Topic: Getting

Music on Demand: Bell Labs’s Ken Thompson, the Father of Unix, Has Invented a New Technology that Could Mean Never Having to Buy a CD Again

What I would like to see is a central library of every recorded work. I’d like to sit down, pick pieces and compare versions, and I’d like to do this from home. One way would be via cable TV. The cable companies want to do this with movies, but that won’t be commercially viable for years. They’re aligning before the medium is ready. But with compression, the medium is ready for music right now. You could get 50 audio streams in one TV channel.

Encyclopaedia Brittanica Online? Given that the Web Itself is Becoming the Sum of the World’s Knowledge, isn’t Putting the Encyclopaedia Britannica Online a Spectaculary Useless Thing to Do?

This is not just another format. In the long term, digital media will fundamentally destabilize the way we do business. Usually, people talk about the revolution in digital media in terms of putting interactivity within the product itself. But the real revolution is in the market.

Agent of the Third Culture: John Brockman is the Michael Ovitz of the New Intellectual Elite

The book is still the best delivery system for new ideas we have, though that will eventually change. The corporate owners and a few of the top trade publishing executives are looking seriously at new technologies, but the trade publishers are still mostly techno-illiterates.

Friend or Foe: Newt Gingrich Talks the Talk About Being a Revolutionary. And He Walks the Walk by Ramming Through the Most Radical Political Agenda Since the New Deal. So Why Does He Still Leave Us Feeling Uncomfortable?

I like laptops – you can take them home. I’m not very impressed with computers that schools have chained to desks. I’m very impressed when kids have their own computers, because then they’re liberated from a failed bureaucracy. No, no. You can’t do any single thing and solve the problem. You have to change the incentives; you’ve got to restructure the interface between human beings. If you start redesigning a learning system rather than an educational bureaucracy, if you have incentives for kids to learn, and if you have 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week free-standing opportunities for learning, you’re likely to make a bigger breakthrough than the current bureaucracy. The current bureaucracy is a dying institution.

People Are Supposed to Pay for This Stuff? Crisscrossing the Country, Our Intrepid Correspondent Visits Corporate Labs, Model Living Rooms, and Actual Sofas, to Check Out the Megahyped Interactive Television Prototypes and See Just How Real the 500-Channel, All-Digital, High-Fiber Future Really Is

Set-top boxes [will] sell for less than $500 in two years. [The] business model relies heavily on interactive advertising … People will want to interact with ads for information-intensive products like cars and pharmaceuticals. But at this point there’s no solid evidence that large numbers of people want to interact with TV ads or shop this way. The $4 billion video-shopping and infomercial industry has been successful because tantalizing videos of beautiful models create demand. Some people think QVC is entertaining.

People Are Supposed to Pay for This Stuff? Crisscrossing the Country, Our Intrepid Correspondent Visits Corporate Labs, Model Living Rooms, and Actual Sofas, to Check Out the Megahyped Interactive Television Prototypes and See Just How Real the 500-Channel, All-Digital, High-Fiber Future Really Is

Microsoft seems to be over-intellectualizing TV … “People have a money budget and a time budget,” [says] Thomas Wong … “And people are willing to pay to save time.” … They will use interactive TV to rent movies; shop for food, clothing, and household items; attend college and self-improvement classes; and get all kinds of information – all without having to leave their couch for time-consuming trips. That, he says, is what people in focus groups and surveys say they’ll do. I don’t think so … People watch television for an entirely different reason: to feel that they are part of something larger than their own lives … It’s a deep psychological fix … They also turn it on for company, as background noise. And who needs interactive background noise?

People Are Supposed to Pay for This Stuff? Crisscrossing the Country, Our Intrepid Correspondent Visits Corporate Labs, Model Living Rooms, and Actual Sofas, to Check Out the Megahyped Interactive Television Prototypes and See Just How Real the 500-Channel, All-Digital, High-Fiber Future Really Is

Microsoft approaches the business of interactive TV the same way it approaches computing. It wants to set the basic software standards and supply some applications while leaving the high risk of building capital-intensive hardware and networks to other … “We won’t dig up the streets and put $10 billion into the ground,” says Laura Jennings … “The TV must make the transition from a broadcast appliance to a tool,” says Lowell Tuttman … But isn’t that the most absurd of uphill battles? It’s the computer that was designed as a time-saving device. Not the TV. The TV has always been a time-wasting device. It’s there to entertain you, not help you get things done. GTE has already learned this lesson.

People Are Supposed to Pay for This Stuff? Crisscrossing the Country, Our Intrepid Correspondent Visits Corporate Labs, Model Living Rooms, and Actual Sofas, to Check Out the Megahyped Interactive Television Prototypes and See Just How Real the 500-Channel, All-Digital, High-Fiber Future Really Is

People were mostly paying lip service to the education, information, and time-saving features. So, the company’s new infomercials and marketing pitches hardly mention those. Instead, they emphasize the fun and entertainment aspects … the ability to play along with game shows, compete in trivia games, predict during football season whether the quarterback will pass or run the ball, and participate in special events, such as voting for your favorite actors on Oscar night. Coming soon: betting fake money on horse races. GTE executives might not admit it now, but it looks like gambling could be their killer application … By the year 2003 … GTE projects that up to 60 percent of U.S. households will have interactive TV.

People Are Supposed to Pay for This Stuff? Crisscrossing the Country, Our Intrepid Correspondent Visits Corporate Labs, Model Living Rooms, and Actual Sofas, to Check Out the Megahyped Interactive Television Prototypes and See Just How Real the 500-Channel, All-Digital, High-Fiber Future Really Is

The 500-channel, all-digital, high-fiber world of the future. Will it be a happy time, bursting with “choice, control, and convenience,” the mantra of every corporation getting into this business? Or will we take one look at it, snort, and go right back to reruns of “Baywatch”? For that matter, will it even happen? Will you want to “turn your living room into a mall,” as the Time Warner brochures promise? Or are so many industries rushing to make television interactive for the same reason that dogs lick their balls – because they can?

Disc Junkie: MCA Music’s Al Teller Reveals Why Hollywood is Deaf to the Sounds of the Net

Some major players in the entertainment industry, not just in Hollywood, believe they’re going to dictate the flow of events. I laugh at that. I think Hollywood is going to have to fight hard to keep a dominant seat at the table. I don’t believe that the center of gravity in the online world will be naturally emanating from Hollywood. It’s likely going to come from a whole new generation of kids who grew up with videogames.

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