and Telecom
Growing use of the Internet for "net-phony"
This is an easy extrapolation from current trends. The long-distance phone companies were so worried by "net phones" in 1995 that they actually began litigation to try and control the potentially burgeoning industry. While people were initially fascinated by promises of being able to "call their friends free over the Internet," they discovered that programs like NetPhone had certain irritating bugs. They were hard to configure. Over 14.4 modems, the sound was choppy and hollow. You couldn't talk at the same time as the other person. The IP connection was difficult if the person didn't have a fixed address (most SLIP users don't). You couldn't talk to more than one person - no "conference calls." And that other person had to be logged on to the Internet and using the same program as you, at the same time. No way to leave messages for them!
If they were worried in '95, they will have a real reason to worry by 2005. New programs are already appearing that feature full-duplex multi-party conversations, and (like CU-SeeMe) combine them with videoconferencing and "whiteboards." People can use hands-free speakerphones or headsets rather than clunky microphones. You can leave audio messages for people who are not logged in. You can log (store) the conversation. Some even have a "bridge" function that lets a person on the Net dial an ordinary phone and talk to a non-Net person. New Internet Printing Protocols (IPPs) will enable people to send "color faxes" - documents that print on remote printers in full color. The growth of "netphony" traffic will plague the Internet, which is already choked by other forms of data at other points. In some ways, it's a little paradoxical that many of these programs are taking analog voices, converting them to digital data, transmitting those data bits as bursts of sound over analog lines, converting them back to digital on the other end, then playing them as analog sound once more.
As a result of loss of revenue from long-distance, and Internet bottlenecks, the phone companies which now own so much of the now privatized Internet (Sprint, MCI, AT & T) may stop trying to fight 'em, and join 'em instead. They may try metered per minute rate pricing for netphony - since much net phone data is going over their trunk lines anyway! People are used to paying for voice on this basis, but not for data. While Internet users are used to flat per-month pricing from their ISP, they may be shocked to find that talking an hour with their friend in Tokyo over CU-SeeMe cost them -- and how! But they'll get a special discount on netphoning if they switch to AT & T WorldNet as their ISP... the new boss is the same as the old boss.
Spread of faster Internet "onramps" -- ADSL and ATM over twisted-pair
With "x2" modems the limitations of the existing twisted-pair phone lines become apparent. You can get 56 Kbps data... if the modem on the other end uses the same x2 standard, you're using a crystal-clear line, the other modem is next door, and the moon is full. Which is not pretty often. As most people have realized if they turn the proper Hayes command set on, their 28.8 modems are usually connecting at 24 Kbps or slower. The theoretical potentials of these technologies are slamming against the practical limitations of our phone system. "Fiber optics to the home" is every computer geek's dream, giving them a huge high-bandwidth pipeline for any kind of data imaginable. But to Al Gore's and other people's consternation, no one wants to strum up the billions of dollars needed to do it.
ISDN also turns out to be an also-ran. The ISDN propagandists tout being able to talk and transmit data at the same time. But ASVD modems already do this with ordinary lines. You can get 128 Kbps... if you used both 64K channels for data download. Even with ISDN working optimally, large Web pages still download insufferably slow for the average person, and ISDN lines are expensive if they're even available in many areas. Same problem with "cable modems": very few cable companies have put down coax with sufficient 'back-stream' for fast uploading capability, so in many places they're just simply not available. This might improve marginally by 2005.
By 2005, the phone companies start unveiling their own answer to the home consumer: ADSL (Automatic Digital Subscriber Loop) and ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode), which can run over existing twisted-pair, with some modifications. Both of these offer data transfer rates of 1 to 10 Mbps -- close to the rate of some Ethernet LANs -- but with the proviso that the transfer is always slowed down to the slowest point in the chain. (Internet II and the faster MBONE or multimedia backbone are still available only to universities, etc.) So unless it's "ADSL all the way," you won't ever see the 10 meg per second. Still, at that rate, full-motion full-screen video streams over the Internet at least become feasible, although maybe not at 30 fps in millions of colors...
True videophony appears but consumers demand features...
As technology pundits like to point out, the first commercial videophone appeared in the 1960s. Why aren't we all using one now? For one thing, the first videophones offered a tiny, jerky, black-and-white picture, which didn't sync perfectly with the voice of the person. And you could only be 'seen' if you stood almost ridiculously close to the lens of the device. Worst of all, you could only dial another videophone - you couldn't dial an ordinary voice telephone. The same problems that ordinary human beings have with many new technologies: too awkward, too inflexible, not backward-compatible.
Still, people had another complaint, which had to do with their privacy. Who wants to answer the videophone if they're in the bathtub? Videophone technology will be mature in 2005 -- people are already videoconferencing using QuickCams and other desktop cameras plugged into their PCs. But because people want to be seen less often then they want to be heard, they will probably include built-in caller ID (so you know if it's your wife), "video mute" (so you can black out the video), video substitution (which shows a substitute picture of you when you're in the tub), and maybe even customization features that make you look neater if it's the first thing in the morning and you haven't combed your hair, or make it look and sound like you're at work even if you're really calling from a bar.
It's almost a sure thing that by 2005 you will see 1-900 videophone services, and that video "telesex" will be the first application. How well these will scam people is questionable; they may make heavy use of the video-substitution feature. They will charge a heavy fee, but the spread of the HIV-Mark 2 mutant virus will make them popular. Other 1-900 videophone services might include various kinds of game/quiz "shows", where you can see a Tic-Tac-Toe or some other kind of game board, as well as the usual kinds of (now visual) dial-the-weather, dial-a-psychic, dial-the-movies, etc. Novel applications might include a "dial-a-diagnosis" from a doctor, "dial-an-appraisal" of jewelry, and new visual "date" or "chat" lines where people once again make heavy use of video-substitution...
Interactive/Multimedia
Changes for BBSes and online services
BBSes and online services are taking a beating from the Internet, but they are surviving by adopting two strategies. They are both trying to offer varying levels of Internet service (in some BBSes, this may be nothing more than gated e-mail to the Internet) and emphasizing their compactness and organization. Finding a file, a discussion topic, or a person on the sprawling and vast Internet can sometimes be nearly impossible; on a well-sorted, well-organized online service, you may be able to quickly find that file, and also read a detailed description of what it is and what it does. Plus the service has already compacted it, tested it for bugs and viruses, and evaluated it for you.
While the online services are in the middle of merger mania (AOL is eyeing Compuserve and Prodigy), some BBSes are growing so big they're like mini-online services. PC-BBS in Ohio boasts close to a million subscribers throughout the U.S., and offers thousands of files, several hundred discussion nets (like FidoNet), dozens of chat rooms, and several dozen phone lines. Ultimately, however, the smaller hobbyist BBSes will continue to thrive by emphasizing their uniqueness: they often serve a very specific niche (police, ham radio enthusiasts, doctors, adult GIF lovers, Amiga owners, etc.) and inevitably serve a very specific area (in particular, the zone/area code from which the system is a local call.)
Online systems and larger BBSes in 2005 may find their own niche in offering cross-country multi-player video gaming. Today on the Internet you can fight dragons in MUDs with, or play chess against, or play hangman versus, dozens of people from all over the world. But these games are usually pretty low-tech, often ASCII-text only. And you can also play a 3D graphic game like DOOM with up to six other people - but only over a LAN or if you dial each other over modems at the same precise time. You have to know your opponents, you have to know their phone number, and you all have to agree on a time to play. In 2005, you may be able to connect to AOL 6.0's DOOMNet, and play against all the other people who happen to be logged in at the same time as you - 24 hours a day! You can join a game in progress at any point. Video gamers will go for this - they can play when they feel like, without any remorse for their opponent, because they can play people they don't even know at all.
Internet "push media" become stronger parts of the media world
Today's "push media" services show the signs of infancy. The majority of them are fairly simple "news tickers." You see a headline go by; it's interesting; clicking on it takes you to a story on a Web site. Along with these headlines are usually stock quotes, weather info, and sports scores. Others, like SurfBot, deliver you a customized Web page each day which carries only the stories you are interested in - the so-called 'custom newspaper.' PointCast and InterMind are at the forefront of all this, giving you customized, dynamically updated, dynamically tracked, graphical news from sources that you choose (PointCast lets you pick ten out of 22 sources, ranging from CNN to Pathfinder to the San Jose Mercury News.)
Even more interesting are BackWeb, whose subscriber channels send you "InfoPaks" which range from animations to software to event announcements, and Castanet, a Java "tuner" whose "channels" can send you things ranging from an interactive, periodically updated cartoon, to an interactive map utility that will zoom in on whatever part of the U.S. you live in and give you a street map. What makes the "push media" interesting is that they're a little bit like print, a little bit like broadcast, and a little bit like the Web - but also a lot like none of the above, because they're often very customizable: you control what you receive and how you receive it. And you can set them to update their content when you feel like and set them up to command as much or as little of your attention as you desire.
Although PointCast and the others in 1997 are still mostly text-only, by 2005 RealAudio and RealVideo 'streaming' technology will be utilized so that users can not only read about what happened in the Republic of Texas that day, but can also watch and listen to it. They can even tune in to C-Span style Internet online conferences and conventions. The niftiest part is that PointCast 9.0 in 2005 is still free, but few people realize that "cookies" from the program are tracking everything they watch and making sure when that they use it they get some highly targeted advertising. PointCast doesn't spell the era of broadcast TV, however, because the software developers still find customized entertainment a lot harder to do than customized news.
Computers increasingly become "all-in-one" media devices
Pundits like Nicholas Negroponte have been accused of "computer chauvinism," but the advantage of using computers as media centers will quickly become obvious to many consumers by the year 2005. This is for obvious reasons: NTSC-TV is clearly inferior to computer monitors for viewing text and graphics. Unlike dedicated-hardware systems, computers can (within limits) acquire new capabilities by adding peripherals, add-on boards and cards, and software. Computers can automate through agents and "wizards" many functions consumers have to do laboriously on other devices. All of our media are becoming digital, and the computer already is designed to handle digital data. And, of course, the computer can quickly store, sort, search, analyze, and access what we see and hear.
Various companies have already tried to roll out limited units of this kind. Apple's TV/FM tuner lets people watch TV and listen to FM radio through their Mac. All kinds of nonlinear video editing boards are coming out, and so are the first digital full-motion video cameras. Computer music, through MIDI-synthesis and other systems, is becoming a genre of its own. New voice modems allow computers to function as answering centers, taking voice mail, e-mail, and pages, and forwarding them, saving them, or even auto-responding. DVD-ROM players will mean a whole new generation of interactive multimedia titles. And the Internet and Web through Java, etc., is more and more becoming a transparent part of the "desktop." Beyond even this, some computers through RS-232 ports are now controlling other household appliances.
A device capable of simultaneously handling all these functions efficiently doesn't exist yet, and if it was built would cost close to SGI professional workstations (in the $30,000 + range.) Still, every year, processor speeds seem to expanding exponentially, and in the future companies are likely to roll out more and more units with dual or more multiple processors, special-tasking MPEG or MMX multimedia cards, larger monitors and better speakers, and networking capabilities for sharing tasks with other connected systems. By 2005, media computers of this kind may be available to consumers with a lot of disposable income; in ten years after that, they might even be quite affordable.
Media Changes
Content producers have more work to do.
Media programming by 2005 will be a more complex affair. There are more channels, more outlets, more ways of offering the same program. The producers of Seinfeld 2000 may have to do a French version for their DVD-France title which carries the show in French and English. In some cases, French actors may be substituted for the U.S. ones. They may have to do a closed-captioned version for the hearing-disabled. They may have to do a low-violence and low-sex version so people with violence and sex-blocking V-Chips can still get the program. There may have to be an HDTV and non-HDTV format of the episode. They may film a special "Seinfeld Interactive" episode where people get to pick whether Kramer or Jerry gets to sleep with Elaine at the end.
The bottom line is that the producers are not done when they call "cut," and while post-production editing has always been a feature of TV, they are going to have to do a LOT of it, plus they will need to repeat a lot of takes - not just to get them perfect, but perhaps to do multiple versions of the same scene for multiple formats! Interactive TV is going to mean that multiple endings will need to be filmed - and if the show is really interactive, multiples of every scene. Still, technology will come to their assistance as well in various ways - perhaps 'digital actors' won't demand the union-scale wages for repeating a scene that real ones do.
There will inevitably be a great deal of recycling to meet the greater demand for material. Old films will be digitally re-mastered (like the re-release of Star Wars), new characters will be 'pasted' into them Forrest Gump style, and lots of shows will use 'flashback' material. For creative people, it will be a seller's market, as the demand for production talent will grow exponentially. Many people may even start doing this from home - video editing on their desktops and "telecommuting" their stuff over to studios!
Advertisers and consumers wrestle with the surveillance era.
In 2005, advertising has become more interactive, but consumers feel more bombarded by it than ever. Consumers slowly discover that as they type their individual preferences and tastes into interactive media systems, those things are being compiled into a database which advertisers use to send them "precision" advertising focusing on their demographic (age, race, gender, etc.) group -- maybe even micro-tailored to them as individuals! Online advertising allows the person to do everything but physically handle the product - and VR bodysuits may make even this a reality - before they buy it.
Some will look upon this as a better way to learn about new products - after all, now they don't have to deal with ads for incontinence products if they're young, or for skateboards if they're over 65. Others grow to resent the strong sell and loss of privacy and take technological and other measures against it. They refuse to fill out online surveys. They use blocking programs that eliminate "cookies," web banners, and net ads. Some start demanding pay-per-view media as an alternative to 'free media' with advertising. They use programs which switch off the broadcast when ads come on.
Debates in government will ensue over where and when advertisers cross the line. Is it wrong to sell life insurance to people who use online cancer therapy discussion groups? Is it wrong to send people who always watch the Romance channel ads for 1-900 chat lines? Is it improper to design ads which target the elderly (who are already a frequent target for scam artists?) Should a corporation be entitled to know information about me, if I typed that information into someone else's Web site to get a free download of Quake 8.0? There will be no easy answers.
Journalists are no longer trained for print, magazine, or broadcast.
Today, the University of Florida trains journalists in the College of Journalism for three areas - print (magazine and newspaper), broadcast (radio and TV), and, recently, "electronic publishing" (teletext, the Web, etc.) In the new media universe, the differences between these things begin to erode. New media journalists are expected to be able to work in a wide variety of areas - to work in a 'unified' multimedia field in which text, audio, video, and graphics may be used in many different contexts.
All journalists will have to be trained with computer skills, because they will come into contact with computers in all areas of their career. Increasingly, they will look for sources of information online, and do research in electronic archives and databases. Journalists were "information professionals" before the information age ever started, so they have a leg up in coping with the new information economy.
As in some areas, there will be an erosion of jobs because of automation. A robot with a camera may actually be more useful in certain journalistic situations (disasters, wars, terrorist attacks) because using one doesn't put a person in danger. Instead of opening large overseas bureaus, news shows may simply rely on one guy with a remote satellite uplink. Or instead of sending reporters to press conferences, they will rely on "video releases." Journalists with technical skills can stay ahead of the game. Others may have to look for new sources of employment.
The rationale for public broadcasting begins to erode.
Although many people rallied behind the Corporation for Public Broadcasting when there were attempts to cut its funding in 1995, the questioning of the rationale for National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) will continue. By 2005, the CPB may be an endangered species. Many people feel that PBS was created in an era in which there truly was a genuine dearth of programming for children, education, arts and culture, and public affairs, especially in rural areas. However, they think that these needs are now being met through program networks like CSPAN, Bravo, TLC, Nickelodeon, etc.
Supporters of PBS will counter that it provides things no other pay network ever will: no advertising and no kow-towing to advertisers' wishes (this actually isn't true - besides subscribers and the government, PBS shows get most of their money from corporate foundations); no catering to the lowest common denominator in search of ratings; no blending of news and entertainment into "infotainment"; a continued interest in local community affairs among its affiliates; a service that will always be free to the low-income TV watcher with an antenna who can't afford satellite, cable, etc.
Whether those arguments will prevail in 2005 is uncertain. In an era when major world governments are privatizing and selling-off their state-run media outlets, the U.S. government will have a hard time explaining that it is continuing to maintain a government-funded network (even if it is supposedly free of government control of content.) The main problem PBS will face in the new media universe is that it is one channel among 500, and that it desperately lacks the technology to keep up with the other 499.