|| Return to On The Road... ||
September 14, 1996
San Francisco
Flying to San Francisco I ran into an article in a magazine called Convergence. They detailed a new approach by Intel and several major television companies that amazed me.
If you've followed the Web Letter at all, you know I'm least impressed with any technological tricks. I'm so bad I won't sell people on Java, Shockwave, or any of those other techie terms that make newcomers drool but eventually burns them out after several crashes. When it runs right, it's great; but how often does it run right?
Online we're facing the merger of entertainment and information. But the small fries among us are getting suckered into playing the cutting edge game. Take the use of highly refined search engines, or even Shockwave; I can't waste my time developing the technology because I don't have the budget. I'm also not an entertainment company with vast resources to push into creating.
Nor do I ever want to be that company. I've focused on content strictly, because with every new turn in media, comes the corresponding lack of ingenuity, of ideas. Ideas are what's important, ones that lead to products and services. So instead of trying to be like NBC, I'm finding my own style.
Think about it; would I try to create a television network or movie studio because I was in love with the technology? Take that approach and the boys in the white jackets will get you (and just to ensure equal rights, the woman, animals, and all other species in white coats will get you...evenetually.
It doesn't make sense to fight the big firms. You have to play your own game. But by learning from them, I'm committing my own form of Convergence. Which leads us back to why the article absolutely thrilled me.
I read about how the show Homicide on the Streets is being experimented with. You can watch the show full screen in your television cum computer; or you can watch it with enhancements. DON'T WORRY, ENHANCEMENTS AREN'T JARGON IN THIS CASE. Which is why I love this approach....
The enhancements are access to the Web, to the vast number of sites available that relate to what is going on. You can follow the provided Web sites to get background information, fingerprints and clues, and play along with the plot with the detective. Or you could watch and randomly surf to a site that tells about the actors or the writers; ever been to a boring part of the show? What about commercials? It just makes sense.
Or you could surf to sites of your choice, change the channel and see other related Web sites you choose or search for, all the while having the show play in the uppper corner of your screen. Finally, you could access chats about the show; ever seen MTV's chats on America Online while playing videos? That's the idea.
It just makes such sense, you are the one programming the channel as the viewer, but the channel is so rich. it isn' about one channel or controlling the channel, it's about multiplying what can be viewed via the channel. You have choices to participate or you can just watch; surfing televisoin just became fun.
Guess what? All of this fits ingeniuosly within the broadcasting capabilities of your TV set. Sure, we need much bigger screens and Pentium chips in all our appliances. But that is already happening.
What does this mean to the Web? It really is a case of keeping it simple; text information should be loaded quickly and not too full of imagery to detract from the primary broadcasting medium. There are new channels opening up that go beyond even these capabilities.
I'm serious, this article made me gasp. Once you see an example, you know it's going to happen. No hype or myth like multimedia and all those other techie-driven technologies. The real convergence is with entertainment, with the content makers. They are the ones adapting the technology to their uses. Like I adapt the Web to my uses. Come back for a visit soon; I'm going to be converging...should be fun.