Glimpsing Tomorrow
"For some time now I've been seeking to
emulate the character 'Burt', from the
1977-1981 ABC television series Soap,
who could snap his fingers and become
invisible. I've finally succeeded
in duplicating this arcane ritual. The secret
didn't involve complex hand gestures,
at least for me, but rather I merely had to
become an internet-columnist. I'm
now invisible..."
Me, after a nine inch Rusty Nail and
viewing my hits for the previous week.
Ever so gradually,
personal computers and such associated perks as e-mail,
web-surfing, downloading audio and video
files, etc., are changing the way many
of us work and/or relax. No longer
constrained by the arty anarchy of
technogeeks and cyberpunks, the PC has
become a tool and plaything for the
middle-class. And, as such, the
PC is now suffering growing pains far worse
than anything experienced by an average
hormonal adolescent. Yet, despite the
occasional flare of erratic behavior and
more than a few blemishes, we may
glimpse tomorrow today. When the
PC grows up it'll be strong, handsome, and
make everyone proud. Now, as to
be expected and extending the metaphor, the
products from Apple-Macintosh (and other
units not beholden to running the
Windows OS) will more than likely get
pregnant, generate offspring, and be
most unconventional. Ah, ...the
fecund and fickle future!
While such Internet
access companies like WebTV remain somewhat
impotent with their primitiveness, RCN's
new cable modem service, with speeds
up to fifty times faster than the fanciest
of 56K V.90 modems, appears to
advance the next step in PC technology.
At $39.95 a month, on top of
subscribing to their basic television
cable service, the consumers I've spoken
with have praised the speed, but ...complained
of the cost. Gee, that 386 with a
14.4K modem seems like a memory from another
lifetime! [Click here for more
about RCN and here
for background on DOCSIS.]
Last Sunday's
Boston Herald featured a full-page derision of the online
sale
and downloading of David Bowie's new album,
Hours, by an entertainment
writer, Dean Johnson. Bowie, forcing
the future, has opted to pre-release Hours
on the Internet some weeks before its
general release. The album is available in
two formats: Liquid Audio and Windows
Media Player. The Boston Herald
writer apparently used a slow modem through
an AOL account (and probably IE
4 as his browser), admitted failure after
several attempts, with over eight hours
invested, and accumulated a credit-card
bill of nearly $50... I really hope he did
it as research for his article, as he
admits: "Oh sure, if I had a faster modem
and/or used a cable modem instead of phone
lines, this would have been a snap.
But I don't. And most folks using
computers these days don't, either." Well,
most fans of Bowie will watch tomorrow's
season premiere of Saturday Night
Live featuring Dave, wait
a couple of more weeks to buy the new CD in stores,
and are saving their pennies to afford
a cable-modem account.
Much less ambitious,
and perhaps more significant (sorry, Dave, I haven't
heard your latest), is the upcoming release
of Turn It On Again...The Hits, by
the art-rock band, Genesis, featuring
a new version of their 1974 classic, "Carpet
Crawlers," from The Lamb Lies Down
On Broadway, with vocals by ex-Genesis
members Phil Collins and Peter
Gabriel. Genesis is offering "Carpet Crawlers
1999" as a free, downloadable file for
Windows Media Player (as well as some
odd, beta-version player for Macs), at
its Genesis-Web site. [Note: In
keeping
with the theme that 'da future ain't
happening yet, I downloaded the new Genesis
remake of "Carpet Crawlers" twice, and
even listened to it "streaming" through
the Windows Media Player--the files were
all corrupted and seemed to skip
through parts. I had previously
believed that corrupted files wouldn't/couldn't
play, but I heard sounds akin to scratched
vinyl. This has soured me on the
Windows Media Player...]
On cue, earlier
this week, Microsoft announced a joint venture with some
thirty-five tech and media companies to
improve its software (read: the above
mentioned Windows Media Player--gag, spit...).
Referred to as a "coalition,"
and projecting the soon-to-be-developed
"underpinning technology" which will
enable Microsoft to take advantage of
the emerging cable-modem market
(though they did buy controlling interest
in the lame WebTV over a year ago and
haven't significantly improved the quality
of service). This move by Microsoft
is, as is well known, a blatant challenge
to the well deserved and overall control
of Real Networks (RealAudio and RealVideo)
on the internet. Bill Gates might
be a nice guy and all of that, but his
company is dedicated to ruling the world.
Period.
I've been somewhat
amused by what software is used with every new media
event on the internet. Godzilla
1998 (the updating with Matthew Brodrick),
featured a trailer downloadable in VivoActive
format. I recall sneak previews of
the animated Batman Beyond
as common mpeg files. The Victoria Secrets
show was through RealVideo, and the latest
www-mistake was Woodstock '99
available only through the Windows Media
Player. The sound came through for
me, but the vid was awful. Again,
much like the Boston Herald writer, it was
probably the lack of a cable-modem connection,
but ...it's also inferior software
released and advertised as something worth
my time. It wasn't, isn't, but
...maybe someday it will be.
A popular analogy
of changing Internet media-software is the popularity of
8-tracks in the 1960's and 1970's, the
subtle usurpation by cassettes, then
compact disks, now DVD, and soon ...Super
DVD's and other versions of digital
disks. Who will win? Will
consumers get the best bang for their buck? I'm
reminded of existing tech to make automobile
tires that would never wear out;
the tech is decades old, but Goodyear
and Firestone won't be rushing them into
production anytime soon. A new product
(or a new version) every season to get
our latest disposable income. Sigh,
...but most of you knew that already.
snapping my fingers again,
Rick