Teleputers [networked computers] will allow many of the 50,000 screenwriters who now queue up before the Hollywood bottleneck instead to reach substantial audiences around the world not by pandering to mobs but by appealing to special interests and passions.
By changing radically the balance of power between the distributors of culture and the receivers of culture, the teleputer [networked computer] will forever break the broadcast bottleneck. Potentially, there will be as many “channels” as there are computers connected to the global network. In essence, this means one channel for each person, which he himself programs and controls and which always offers his very first choice … Artists will be able to command a large audience without catering to lowest-common-denominator tastes.
The key to the culture is not its perversions but its aspirations and opportunities for distinction. By refracting the mass media into myriad media, the teleputer [networked computer] will open the way to floods of new programming.
Over the last five years, the share of computers in the U.S. linked to networks rose from under 10 percent to over 60 percent. During the next five years, the capacity of those connections can rise at least a thousandfold, allowing PCs to summon digital films and files of news, art, and multimedia from around the world. The television cable can become a computer connection. The personal computer can rule American culture as decisively as broadcast TV has ruled it for the last 40 years.
The electronic newspaper will be a far more effective advertising medium than current newspapers, televisions, or home-shopping schemes. Rather than trying to trick the reader into watching the ad, the newspaper will merely present the ad in a part of the paper frequented by likely customers. Viewers who are seriously interested in the advertised item can click on it and open up a more detailed presentation; or they can advertise their own desire to buy a product of particular specifications.
Just as digital desktop publishing equipment unleashed thousands of new text publishing companies, so the new digital desktop video publishing will unleash thousands of new filmmakers … Hollywood, meanwhile, will move toward providing enhanced experiences through virtual reality and other expensive technologies.
In every industry – from retailing to insurance – the key impact of the computer-networking revolution is to collapse the costs of distribution and remove the middlemen … Anyone with access to the information highway will be able to distribute a film at a tiny fraction of current costs. Moreover, webs of glass and light will free the producer from the burden of creating a product that can attract miscellaneous audiences to theaters. Instead producers will be able to reach equally large but more specialized audiences dispersed around the globe. Rather than making lowest-common-denominator appeals to the masses, filmmakers will be able to appeal to the special interests, ambitions, and curiosities of individuals anywhere, anytime.
Computers multiply data; in fact, one study indicated that data would double 19 times between 1990 and 2000. How will anyone be able to find the information needed in this huge haystack? The world is already choking on data … Where is the information we have lost in data?
The new law of networks exalts the smallest coherent system: the individual human mind and spirit. A healthy culture reflects not the psychology of crowds but the creativity and inspiration of millions of individuals reaching for high goals. In place of the broadcast pyramid, a peer network will emerge in which all the terminals will be smart – not mere television sets but interactive video receivers, processors, and transmitters.
In the world of the teleputer, broadcasters, educators, investors, and filmmakers, who thought they could never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people, are going to discover they were wrong.