Edison didn't invent a better candle. Still, Edison invented the light bulb by candlelight. All the new technology lacks one thing. It cannot convey a message to those who cannot see the new technology.
Egypt, A new world order--a world without borders.
We are moving rapidly from the land of Laptopistan written about in a Times article to Netopia.
What happens when movies on demand becomes TV on demand? What happens when television goes beyond the laptop through Google TV to a direct subscription system.
Time Warner may want to go beyond the old movies of TCM and began broadcasting, what? Leave it to Beaver? The Early episodes of The Simpsons? Gunsmoke? Two and a half men?
The Wolves at Tottenham that I cannot watch on ESPN will be available over the internet. Remember a few scant years ago when the music industry was in an uproar about Napster? Remember that free phone service of ten years ago and VOIP? That debate became moot with Skype.
The best idea broadcast television has come up with to attract viewers is to start airing programmes targeted at people who don't watch television. Thus, driving away viewers who do watch television. Then there is the newer technology.
Sit down to dinner, push a button, and your dining room wall becomes a massive flat-screen television screen allowing you to have dinner with your sister and her family in Bismarck, North Dakota. (Home to the Raccoon National Cemetery.)
The social interaction will move people quickly into Netopia. Your son studying in Sweden, your daughter the doctor on a humanitarian aid mission to Japan for the recent floods, a BritCom years before it hits Channel 13. (American idiom for The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which used to be National Education Television before the marketing people realised that people don't watch television to get an education only to appear to have gotten an education. (There is a sentence in there somewhere: some assembly required.)
What a shame those in the broadcast industry can’t see what is going to happen. Then, too, they don’t seem to be able to see what is actually happening. If only we could figure out whether it’s because they’re watching too much television or not enough.
Regards,
Slim
Mail: Slimfairview@yahoo.com
