SELECTIVE VISION

Reading through Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat", I was very enthused to hear his perspective and to contemplate the many excellent observations he makes about the multiple convergences shaping our current world economy. Of particular interest was the observation that these technologies arrive at exactly the right time to empower the newly democratizing (and therefore available) populations of China, Eastern Europe, and India. However, I was also simultaneously suspicious that his is a simplistic and selective interpretation of events. True, many of the forces he describes do exist and are not likely very different than the way he describes them, but so far, half way through the book, he isn't giving much or any discussion time to the negative impacts this "flatening" is having on the poorer non-western cultures that are supposedly benefiting.

I'm certain Postman would jump to point out that the technologies Friedman lists as flattening forces come at a cost. As discussed in Howard Rheingold's blog posting we read this week, being accessible at all times is both empowering and enslaving. To the Indian or Chinese call center worker who must change their name or fake an american accent, there is probably some sense of compromising one's own identity or culture. Indian and Chinese citizens must be starting to grapple with the effects of personal info data mining, identity theft, or other digitally enabled crimes, and I can imagine that the respective governments are less prepared or responsive to protecting the consumer compared with the US.

OMNISCIENCE

"Technologies of the Third Mediamorphosis," by Roger Fidler.

I was fascinated to see the extent to which industrialization and the spread of the railroad system compelled early communication technologies, especially where they would fascilitate instantaneous communication over a large distance. At present, of course, the computer has generated a dizzying array of alternative modes of communication, all very easy and immediate, but I do see certain parallels between the early industrialists and modern online game developers. Both are trying to build infrastructure, establish standards and develop systems that allow users to communicate with each other. Admittedly, game developers build on top of 200 years of existing infrastructure, and many new technological hurdles that exist are largely because of a desire to perpetuate or protect propietary systems or technology, rather than speed the adoption of standards. This is particularly true in the games industry. But we are facing certain challenges not unlike the early expansionist industrialists: the desire to connect communities and interested parties, to fascilitate the exchange and mediation of products or information, and the overriding interest in making money on the whole thing. Think Snowcrash: massive virtual environments where people can communicate, trade, collaborate or compete. That is clearly the future of online gaming. It's the 1800s again, but virtual.

We're a long way from achieving anything like the transparency of virtual environment depicted in Snow Crash, where it is presumably possible to ignore or be unaware of the underlying technology. Looking at the progression Fidler makes in this week's article, though, I can extrapolate from the 40s televisions and the 90s internet to arrive at a massively virtual visual online environment within 20 years, which may even be standardized the way the internet is. To be sure, the current battle between Sony and Microsoft will influence the precise shape this environment takes, and may even inspire a parallel open-source extension of current web protocols. One thing looks certain: the core technologies behind modern 3d gaming, especially online gaming, will be essential.

So the central question seems to be, will this new environment enjoy standardized protocols, or will it be pinned to proprietary licensed technology as I'm certain either Sony or Microsoft would prefer (and prefer it be theirs)? The survival principle, referenced in this article, could be interpreted to go either way. Sony or Microsoft, and their respective online gaming portals, will evolve as market forces dictate. A particularly successful title on either side would influence the process. Also, it's not inconcievable that in-game communication, which currently supports voice, text and avatar synchronization, could become a threat to present day conventional channels of phones, email or television. It just depends how much time people end up wanting to "log in" to this virtual environment. I'm sure Postman would have something to say about this. It isn't likely to improve anyone's life or help them do their jobs significantly differently than current technologies, but it is likely to occur in some form or another regardless.

On Technology and Happiness

In the study report “Around the Web in 80 Ways”, the author comes to the fairly prosaic conclusion that what motivates politically interested internet users is different than what motivates users with less political inclination (p 319). This would seem pretty obvious, and now it’s been proven by a survey. Another conclusion, that it is very difficult to predict what usage patterns occur with different users judging on their previous usage patterns, is again predictable. In fact, the Internet is in this way akin to driving through an area of town that is festering with billboards. Your eye will wander, and it’s not especially meaningful.

So why was the study done? I can’t help but think that this article indulges in a little of the dot-com era hand wringing in it’s attempts to understand “what is the internet?” Well, this study might not differ much if it focused on newspapers or radio. People are drawn to a given medium for what they seek – uses and gratifications theory. I really failed to see anything profound about the fact that the medium, or rather channel, is the internet, except that the internet does offer orders of magnitude more choice.

It is interesting and sensible that there is apparently a renewed interest in Uses and Gratification theory, as the author states on p304 in the introduction, at a time when people are offered more choices for interactive and self-directed media consumption than ever before. This would seem to offer a goldmine of data to anyone trying to parse the implications of Uses and Gratifications theory, and of a quality that would have been impossible before the internet. But the author’s intended goal of determining whether motivations (specifically political motivations) act as an intervening variable in the uses/gratifications equation would appear somewhat light – the answer seems self evident. Anyway, it’s done and documented.

The most interesting part of the article for me was the section in which they drew certain conclusions about who uses the internet for political purposes, or really for any of the studied uses. There’s some interest data to ponder there. That accessing bulletin boards or lists so totally outranks music download and game playing actually surprised me – there must be a lot of “virtual community” oriented nerds out there. This is an especially interesting and compelling piece of information for many online game developers. It’s an assumed axiom that supporting community development (clans, chat, friends lists) within a specific game will powerfully reinforce loyalty to that game. That said, I think a more interesting dimension would emerge if the study were not cross sectional, dated Oct/Nov 2004, but a longitudinal study spanning many years, as practical. The trends that might emerge would be very telling about the internet’s effects.

If I seem mildly like an eye-rolling luddite here, I can at least take comfort in the message of the excellent speech Neil Postman gave to the German Informatics Society in 1990, another of our readings for this week. His point that computer technology comes at as high or higher of a cost to society as it’s benefit really resonates. I hadn’t considered it, but the truth is that within the last ten years, as he points out, I have noticed that I do feel more tracked and controlled, more buried by spam and junk mail, and more easily reduced to a number or password. His point that sophisticated information technology doesn’t really help us cope with any of the real problems in society, such as war, hunger, homelessness or disease, seems especially poignant to me as I reflect how easy it is to abstractify and reduce the reality of the poorer, non-western world down to CNN news bytes. Information overload means less ultimately hits home.

I find this little excerpt of an article in the London Financial Times germane, where it quotes Jean Giono’s “The Weight of Heaven” :

“Joy is not the product of technology or society. It is the individual product that an individual being, rich in natural treasures, is better qualified than anyone else to attain and to keep, so long as his physical being inhabits the space and time of a man. Mankind lives among unbounded splendours."*

And, similarly, a quote from William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence”:

"I have no name/ I am but two days old - / What shall I call thee?/ I happy am/ Joy is my name - / Sweet joy befall thee!"

Clearly a variation of the old platitude “ignorance is bliss”, these nuggets nicely embody the wisdom of Postman’s speech. There’s some irony in the fact that, through supervening necessity, the technology to access these gems has matured into not only the internet, but the extremely powerful proquest database where such information is literally at my fingertips, and it is through these means that I’m finding such pertinent quotes to illustrate my point. Ultimately, of course, I wouldn’t give up that search capability for anything. I am just delighted and thankful to have read Mr. Postman's counterpoint.

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Article: “In search of sweet and untainted joy: society and technology often obscure this elusive emotion, but it can be recaptured through nature”.

Abstract: With quotes from prose and poetry, the author opines on the subject of technology vs. joy, and makes the point that they are antithetical.

Notes: Media Technology and Society -- Introduction and Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION: The concept of "supervening social necessity" certainly rings true. This blog is a perfect example: once society changed to the point where many people feel the need to express themselves publicly, blogging software came along to handily meet the need.

I can also apply the idea, in a couple of ways, to the game console.

The most significant technological advancement in the next generation consoles, HD capacity DVD media, perfectly illustrates the contradictory forces of supervening social necessity and supression. We need the higher capacity media for HD movies, next gen games, etc. (which is the supervening social necessity), but a standard is not forthcoming because of the suppressive effects of the legal battles within the blu-ray/HD-DVD format war.

As for the game machine itself, it's evolution from "pong" to the multimedia powerhouse that it is today reflects the demand consumers have begun to make on their entertainment appliances: dvd playback, dvr recording, music serving, online games, and, once HDTV becomes ubiquitous, web and email. Just within the game-specific technologies, everything from speech recognition to user interface design are developing at a fast rate to meet the needs of the developers. It is not inconceivable that game consoles will play a role in mitigating the digital divide -- talk about supervening social necessity! Consoles cost 150$, pc's several times this amount.

HOWEVER, before consoles can really challenge the pc, HDTV must become the standard. NTSC is simply too course for email or web. It will be interesting to see if supervening social necessity will compel HD adoption, once people realize what they _could_ be doing on their game machines.

(As an aside, I suspect that, more likely, sports broadcasting will drive HD. Not such a supervening necessity, but in this country not all that much is anymore (my opinion). I imagine India and China will have an altogether more interesting set of forces at work when it comes to this sort of technology adoption.)

This raises the more interesting question: what is the "brake" (law of the suppression of radical potential) that is inhibiting HD adoption in the US market? Is it the investment base people have in NTSC devices, such as vcrs, dvd players, tivo, and the televisions themselves? If so, this is a perfect illustration of the way the technologically advanced countries can find themselves falling behind compared to developing countries, which may, through a combination of necessity and opportunity, leapfrog a generation of tech infrastructure. However, it's probably not that simple. I can imagine corporate interests playing a huge role in this negotiation, particularly in the US. Winston basically suggests so, though refering to the UK.

Another aside: I particularly appreciate that Winston uses the example of videogames to illustrate unintended technology spinoffs, in this case from the microprocessor (p 14).

CHAPTER 1: Winston's account of the scrambled efforts that eventually lead to the telegraph is very entertaining. It's charming to imagine inventing in such a mechanically straightforward world: 26 alphabetical characters MUST require 26 seperate channels of communication! I can really appreciate Morse's innovation, his insight that a single channel would suffice with a code, and that the code formula should be informed by the frequency of each letter in typical print typesetting.

It's amazing to contemplate the amount of existing infrastructure that we take for granted, particularly the fiber optic networks that were bizarrely over invested during the dot com boom and then sold off at discounter prices when the investing corporations collapsed. The last couple of pages of chapter 1 describe a fascinating environment in which competing telegraph technologies scrambled for supremacy, ultimately arbitrated by the american courts. Similarly unhinged, it would seem.

Notes: How the Internet Killed the Phone Business

This is fantastic. For some irrational reason, I really dislike paying my phone bill. I don't seem to mind paying for internet access, though.

It looks like this is basically just going to hasten the tranformation of telecoms into data transmission providers. The bill will still come from the same corporations, and for the same ultimate services. I wonder whether VOIP will prove to be stable and of high enough quality for most consumers. It could very well be a backwards step for some time. I need to try this out.

One key point that I take from this article is that disruptive technologies always divide the incumbent players into two groups, the reluctant supporters and the feverishly opposed. It's almost a useful metric to decide whether a technology really IS disruptive -- just check to see if the existing parties start to divide into these camps.

Notes: Social Aspects of New Media Technologies

USES AND GRATIFICATIONS: It's interesting to run my chosen technology, video game consoles, through the different theoretical paradigms discussed in this article. I would say, especially in modern online games, that consumers clearly experience 3 of the 4 major gratifications: entertainment, personal relationships and personal identity. The fourth major gratification, surveillance, is less applicable with most games, except perhaps educational reference games. But that's sort of a stretch. Where surveillance IS available, though, is in the secondary uses of modern consoles -- email, web browsing, and dvd playback.

I think the "uses and gratifications" perspective is going to be extremely useful in discussing my research topic for T.Y.'s class: "Under what circumstances would a consumer pay a subscription fee for an online game?". Clearly, such a pricing model is comparable to cable television, as opposed to, say, a dvd movie sale. The dvd movie sale is more comparable to a traditional, non-subscription video game sale. Where, on page 467, the article specs out the typical demographics for cable subscribers as being young, middle class, having children and higher education, I immediately drew a like comparison to the demographics of the typical video game consumer.

The main difference between cable and video games is, of course, interactivity vs. passive experience. Again, though, uses and gratifications would probably draw the same conclusion -- most game or cable consumption is for entertainment. Games differ remarkably in their ability to also add personal relationships and personal identity gratifications.

CRITICAL MASS: The video game hardware industry is obsessively concerned with issues surrounding critical mass, mass market adoption, and standards. There is currently another "vhs/betamax" battle raging over the next generation of DVD media format, which will need to support HD. Again, Sony is a key player with their blu-ray disks, and Toshiba is offering the inferior but cheaper HD-DVD. Hollywood distributers and studios weigh in and choose sides, predictably, but I find it interesting that a key strategic maneuver involves which type of media the next generation game consoles will support. Sony's Playstation 3 will use blu-ray. Microsoft's X-Box 360 will use neither at first, then later adopt HD-DVD. Anyway, whoever wins this standards war will immediately see a virtuous cycle support mass adoption of the winning media because that media will be used for the largest variety of products ever: movies, games, massive data storage, encyclopedias, etc. The worst thing that could happen, from the perspective of the consumer, would be to see both formats gain some adoption, some market share, and try to co-exist.

As to the question of HD televisions, and when they will reach critical mass to become the new standards, I believe that the next generation game consoles will provide a very substantial forward push. The consoles will, of course, work fine on PAL or NTSC sets, but to realize the graphics potential of these machines, consumers will likely be inspired to invest in HD televisions in much greater numbers.

DIFFUSION OF INNOVATIONS: Compared to the way games were evaluated and adopted in the recent past, today's massively networked gaming experiences would seem certain to turbocharge the process, likely compressing the adoption rate into a much shorter timespan. The future of games is online. Player vs. player gameplay, especially when it will simultaneously support hundreds or thousands of players within a single arena, is going to drive console and game sales in a way that was not even considered 10 years ago. On page 474, where the author speculates about whether new media "may have some special social or psychological implications", I think the answer with regards to online games is that we haven't even begun to see how this will change society. Snow Crash appears more or less on target.

There is so little friction working against innovation in this technology that it's almost impossible to predict what will happen. The big questions facing game developers center around how best to support the development of communities, how to minimize or eliminate cheating or theft, and how long to expect each product cycle to last. Unintended side technologies, such as using a playstation as a phone or to pilot a cruise missile, will certainly occur, and it will be fascinating to watch.

MEDIA SYSTEM DEPENDENCY THEORY: Game consoles may not have been much of a factor to discussions of media dependency when they first arrived, but now they are key. The high definition DVD format war I refered to earlier is a perfect example. It is conceivable that, within 10 years, the game console will be the primary appliance for consuming digital media in a typical household, eclipsing the pc. In fact, all the major console manufacturers are aggressively pushing directly at that goal. If they succeed, the console will be the starting place for any discussion of media dependency within the residential environment. Console manufacturers will dictate format, copy protection, portability and usability.

SOCIAL INFORMATION PROCESSING THEORY: Since the ipod set the standard for high concept branding, Sony and Microsoft have been extremely aware of the importance of design and image in the marketing of their next generation consoles. Microsoft even ripped off the ipod directly with the XBOX 360. If Sony were allowed to remain completely dominant, in other words, if XBOX had never existed, you can be reasonably sure that the Playstation 3 would be just as prosaic as the design for the Playstation 2. As it is, the pitch verbal warfare between the two camps borders on religious. I'm in the Sony sphere, and there are microsoft households I can only visit if I remain professionally anonymous. Clearly, the subjective affiliations people make to these competing brands is at an unprecedented level.

BLOG ON

Alright, we're up and running now. In my enthusiasm to get the quarter started I read half of "The World Is Flat" before the 1st week of class, only to discover that it's not our first book. Dang.

The _actual_ first book, "Media Technology and Society", by Brian Winston, appears to be sewn from altogether denser cloth. I might even call it opaque. In fact, after 2 hours chewing on the introduction, I really have no idea what he's talking about. Keep that Dictionary handy.