Monty Python cartoon: Television is Bad for Your Eyes
Why is technology always viewed so negatively? And why is the future always bleak? Why does it feel like the future-thinking theorists and prognosticators of the late 20th century as well as the present day always seem to be pointing out how present technoproblems automatically mean future pains?
In 1997, Ben Bagdikian (and I’m sure many others like him – I’m looking at you, Tipper Gore) decried the moral depravity of mass media. Bagdikian, in his afterword to Media Monopoly, examined the most powerful medium of the day, American television, and saw an unregulated space without a moral compass, destined to inevitably lead the nation’s unwitting people astray.
In 1999, information administrators at Arizona State University were struggling with the question: how do we archive important digital records, when deletion and turnover are so rampant? Unlike paper records of the past, permanent storage of digital records was presenting new challenges. How would future generations access older digital records as technology and storage media invariably advanced? Or, in other words, how far backwards will “backward’s compatibility” reach?
Lastly, in 2003, Christensen et al.’s Seeing What’s Next looked at how new communications innovations like VoIP, multiple-service operations (MSOs), and WiFi were already beginning to present problems for standard telecoms. Chapter 10 of the book considered how established incumbent businesses might want to embrace these new technologies and co-opt disruptive startups – a logical assumption, considering how new technologies could displace older ones, which has never happened in the whole of human history (yes, this is my added sarcasm). Now, to be fair, they present ways in which entrants to the telecom game, with new toys like VoIP or Instant Messaging, can beat the big dogs at their own game. Nevertheless, the problems larger providers like Verizon or AT&T face from new entrants fit into the “figure it out or its curtains” motif.
I agree that there is something to all of these clarion calls. American TV has been a moral wasteland at least since cable’s introduction, if not earlier. And problems with digital recordkeeping? The Bush administration “lost” a heck of a lot of official emails through the last eight years. And in terms of trouble in the tech world, Christensen et al. basically predicted in 2003 that MSOs like Comcast, offering phone services via coaxial cable, and Verizon, rolling out fiber-optic television, would begin spending gads of money to beat each other to death at the others’ games, all for only marginal returns.
So, here we are, in the future itself, but I’m not sure things are as bad as previously predicted. Sure, even I am guilty of accusing Google of becoming the predecessor of SkyNet in my Neuromancer review, but then there’s merely interesting speculation and then there’s more interesting reality.
For example, Bagdikian talks about how the TV medium was out of control because of a lack of government regulation. He also points out how calls for regulation are always met with cries of “socialism”. NHK works in Japan, the BBC in the UK, so why can’t we have something like that here in the states? If only Bagdikian had considered the Internet. As far as I am concerned, the masses are responding to all that vapid and immoral televisual thought-control by turning off their TVs and logging-in to a world-wide semiotic democracy. The true morality of free speech, stemming from the people and not the government, is now winning a fight against regulation. How ironic!
In terms of record keeping, I am certain many of the problems presented by archiving digital records will correct themselves with the help of a few hardcore computer nerds plugging away in the basements of the very institutions faced with those problems. As for backwards compatibility, well, the future will just need digital anthropologists. Maybe.
And, as a former Interactive Television broadcast operator, I welcome the battles of the MSOs. Convergence is the future. Integrated hardware solutions will provide solutions for disintegrated software problems, and vice versa. And entrants like Vonage have their own problems to deal with when free services like Skype rear their beautiful heads.
The future is not bleak. It’s full of exciting problems! And hordes of empowered “basement dwelling nerds” like me who will assuredly find solutions that businesses and governments never ever think of. They might control the pipes, but we control the water.
Until then, here’s Coldcut’s 2006 techno track “Everthing is Under Control“. Yes, but only for now.
References
Bagdikian, B. H. Afterword media monopoly bagdikian. Retrieved 2/20/2009, 2009, from http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/Afterword_Bagdikian.html
Christensen, C. M., Anthony, S. D., & Roth, E. A. (2004). Seeing what’s next : Using the theories of innovation to predict industry change. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Retrieved from WorldCat
Olsen, F. The chronicle: Daily news: 10/15/99 — 01. Retrieved 2/20/2009, 2009, from http://chronicle.com/free/99/10/99101501t.htm
YouTube – coldcut – everything is under control. Retrieved 2/21/2009, 2009, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrQcOmpbkCs
YouTube – television is bad for your eyes. Retrieved 2/21/2009, 2009, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXCpYgd338U
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Tags: cable, communications, fiber optics, Internet, mass media, predicting the future, technology, television, VoIP, wifi