Weblog for New Media Storytelling

Posted: 12:30 p.m. 11/19/01

The future of broadcast

The future of broadcast will mix traditional broadcasting with far more interactivity. I don't entirely agree with the concepts that Fidler predicts, but his analysis offer a good starting point.

In chapters seven and eight of Mediamorphosis, Fidler confusingly presents two views of the future of broadcast, and I think only hits the nail on the head in the second view. Chapter seven is supposed to address the future of the interpersonal domain, but creates a world in which both interpersonal and broadcast communications are dominated by virtual reality.

The husband and wife in this chapter seem rather attached to their headsets-so attached that one could easily assume they would receive broadcasts through the headsets. And the husband even receives a "video mail" through his headset. That isn't interpersonal; that's broadcast.

But in chapter eight, when Fidler specifically guesses on the future of broadcast, he presents an entirely different scenario. I think he is mostly correct in what he presents, but, as in his entire book, he seems to have no concept of the marketplace. With all the holographic televisions and Tivo-like interactive features, advertisements are never mentioned. More ridiculously, he has their interactive television service giving away a broadband connection to everyone connected to a school. The services the family uses are all well and good, but who is paying for this?

We've only just begun

Aside from the dollar problems, however, Fidler gives us a realistic view of the future of broadcast (a very realistic view compared to chapter seven's avatar-virtual-reality-I-saw-it-on-Star-Trek mumbo jumbo). Many of the features he describes can seen in their genesis today. Some examples:

The digital clocks, VCR and otherwise, automatically at the correct time.

Newer VCRs already have this feature, with public television stations often providing a signal that holds the time in addition to their broadcast.

Television on demand.

Tivo, finally much more than a David Letterman joke.

Television as an information source.

The 500-channel mark has been met and broken by digital cable systems. Cable companies already create directories of these channels and their programming; technology-aided dissemination of all of this information is easily foreseeable.

The room, no longer television centered.

Fidler gives the example of a large flat-screen television taking up most of a wall, but this example could be extended. As our homes and offices become more wired, walls and television sets could be almost interchangeable, especially with nanotechnologies.

Finally, there is a Fidler's suggestion of holographic televisions. He presents this idea as part of a home theater system, but why does it have to be confined by theater boundaries? I think Fidler only prescribes these limits so as not to conflict with his virtual reality vision in chapter seven. Holographic viewing and virtual reality viewing are polar opposites when it comes to physical audience. Holographic viewing increases the number of people who can view together and still be in each other's presence; VR knocks that number down to one.

I think holographic viewing is a more realistic and acceptable goal for broadcasters, whether they are from the movie or television realms of the field.

Argument against VR

The day we use virtual reality headsets seems to be as far off as it was years ago. In 1994 I went with my family to the Philadelphia's Franklin Institute and got to try on a virtual reality headset as part of the exhibit. It was supposedly the wave of the future then. Where is it now? There are VR products for the home market, like I-glasses. This is a product that, a few years ago, used to show up regularly in the Sunday circulars for tech stores like CompUSA, but you won't find it there anymore.

Even as computer and video games have continued to boom, the viewing and playing audiences have seemingly rejected these products. Maybe the products are too uncomfortable or not realistic enough, but I think there is more to the rejection. People enjoy group experiences and being in each other's company. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeats are far less significant when you're alone.

I am not saying, however, that people do not play games and watch television by themselves. They certainly do. So why no VR products for them? Broadcast content producers are very focused on audience and do not want to create producers that effectively limit their audience to a single person. This is why video games rarely come for just a single player anymore; the people at Nintendo and Sony want other players to pick up the controllers too.

In the computer game market, where producers can guess with more accuracy that only one player is sitting at the keyboard, the companies have built in extensive network multi-player options. The best-selling computer games usually have good multi-player functions. (Having not played computer games regularly in three years, I'm basing this on game reviews.) One strong example: Myst, a single-player game, was hugely popular in 1996, but its successors, also single-player, have not generated nearly the same kind of popularity.

The far shorter argument for holograph systems

Holograph systems have also been discussed in mainstream media for the last decade--once even meriting a whole Buzz Beamer cartoon in Sports Illustrated for Kids in the early 1990s. But, unlike VR, their have been no devices on the market. The concept seems much more complex, but in its complexity, holography has its strength.

The central reason Fidler seems to promote VR systems is their interactivity, but I think this wrongly assumes that holograph systems would be without interactivity. If a virtual image can be sent with a classroom, as it is in Fidler's scenario, an image can obviously be projected the other way. In this future world, the technology of capturing an image in holographic form -- whatever it is -- could not be much harder than presenting the image.

If we strip away Fidler's limitations, the holographic system suddenly becomes a one-way and a two-way medium, both broadcast and interpersonally oriented. Such a system then allows the ability to have people physically gathered together, as well as virtually. Content producers, the networks of the hazy future, would prefer this larger audience. The support of their checkbooks would make it more likely to develop.