Broadcasting in the Web Age
Interpersonal Computing and Technology
From: David Petraitis <dav...@mare.ch>
I foresee an important shift in the delivery of broadcast style services on
the Internet. Most services that you or I access will be geographically
local. The rising demand on bandwidth and the fact that fast equals
shortness in kilometer length, means that the advanced services of the
Internet such as video and virtual realities will be served to you from a
metropolitan area network. The *Global internet* will simply consist of
transfers of content from content providers to local distribution point
(read: mirror sites).
In this sense the Internet will become more and more local. And I will need
less and less to leave my mountain village to perform work. However, There
will be small global communities of interest around topics. How these will
be managed is not yet clear to me and I hope to do some work with a company
that has a plan on how to leverage this onto the Internet.
Will there be global content that comes to the fore from local sources? Yes
I think so.
I have a scenario of some west african story teller. He is a fantastic story
teller that many people in his village on the Atlantic love to listen to. He
sits in his old rocking chair on a veranda above the beach and quietly tells
fables of intricate plot and lovely twists at the end. Always with a moral.
This man's son has gone to the University in the capital and has bought his
old man two video cameras and an Internet connection to maintain contact, as
the old man can't read, write or type. The son sets up his two video cameras
on the porch and uploads the stories to his site at the University.
He sets up an Internet payment system for people who would like to download
the week's story, something small like 25 cents per story. His father tells
a story one a week of about 15 minutes in duration. After about the fourth
week it appears his father is now a millionaire!
Local content will become global. The global Internet will become local and
localized.
Language differences may make much of the content will be the
*inaccessible*. I would have problems if the content was in one of the
larger human languages like Chinese or Urdu too. But tant pis, I am
restricted by my languages just as everyone on the planet is. Is there
something in Urdu that I am really missing out on? How can I know?
Regards,
David Petraitis
Mare Conseil
Marketing and Re-engineering
ch. Sous les Roches
1264 St-Cergue, Switzerland
http://www.mare.ch/
Internet Service Providers Europe Newsletter: http://www.mare.ch/ispe
Interpersonal Computing and Technology
From: INFOMAN <Inf...@Queens-Belfast.AC.UK>
Here is a developed country equivalent of the African storyteller.
You are in a small town in Surrey, call it Virginia Water, where people
used to show off to their neighbours with new cars, extensions to their
houses, collections of paintings and slide shows of their holidays. Now
they have an interactive fibre network, so they can be connected all the
time instead of just when making calls. To show off, you put your slides
and expensive holiday stories on your house web server, and spend your
time trying to outdo what your neighbours put on their web servers.
Everyone becomes an editor/broadcaster and storyteller. Eventually this
virtual competition becomes so important you sell your second and third
cars, and invest in better hardware or ghostwriters.
---------
From davenewman at QUB-IM, via inf...@qub.ac.uk account of
Dr. David R. Newman, Queen's University, School of Management,
BELFAST BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland. mailto:d.r.n...@qub.ac.uk
http://www.qub.ac.uk/f&info/staff/dave/index.html