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January 11, 2006
The Content Chimera
Posted by Dana Blankenhorn
The Media PC ain't gonna happen. The "walled gardens" of the cell companies are going to come down. The telcos' plans in cable are non-starters.
All these huge corporations are subject to the Content Chimera, the idea that networks are pipes for selling content to people, and that it will all "converge" somewhere.
This is nonsense:
- TV standards are moving toward those of movies. None of the "Media PC" offerings at CES took HDTV into account.
- Networks are not pipes for selling content to people. They are two-way bit pipes. The future is
synchronoussymmetrical, not asynchronousassymmetrical.
- It's not all going to "converge" in any particular place. We will seek to consumer entertainment where we are, with whatever attention we can give. But we also create, we communicate, we interact. Different levels of attention require different types of devices.
The Content Chimera goes nowhere. It's the technology version of the Oil Chimera that now drives America's relations with the world. The solutions in both cases are remarkably similar.
Interactivity.
The "choke point" for the content market is NOT in production, or distribution, or marketing. It's in each one of us. It's in the time we have to consume, and the attention we can give to creation. Creation of content, by its nature, involves the consumption of older content, and the laws must reflect this, or they're economically non-productive. (Energy creation and consumption must similarly become a two-way street, all of us creating what we can from the Sun or wind or heat around us, and the current grid evolving into something remarkably like the Internet. But that's anoither show.)
So what happens now?
The biggest technology problem of our time is that the government has become as Clueless as the major companiies funding it, regarding the nature of the future, and the proper way to capitalize on these changes. Innovation has been made illegal, through telco monopolies, content oligopolies, and DRMs designed solely to lock us into obsolete economic systems. Other economies will continue to overtake us until we recognize this.
Will we be overtaken? It's up to you. There are ways for you to change policies, regardless of your party or economic power. Refuse to accept limits on choice. Demand your right to create. Speak, write, record, distribute, and make sure your kids do so as well.
The market will do the rest.
Comments (4)
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Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for over 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the "Interactive Age Daily" for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age, and dozens of other publications over the years.
1. Thuktun on January 11, 2006 08:09 PM writes...
Networks are not pipes for selling content to people. They are two-way bit pipes. The future is synchronous, not asynchronous.
Do you mean symmetric/asymmetric instead of synchronous/asynchronous?
Doings things asynchronously (e.g., email) is often better for the user than doing them synchronously (e.g., phone call) because it doesn't require all participants to devote their time to the activity at the same time. This doesn't seem to apply to your point.
Asymmetry, like the disparity between consumer broadband's massive downstream channel and tiny upstream channel, is usually present because the provider views them as feeding tubes for the consumer, rather than general connectivity. This applies directly to your point, I think.
Permalink to Comment2. Jesse Kopelman on January 11, 2006 08:11 PM writes...
"The biggest technology problem of our time is that the government has become as Clueless as the major companies funding it . . . "
Isn't this ipso facto? Clearly the solution is to get corporations out of government. I wonder what Tom DeLay and Duke Cunnignham would say?
Permalink to Comment3. Jack Mullaney on January 15, 2006 02:52 PM writes...
How wonderful to have stumbled on this site. I love thinking people. Here's my comment re 'solution to energy crisis is a network of everybody's personal generators'. My thinking is that this will not work because 'people' won't do it -simple at that. Energy prices will keep going up and we will use more of it because we can. The only solution is an attitude change. How do you create an attitude change in dumb (ie, most) people? - Fear. Sorry, that's about it. So if someone started a rumor like 'gasoline vapor causes sterility', for example - that would work. We need to think of a solution that will work, not one that ought to work if people were smart enough.
Permalink to CommentThanks for the talking space.
4. Jake Ludington on January 20, 2006 01:11 PM writes...
I'm not sure which Media Center PCs you looked at at CES, but most of the solutions do take HD content into account to the extent that HD is available at this point. All of the solutions will do "over-the-air" HD now and as soon as the CableCard tuners come out, all of them will do HD over cable. The current limitation is hardware, which is a technology problem that's practically solved.
You're also discounting Tivo as a Media Center in your blanket statement, which announced the Series 3 box at CES.
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