a crank's progress

In the High-Tech Sector, Optimism Is Just a Faded Memory

. . . . . but those who control it are afraid of the new markets that the tech boom has created: they understand how to get revenue from theaters and DVDs and CDs, but not from mediumless digital media, like streams or music/movie files.

The most heated debate of the event came during a panel of Hollywood executives who criticized the technology industries for their lax adherence to intellectual property protection and copyright issues in the digital era.

That evoked a response from many executives here that the entertainment industry’s unwillingness to explore new business models was primarily responsible for the industry’s lack of growth.

“We’re in a real technology gridlock,” said Peter Schwartz, co-founder and chairman of the Global Business Network, a consulting group based in Emeryville, Calif. “All of the entrenched industries are attempting to protect their positions so that in broadband, digital television and digital distribution of content, we’re stuck.”

It’s not the tech companies job to worry about copyright: if that had been the prevailing attitude 25 years ago, we may not have had VCRs or even photocopiers. It’s the media cpmpanies job to come up with ways to make money, given a larger market — anywhere that TCP/IP can reach — and little or infrastructure cost — no need to build a theater or ship a print to every small town when you can send the content as bits.

Having worked in a large media company, on both the news and entertainment sides of things, it was frustrating to see how hard people were trying to map their experience onto this new amorphous opportunity. The quality concerns in those early bandwidth-contrained days were valid, but now with increasing penetration of broadband in the home and almost universal high-speed internet access in schools and business, what are the media companies doing to capture an audience? I would guess the big three segments of the Internet are news sites, weblogs, and porn, but not in that order, and of them, news is where you’ll find the big media combines.

In entertainment, the key was driving people back to the TV set with ancillary programming like games and trivia: early attempts to build internet-exclusive programming were not well understood and were ultimately scuttled. Ad sales models from TV and cable broadcasting didn’t translate to the web, and rather than come up with new models, it was easier to kill off the new media products.

Between the potential of broadband and the increasing buzz around TiVo, I wonder if anyone will figure out how to get the content people want served up on demand, rather than clinging to the “must-see TV” model.

It’s getting to the point where I think the English model of a TV license or subscription that would fund a reliably high-quality broadcasting effort makes more sense than the continued commercialization and resulting cheapening of the content. 100 million households times a $10 license fee is a pretty nice budget: of course, my dream of high quality arts and education programming coupled with serious films and documentaries doesn’t appeal to everyone. More’s the pity . . . .

The Humane Environment

But interfaces have not moved with changing times. After a decade of research into cognitive psychology and by paying attention to people’s constant computer complaints (and his own annoyance), [Jef] Raskin realized that today’s GUIs are fundamentally flawed. The interface-building tools that companies and open-source prouducts provide enforce bad interface design practices. They are wrong. Period. Raskin figured out how to fix the problems. His popular book, The Humane Interface (Addison-Wesley, 2000) explains all this in some detail.

This makes for some pretty compelling reading: if you’re as fed up with the lack of progress in human-computer interaction as I am (and not just because I’m a lousy typist), it’s worth a look at the book, the running example, or both.

Yahoo! News – WAR CRY

“Even before [the current head of state], the [ . . . ] political system was a shambles,” said Prof. Salvatore Deluna of the University of Madrid. “Their single-party plutocracy will have to be reshaped into true parliamentary-style democracy. Moreover, the economy will have to be retooled from its current military dictatorship model–in which a third of the federal budget goes to arms, and taxes are paid almost exclusively by the working class–to one in which basic human needs such as education and poverty are addressed. Their infrastructure is a mess; they don’t even have a national passenger train system. Fixing a failed state of this size will require many years.”

Click the link above or below to learn more.
Continue reading “To what nation is he referring?”

Mr. Swartz Goes to Washington (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog)

I was impressed by how smart the Justices were. These were people who very thoroughly understood the issues and thought quickly on their feet. They were interested in long-lasting effects and classics, I doubted many cared much for Mickey or Steamboat Willie. It’s sad we don’t have this level of intellectualism and intelligence in the rest of our government today.

The justices are appointed, not elected, which has a lot to do with it. Since they don’t campaign for the the job, their work within the judiciary is what gets examined. Imagine our representatives and senators having to write a defensible opinion on a legal issue, using the Constitution or case law as their examples.

I understand and agree with Aaronbut I’m not surprised at the intellectual heft of the Court: I expect it. Imagine how things would be if the Court were an elected body or otherwise subject to the vicissitudes of politics.

This time I was coming out a store at the UVillage and saw someone bring one to a stop, turn it on its axis, and then go about the business of meter reading.

I went for a closer look, and the meter reader filled me in on how fun it is, though bumpy sidewalks are a bit uncomfortable (apparently, they’re not sprung at all). While she was off the machine talking to me and doing her work, it just waited patiently on its two wheels, rocking gently back and forth: it reminded of a horse grazing or a boat rocking on a swell more than anything on wheels.

They look bigger and more robust in person, bigger tubes and much bigger tires than I imagined from the pictures. I could see a whole population riding them, rather than cars or even bikes, for medium commutes and errands.