Keeping the U.S. Computer and Communications Industry Competitive Convergence of Computing, Communications, and Entertainment (1995) / Chapter Skim
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3 Societal Implications
3 Societal Implications
Pages 40-64
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From page 40... ...
Even the whole concept of national sovereignty is going to have to be dealt with." Advanced communications services, fostered by digital convergence, are seen by many as key contributors to social and economic prosperity (Egan and Wildman, 1992J. Several trends make this possible, including the development of powerful new technologies, growing pressure to address social problems such as inadequacies in public education and rising health care costs, and a new appreciation among businesses, other organizations, and analysts of the role of information and communications in economic productivity (Egan and Wildman, 1992~.
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From page 41... ...
see a whole new world of electronic junk mail opening up; there is an Internet "radio station" broadcasting music from Santa Cruz, California, and beginning to strain the current limits of copyright law and performance; and there are merchants ranging from a small used clothing store in Los Gatos, California, with World Wide Web/ Mosaic access through which customers can query a database regarding available stock, to Digital Equipment Corporation, which derived some $100 million worth of sales for a particular product line from publishing product literature and enabling benchmark testing over the Interned. Although many activities and products will not change, there will be new options in various arenas, and corresponding changes in market share for options on how to spend time as well as money.
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From page 42... ...
As the market for multimedia products develops, manufacturers must analyze human attention structures to learn what sells. Thus, the filmmaker and the literature professor who are skilled in getting attention, whether from viewers or
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From page 43... ...
Lanham argued that it is time to rethink and reorient our approach to the information marketplace in terms of both structure and social implications. "We have to bring the new economics of human attention to focus now," Lanham advised.
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From page 44... ...
"Optical fiber, no more than twisted copper pairs, cannot heal a religious war." Diversity of Information Robert Stein of Voyager related the influence of profit-making strategy to the level of diversity in the information products delivered, building on his status as a publisher in both entertainment and education as well as on his personal philosophy. He said multimedia software appears to be developing along two tracks, the movie model and the book model, with the former prevailing.
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From page 45... ...
, and gambling demand that mechanisms be developed to satisfy the ever-changing parameters of social values and government regulation, Alexander Singer has said.9 Indeed, there is a skeleton at the feast of the entertainment industry's success, because its most profitable segment is the "action" genre, usually a euphemism for violence/ sadism. Also chafing to get into the starting gate is the $30 billion gaming industry (including lotteries, off-track betting, and local bingo games)
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From page 46... ...
Singer emphasized at the colloquium that, regardless of attempts at control, the market will be flooded with information products of questionable value. This phenomenon will not spell the extinction of artistic merit, but it will exploit business opportunities and consumer demands.
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From page 47... ...
Multimedia introduces unique problems into the copyright arena, because its various components have different legal traditions. For example, the book publishing industry relies on comprehensive contracts,- while the movie industry frequently employs short "deal" memos, and the computer industry has little experience with copyright issues such as "performance rights" (Radcliffe, 1993~.
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From page 48... ...
The new space of digital expression now forces us to make this adjustment in theory as well as in practice," he said. Copyright law could constrain multimedia development, Lanham warned.
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From page 49... ...
As suggested above, interesting and vexing intellectual property issues are associated with multimedia "material" other than content or interactive titles, such as the multimedia interfaces of computing or other digital information systems. In the area of computer interfaces, courts have weakened laws over the past few years.
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From page 50... ...
Colloquium participants suggested that intelligent management of new information technologies is the key to maximizing their benefits. This view was most optimistically advanced by George Gilder: I think the technology is enormously beneficial .
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From page 51... ...
Stein remarked on how difficult it can be to predict the full impact, including benefits, of entertainment-related technology by observing that while the placing of a person on the moon had been long anticipated, one of the significant aspects of that milestone was not predicted: that it would be televised, allowing hundreds of millions of people to watch it together. Stein noted that from the 1930s through World War II, machines were portrayed in educational films as liberating people, whereas advertisements in the l950s paired housewives and domestic machines.
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From page 52... ...
As Norman noted, technologists focus on producing technology while the entertainment industry focuses on producing content. "I would imagine what we need is what Singer and Stein were arguing for, which is some attention to the content .
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From page 53... ...
The introduction of the remote control device increased viewer control over video consumption, but providers still "nurture" the consumer to some extent, Wildman said. For example, cable operators prefer to position their channels near a broadcast network, to increase the likelihood of attracting viewers who "surf" the channels.
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From page 54... ...
In a variation on the latter concept, the cable television industry is developing interactive program guides that viewers will be able to operate using a remote control device (NCTA, 1993c)
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From page 55... ...
i~ Whatever the possibilities of an idealized future, Paul David warned against overlooking near-term realities. The issue is not the technology itself, David said, but the need to develop and apply it by acting within social organizations, to address problems of trying to mobilize resources, especially other people's money and talent, for the uncertain and unproven.
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From page 56... ...
Games, Play, and Life The growth in the popularity and profitability of electronic games has inspired interest from many quarters. Indeed, cable industry moguls John Malone and Ted Turner have speculated publicly that games may be an ideal vehicle for encouraging consumers otherwise accustomed to passive television watching to become more interactive users of TV (Lippman, 1993~.
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From page 57... ...
As identity workshops for issues related to control and mastery, MUD s can serve a therapeutic purpose, according to Sherry Turkle, who called the phenomenon a "deadly serious" game world, "precisely because they are not simple escapes from the real to the unreal, but because they're betwixt and between, they're both in and not in real life." Turkle has argued that a computer is like a Rorschach test20 in allowing for projections of the self, but that the computer goes even further than a standard psychological test because it is part of daily life. Extending this metaphor, virtual communities not only enter into daily life, but can also become daily life, because unlike conventional games, they do not have an end-point.
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From page 58... ...
They are rethinking social issues about gender, about privacy, about property, and about what constitutes legitimate authority in a community." The MUDs, their parallels in computer group gaming, and virtual reality technologies doubtless provide a unique and invaluable laboratory for social psychologists. This utility comes at a price, however.
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From page 59... ...
Publishers, news services, cable companies, software companies, and others have been experimenting with PCbased, on-line, and broadcast multimedia programming for education, with mixed success. On a broader level, several participants emphasized the promise of longdistance learning, which could bring the best teachers and latest techniques to even the poorest districts.
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From page 60... ...
: : : ::: .:.:: :. : :: :: : :: : :::::: ::: work, including distance learning classes between the United States and the Montreal World Trade Center, a user-controlled weather laboratory featuring a thunderstorm simulation, a computer-simulated voyage through the human body, and a homework hotline.23 Another project, ThinkLink, connects the classrooms of 115 Michigan fourth-graders to their home television sets via fiber-optic cables.24 Ameritech has an agreement with the school district to procure programming, schedule it, and package it; local teachers select the programs, such as a drama series on solving math problems (Ameritech, 1993a)
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From page 61... ...
Several speakers argued that, if distance learning is to be successful, entirely new approaches must be developed. Notebaert explained that new media drive the need for new approaches: "We are currently working with Indiana University in teaching distance learning in Indiana.
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From page 62... ...
We're hearing Beethoven or Stravinsky or Dvorak or anybody's music in ways they couldn't hear it." NOTES 1. Samuel Fuller, Digital Equipment Corporation, late-1994 interview, characterizing a late-1993 new product line launch.
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From page 63... ...
11. Video game cartridges will be rated by the Interactive Digital Software Association, and PC software and CD-ROM games will be rated by the Software Publishers Association (Farhi, 19941.
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From page 64... ...
After all, these are real people finding each other in cyberspace, not a paying customer calling a professional." 13. There are several legal issues associated with the evolving national information infrastructure (NII)
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