E-books and e-publishing by Samuel Vaknin (essential reading .TXT) 📕

the interests of the public were compromised and sacrificed on

the altar of commercialization and rating. Fears of

monopolization and cartelization of the medium are evoked -

and justified, in due time. Otherwise, there is fear of the

concentration of control of the medium in a few hands. All

these things do happen - but the pace is so slow that the

initial fears are forgotten and public attention reverts to

fresher issues.

A new Communications Act was legislated in the USA in 1934. It

was meant to transform radio frequencies into a national

resource to be sold to the private sector which will use it to

transmit radio signals to receivers. In other words: the radio

was passed on to private and commercial hands. Public radio

was doomed to be marginalized.

The American administration withdrew from its last major

involvement in the Internet in April 1995, when the NSF ceased

to finance some of the networks and, thus, privatized its

hitherto heavy involvement in the net.

A new Communications Act was legislated in 1996. It permitted

“organized anarchy”. It allowed media operators to invade each

other’s territories.

Phone companies will be allowed to transmit video and cable

companies will be allowed to transmit telephony, for instance.

This is all phased over a long period of time - still, it is a

revolution whose magnitude is difficult to gauge and whose

consequences defy imagination. It carries an equally momentous

price tag - official censorship. “Voluntary censorship”, to be

sure, somewhat toothless standardization and enforcement

authorities, to be sure - still, a censorship with its own

institutions to boot. The private sector reacted by

threatening litigation - but, beneath the surface it is caving

in to pressure and temptation, constructing its own censorship

codes both in the cable and in the internet media.

Institutionalization

This phase is the next in the Internet’s history, though, it

seems, unbeknownst to it.

It is characterized by enhanced activities of legislation.

Legislators, on all levels, discover the medium and lurch at

it passionately. Resources which were considered “free”,

suddenly are transformed to “national treasures not to be

dispensed with cheaply, casually and with frivolity”.

It is conceivable that certain parts of the Internet will be

“nationalized” (for instance, in the form of a licensing

requirement) and tendered to the private sector. Legislation

will be enacted which will deal with permitted and disallowed

content (obscenity? incitement? racial or gender bias?)

No medium in the USA (not to mention the wide world) has

eschewed such legislation. There are sure to be demands to

allocate time (or space, or software, or content, or hardware)

to “minorities”, to “public affairs”, to “community business”.

This is a tax that the business sector will have to pay to

fend off the eager legislator and his nuisance value.

All this is bound to lead to a monopolization of hosts and

servers. The important broadcast channels will diminish in

number and be subjected to severe content restrictions. Sites

which will not succumb to these requirements - will be deleted

or neutralized. Content guidelines (euphemism for censorship)

exist, even as we write, in all major content providers

(CompuServe, AOL, Geocities, Tripod, Prodigy).

The Bloodbath

This is the phase of consolidation. The number of players is

severely reduced. The number of browser types will be limited

to 2-3 (Netscape, Microsoft and which else?). Networks will

merge to form privately owned mega-networks. Servers will

merge to form hyper-servers run on supercomputers in “server

farms”. The number of ISPs will be considerably cut.

50 companies ruled the greater part of the media markets in

the USA in 1983. The number in 1995 was 18. At the end of the

century they will number 6.

This is the stage when companies - fighting for financial

survival - strive to acquire as many users/listeners/viewers

as possible. The programming is shallowed to the lowest (and

widest) common denominator. Shallow programming dominates as

long as the bloodbath proceeds.

From Rags to Riches

Tough competition produces four processes:

This happens in every medium but it doubly applies to a

computer-dependent medium, such as the Internet.

Computer technology seems to abide by “Moore’s Law” which says

that the number of transistors which can be put on a chip

doubles itself every 18 months. As a result of this

miniaturization, computing power quadruples every 18 months

and an exponential series ensues. Organic-biological-DNA

computers, quantum computers, chaos computers - prompted by

vast profits and spawned by inventive genius will ensure the

longevity and continued applicability of Moore’s Law.

The Internet is also subject to “Metcalf’s Law”.

It says that when we connect N computers to a network - we get

an increase of N to the second power in its computing /

processing power. And these N computers are more powerful

every year, according to Moore’s Law.

The growth of computing powers in networks is a multiple of

the effects of the two laws. More and more computers with ever

increasing computing power get connected and create an

exponential 16 times growth in the network’s computing power

every 18 months.

This is prevalent in the Net where even potentially commercial

software can be downloaded for free. In many countries

television viewers still pay for television broadcasts - but

in the USA and many other countries in the West, the basic

package of television channels comes free of charge.

As users / consumers form a habit of using (or consuming) the

software - it is commercialized and begins to carry a price

tag. This is what happened with the advent of cable

television: contents are sold for subscription and usage (Pay

Per View - PPV) fees.

Gradually, this is what will happen to most of the sites and

software on the Net. Those which survive will begin to collect

usage fees, access fees, subscription fees, downloading fees

and other, appropriately named, fees. These fees are bound to

be low - but it is the principle that counts. Even a few cents

per transaction will accumulate to hefty sums with the traffic

which will characterize the Net (or, at least its more popular

locales).

Adverising revenues will allow ISPs to offer free

communication and storage volume. Gradually, connect time

charges imposed by the phone companies will be eroded by tough

competition from the likes of the cable companies. Accessing

the internet might well be free of all charges in 10 years

time.

As long as the computer is less user friendly and less

reliable (predictable) than television - less of a black box -

its potential (and its future) is limited. Television attracts

3.5 billion users daily. The Internet will attract - under the

most exuberant scenario - less than one tenth of this number

of people. The only reasons for this disparity are (the lack

of) user friendliness and reliability. Even browsers, among

the most user friendly applications ever - are not

sufficiently so. The user still needs to know how to use a

keyboard and must possess some basic acquaintance with the

operating system.

The more mature the medium, the more friendly it becomes.

Finally, it will be operated using speech or common language.

There will be room left for user “hunches” and built in

flexible responses.

Sooner or later, the business sector has to mollify the God of

public opinion by offerings of political and social nature.

The Internet is an affluent, educated, yuppie medium. It

necessitates a control of the English language, live interest

in information and its various uses (scientific, commercial,

other), a lot of resources (free time, money to invest in

hardware, software and connect time). It empowers - and thus

deepens the divide between the haves and have-nots, the

knowing and the ignorant, the computer illiterate.

In short: the Internet is an elitist medium. Publicly, this is

an unhealthy posture. “Internetophobia” is already

discernible. People (and politicians) talk about how unsafe

the Internet is and about its possible uses for racial, sexist

and pornographic purposes. The wider public is in a state of

awe.

So, site builders and owners will do well to begin to improve

their image: provide free access to schools and community

centres, bankroll internet literacy classes, freely distribute

contents and software to educational institutions, collaborate

with researchers and social scientists and engineers.

In short: encourage the view that the Internet is a medium

catering to the needs of the community and the

underprivileged, a mostly altruist endeavour. This also

happens to make good business sense by educating a future

generation of users. He who visited a site when a student,

free of charge - will pay to do so when made an executive.

Such a user will also pass on the information within and

without his organization. This is called media exposure.

The future will, no doubt, witness public Internet terminals,

subsidized ISP accounts, free Internet classes and an

alternative “non-commercial, public” approach to the Net.

The Internet: Medium or Chaos?

There has never been a medium like the Internet. The way it

has formed, the way it was (not) managed, its hardware-software-communications specifications - are all unique.

No Government

The Internet has no central (or even decentralized) structure.

In reality, it hardly has a structure at all. It is a

collection of 16 million computers (end 1996) connected

through thousands of networks. There are organizations which

purport to set Internet standards (like the aforementioned

ISOC, or the domain setting ICANN) - but they are all

voluntary organizations, with no binding legal, enforcement,

or adjudication powers. The result is often mayhem.

Many erroneously call the Internet the first democratic

medium. Yet, it hardly qualifies as a medium and by no stretch

of terminology is it democratic. Democracy has institutions,

hierarchies, order. The Internet has none of these things.

There are some vague understandings as to what is and is not

allowed. This is a “code of honour” (more reminiscent of the

Sicilian Mob than of the British Parliament, let’s say).

Violations are punished by excommunication (of the violating

site or person).

The Internet has culture - but no education. Freedom of Speech

is entrenched. Members of this virtual community react

adversely to ideas of censorship, even when applied to hard

core porno. In 1999, hackers hacked major government sites

following an FBI initiative against hacking-related crimes.

Government initiatives (in the USA, in France, the lawsuit

against the General Manager of AOL in Germany) are acutely

criticized. In the meantime, the spirit of the Internet

prevails: the small man’s medium. What seems to be emerging,

though, is self censorship by content providers (such as AOL

and CompuServe).

Independence

The Internet is not dependent upon a given hardware or

software. True, it is accessible only through computers and

there are dominant browsers.

But the Internet accommodates any digital (bit transfer)

platform. Internet will be incorporated in the future into

portable computers, palmtops, PDAs, mobile phones, cable

television, telephones (with voice interface), home appliances

and even wrist watches. It will be accessible to all,

regardless of hardware and software.

The situation is, obviously, different with other media. There

is standard hardware (the television set, the radio receiver,

the digital print equipment). Data transfer modes are

standardized as well. The only variable is the contents - and

even this is standardized in an age of American cultural

imperialism. Today, one can see the same television programs

all over the globe, regardless of cultural or geographical

differences.

Here is a reasonable prognosis for the Internet:

It will “broadcast” (it is, of course, a PULL medium, not a

PUSH medium - see next chapter) to many kinds of hardware. Its

functions will be controlled by 2-5 very common software

applications. But it will differ from television in that

contents will continue to be decentralized: every point on the

Net is a potential producer of content