CompuServe Messages

Tim— Our continuing dialogue re. Luther inspires me to send you a piece I recently wrote. Sorry about the length…I'd love to see this published on conventional 4-color magazine paper someday,complete with images… Here goes… Towards a Historical Appreciation of the Promise of Digital Media By: Patrick Rafter Digital Evangelist Data Translation To look to the future of digital media, it is perhaps best to look back, to know which way is forward. The "Information Soup" (a highway is too linear) of tomorrow is the unplanned product of the evolution of communications technologies and the forces that have used and been used by them, ever since cavemen drew their first paintings at Lascaux. The evolution of the media into tools for personal empowerment is a recent, ongoing phenomenon that has its roots in the illuminated manuscripts of the monks in the latter days of the Fifteenth Century. 1464 The Beginning of Mass Media In the Middle Ages-a the principal mass medium (TEXT) was controlled by a small segment of the total population. This early intelligensia consisted almost exclusively of the Church, Academia, and Royalty. This "Group of Three" alone had access and control of the means of Learning READING Creating WRITING Distributing PRINTING Communicating IDEAS………………in the form of TEXT. These three influencers defined organized thought and communicated in a uni-directional format to those who could read-and most could not. Printing, the means of expression-was only possible for those who owned a printing press, or owned the people who owned the press. Gutenberg's printing press liberated thousands of copyists from tedious labor but the process of printing required skilled operators using expensive, bulky equipment. 1790-1890 The Beginning of Popular Communications This is the century of revolution in Europe and the Americas. In documents from Candide to Tom Paine's Letters, from the Declaration of Independence to Darwin's Origin-the written word is a source of inspiration for democracy, free speech, new social orders and controversial theories, challenging the precepts of organized religion, the scientific communities, and despotic monarchies. 1900 The Peak of Text Text has reigned supreme as the primary communications medium for 400 years. Now reading and writing are skills shared by a majority of the population in industrialized countries, evidenced in universal letter writing. Print is widespread and through newspapers, pulp magazines and pocketable books distribution of printed words is both portable and affordable. Small presses proliferate covering subjects of interest to the general public; electric lighting making the task of composition easier on the eyes. All these forces combine to illustrate that text now allows bi-directional communication and spreads the intellectual commerce of adolescent democracies and market economies. Text informs, educates and entertains. In the meantime, motion pictures are emerging as a new form of entertainment. 1964 The Peak of Television Just 60 short years after the turn of the century, electricity has revolutionized communications. Not only do electric powered presses facilitate mass distribution of printed words, but electricity in every home enables television- motion pictures now inform and educate, as well as entertain. A worldwide TV audience for Kennedy's funeral demonstrates the tremendous emotional power of video. A new "Group of Three" controls what people think: NBC, CBS, ABC. Information distribution over the airways remains unidirectional and video has begun to replace print as the primary medium of communication, yet not of expression. 1994 The Peak of Video Just 30 years later-video has beginning to evolve into a two-way medium, as did print before it. This is made possible with the advent of technologies and forums for communications: *Videotape and the low-cost videotape recorder *Portable, hand help video cameras *CNN *MTV *CableTV *"America's Funniest Home Videos" *Computer-based video systems With the arrival of these new technological tools, the electronic democracy was born. Tinanmen Square, Rodney King and S-VHS coverage of the Persian Gulf war are but the first examples of the symbolic power of video images, produced and distributed by individuals, not by the broadcast "Group of Three" or the U.S. Government. The Marxian maxim about alienation from the means of production takes on a new meaning in our "Third Wave" information is power economy! In our nascent electronic democracy, the means of communication and expression are not controlled, they are shared: Learning Reading and Watching Creating Writing and Producing Distributing Printing and Broadcasting Henceforward, VIDEO will be used increasingly as a two-way forum, instead of as an escape for couch potatoes. But video is just another step in the evolution of enabling technology. 2000 The Post Video Era: A Digital World "Video" will be dead before we know it. In its place will be completely interactive, all-digital world where: 1) A convergent shift to digital technology among the telecommunications, computer, consumer electronics, and media publishing industries will enable an inter-mediary exchange of anything which can be stored in digital form…text…computer code… full-motion video…CD-quality audio. Binary code will be the lingua franca of the modern, post-nationalist world. 0101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 2) Easy-to-use, innovative software will enable non-professionals to create professional quality video. Today's broadcast television and Hollywood studio- based film industries have lost their creative zest as job functions became compartmentalized and unionized workers were restricted in what they could do. Virtual Hollywood is being built today, in individuals' homes. The modern Renaissance Woman now has unfettered access to digital tools to create anything her mind imagines. Ironically the last Los Angeles earthquake may turn out to be a blessing in disguise as people will opt to remain at "Home Suite Home" and telecommute on the Electronic Superhighway instead of fighting traffic on the Santa Monica Freeway. Others will stay home in droves, in Boston, Omaha, Berlin and Osaka. Later in Moscow, Peking, Kigali. The typewriter let anyone be a printer. Digital video lets anyone be a Capra, a Murrow, even a Geraldo! 3) Digital video production will be simplified as the number of necessary equipment components will decrease and miniaturization will fit the power of a conventional video studio onto a desktop, ultimately a portable computer. Expert systems, video templates, clip video libraries (with liberal content reproduction rights) will simplify the process, broadening the number of pro-sumers of video. Desktop publishing did this for print production in 1985. We used to go to the studio-now it comes to us. 4) The Movie Theatre/Studio are one. With broad-band communications technology and a fiber-optic infrastructure enabling distribution of digital content from your home or office to mine: the traditional barriers of media production and dissemination are lowered. The digital "airwaves" will become the virtual marketplace, where digital products are bought, sold and bartered. Creators of content will embrace these new ways to share their property or disappear. Recall, before the information superhighway, the barons of railroad business mistakenly thought they were in the railroad business, not the transportation business. They were then eclipsed by a national highway system. Their misperception is a lesson that the telephone companies, cable and broadcast television stations, and publishers must note or pay the consequences. This time around-the consumer will have more say in what may come to pass. Digital: The First Live Medium Ultimately digital communications have the promise to: Entertain, Inform, Educate, Enlighten, Empower… in a way that text frozen on a page, or advertising-sponsored, mass-market homogenzied broadcast-television never, ever could. But as with text before, and video's current evolution, the digital intermedia of tomorrow will require a gradual broadening of acceptance before it approximates its potential. Digital intermedia will combine the lucidity of the printed word, the immediacy of sound, and the unique power and richness of moving images. We can imagine that day will come, someday soon at at theatre near you (your basement?). After all the word imagination, is nothing without an image. ### (c) Copyright 1995, Patrick Rafter. All rights reserved. Patrick Rafter is Evangelist of the Multimedia Group, Data Translation (Marlboro, MA). He was Director of Public Affairs for American Information Exchange (Palo Alto, CA), as well as a manager at Aldus, CD Technology and Bitstream.