Steve Mizrach
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!
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.
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...
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.
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...
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...
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.
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.
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.
(sources: EMRTW-ARF, Kelly, Rushkoff, Rushton)
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!
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.
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.
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.