E-books and e-publishing - Samuel Vaknin (best historical fiction books of all time .TXT) 📗
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But tomorrow’s computer will also function as a terminal, when
needed: when data retrieving or even when using NON standard
software applications. Why purchase rarely used, expensive
applications - when they are available, for a fraction of the
cost, on the Net?
In other words: no consumer will subjugate his frequent word
processing needs to the whims of the local phone company, or
to those of the site operator. That is why every desktop is
still likely to be include a hard (or optical)-disk-resident
word processing software. But very few will by CAD-CAM,
animation, graphics, or publishing software which they are
likely to use infrequently. Instead, they will access these
applications, which will be resident in the Net, use those
parts that are needed. This is usage tailored to the client’s
needs. This is also the integration of a desktop (not of a
terminal) with the Net.
Decentralized Lack of Planning
The course adopted by content creators (producers) in the last
few years proves the maxim that it is easy to repeat mistakes
and difficult to derive lessons from them. Content producers
are constantly buying channels to transfer their contents.
This is a mistake. A careful study of the history of
successful media (e.g., television) points to a clear pattern:
Content producers do not grant life-long exclusivity to any
single channel. Especially not by buying into it. They prefer
to contract for a limited time with content providers (their
broadcast channels). They work with all of them, sometimes
simultaneously.
In the future, the same content will be sold on different
sites or networks, at different times. Sometimes it will be
found with a provider which is a combination of cable TV
company and phone company - at other times, it will be found
with a provider with expertise in computer networks. Much
content will be created locally and distributed globally - and
vice versa. The repackaging of branded contents will be the
name of the game in both the media firms and the firms which
control contents distribution (=the channels).
No exclusivity pact will survive. Networks such as CompuServe
are doomed and have been doomed since 1993. The approach of
decentralized access, through numerous channels, to the same
information - will prevail.
The Transparent Language
The Internet will become the next battlefield between have
countries and have-not countries. It will be a cultural war
zone (English against French, Japanese, Chinese, Russian and
Spanish). It will be politically charged: those wishing to
restrict the freedom of speech (authoritarian and dictatorial
regimes, governments, conservative politicians) against pro-speechers. It will become a new arena of warfare and an
integral part of actual wars.
Different peer groups, educational and income social-economic
strata, ethnic, sexual preference groups - will all fight in
the eternal fields of the Internet.
Yet, two developments are likely to pacify the scene:
Automatic translation applications (like Accent and the Alta
Vista translation engines) will make every bit of information
accessible to all. The lingual (and, by extension ethnic or
national) source of the information will be disguised. A
feeling of a global village will permeate the medium. Being
ignorant of the English language will no longer hinder one’s
access to the Net. Equal opportunities.
The second trend will be the new classification methods of
contents on the Net together with the availability of chips
intended to filter offensive information. Obscene material
will not be available to tender souls. anti-Semitic sites will
be blocked to Jews and communists will be spared Evil Empire
speeches. Filtering will be usually done using extensive and
adaptable lists of keywords or key phrases.
This will lead to the formation of cultural Internet Ghettos -
but it will also considerably reduce tensions and largely
derail populist legislative efforts aimed at curbing or
censoring free speech.
Public Internet - Private Internet
The day is not far when every user will be able to define his
areas of interest, order of priorities, preferences and
tastes. Special applications will scour the Net for him and
retrieve the material befitting his requirements. This
material will be organized in any manner prescribed.
A private newspaper comes to mind. It will have a circulation
of one copy - the user’s. It will borrow its contents from a
few hundreds of databases and electronic versions of
newspapers on the Net. Its headlines will reflect the main
areas of interest of its sole subscriber. The private paper
will contain hyperlinks to other sites in the Internet: to
reference material, to additional information on the same
subject. It will contain text, but also graphics, audio, video
and photographs. It will be interactive and editable with the
push of a button.
Another idea: the intelligent archive.
The user will accumulate information, derived from a variety
of sources in an archive maintained for him on the Net. It
will not be a classical “dead” archive. It will be active. A
special application will search the Net daily and update the
archive. It will contain hyperlinks to sites, to additional
information on the Net and to alternative sources of
information. It will have a “History” function which will
teach the archive about the preferences and priorities of the
user.
The software will recommend new sites to him and subjects
similar to his history. It will alert him to movies, TV shows
and new musical releases - all within his cultural sphere. If
convinced to purchase - the software will order the wares from
the Net. It will then let him listen to the music, see the
movie, or read the text.
The internet will become a place of unceasing stimuli, of
internal order and organization and of friendliness in the
sense of personally rewarding acquaintance. Such an archive
will be a veritable friend. It will alert the user to
interesting news, leave messages and food for thought in his
e-mail (or v-mail). It will send the user a fax if not
responded to within a reasonable time. It will issue reports
every morning.
This, naturally, is only a private case of the archival
potential of the Net.
A network connecting more than 16.3 million computers (end
1996) is also the biggest collective memory effort in history
after the Library of Alexandria. The Internet possesses the
combined power of all its constituents. Search engines are,
therefore, bound to be replaced by intelligent archives which
will form universal archives, which will store all the paths
to the results of searches plus millions of recommended
searches.
Compare this to a newspaper: it is much easier to store back
issues of a paper in the Internet than physically. Obviously,
it is much easier to search and the amortization of such a
copy is annulled. Such an archive will let the user search by
word, by key phrase, by contents, search the bibliography and
hop to other parts of the archive or to other territories in
the Internet using hyperlinks.
Money, Again
We have already mentioned SET, the safety standard. This will
facilitate credit card transactions over the Net. These are
safe transactions even today - but there an ingrained interest
to say otherwise. Newspapers are afraid that advertising
budgets will migrate to the Web. Television harbours the same
fears. More commerce on the Net - means more advertising
dollars diverted from established media. Too many feel unhappy
when confronted with this inevitability. They spread lies
which feed off the ignorance about how safe paying with credit
cards on the Net is. Safety standards will terminate this
propaganda and transform the Internet into a commercial
medium.
Users will be able to buy and sell goods and services on the
Net and get them by post. Certain things will be directly
downloaded (software, e-books). Many banking transactions and
EDI operations will be conducted through bank-clients
intranets. All stock and commodity exchanges will be
accessible and the role of brokers will be minimized. Foreign
exchange will be easily tradable and transferable. Initial
Public Offerings of shares, day trading of stocks and other
activities traditionally connected with physical (“pit”)
capital markets will become a predominant feature of the
internet. The day is not far that the likes of Merill Lynch
will be offering full services (including advisory services)
through the internet. The first steps towards electronic
trading of shares (with discounted fees) have already been
taken in mid 1999. Home banking, private newspapers,
subscriptions to cultural events, tourism packages and airline
tickets - are all candidates for Net-Trading.
The Internet is here to stay.
Commercially, it would be an extreme strategic error to ignore
it. A lot of money will flow through it. A lot more people
will be connected to it. A lot of information will be stored
on it.
It is worth being there.
Published by “PC World” in Tel-Aviv on April 1996.
Partially Revised: 7/00.
Appendix - Ethics and the Internet
The “Internet” is a very misleading term. It’s like saying
“print”. Professional articles are “print” - and so are the
sleaziest porno brochures.
So, first, I think it would be useful to make a distinction
between two broad categories:
Content-related
or
Content-driven and Interaction-driven
Most content driven sites maintain reasonable ethical
standards, roughly comparable to the “real” or “non-virtual”
media. This is because many of these sites were established by
businesses with a “real” dimension to start with (Walt Disney,
The Economist, etc.). These sites (at least the institutional
ones) maintain standards of privacy, veracity, cross-checking
of information, etc.
Personal home pages would be a sub-category of content-driven
sites. These cannot be seriously considered “media”. They are
representatives of the new phenomenon of extreme
narrowcasting. They do not adhere to any ethical standards,
with the exception of those upheld by their owners’.
The interaction orientated sites and activities can, in turn,
be divided to E-commerce sites (such as Amazon) which adhere
to commercial law and to commercial ethics and to interactive
sites.
The latter - discussion lists, mailing lists and so on - are a
hotbed of unethical, verbally aggressive, hostile behaviour. A
special vocabulary developed to discuss these phenomena
(“flaming”, “mail bombing” etc.).
To summarize:
Where the aim is to provide consumers with another venue for
the dissemination of information or to sell products or
services to them the standards of ethics maintained reflect
those upheld outside the realm of the internet. Additionally,
codified morals, the commercial law is adhered to.
Where the aim is interaction or the dissemination of the
personal opinions and views of site-owners - ethical standards
are in the process of becoming. A rough set of guidelines
coalesced into the “netiquette”. It is a set of rules of
peaceful co-existence intended to prevent flame wars and the
eruption of interpersonal verbal abuse. Since it lacks
effective means of enforcement - it is very often violated and
constitutes an expression of goodwill, rather than an obliging
code.
The Internet in the Countries in Transition
By: Sam Vaknin
Though the countries in transition are far from being an
homogeneous lot, there are a few denominators common to their
Internet experience hitherto:
1. Internet InvasionThe penetration of the Internet in the countries in transition
varies from country to country - but is still very low even by
European standards, not to mention by American ones. This had
to do with the lack of infrastructure, the prohibitive cost of
services, an extortionist pricing structure, computer
illiteracy and luddism (computer phobia). Societies in the
countries in transition are inert (and most of them,
conservative or traditionalist) - following years of central
mis-planning. The Internet (and computers) are perceived by
many as threatening - mainly because they are part of a
technological upheaval which makes people redundant.
2. The Rumour MillAll manner of instant messaging - mainly the earlier versions
of IRC - played an important role in enhancing social cohesion
and exchanging uncensored information. As in other parts of
the world - the Internet was first used to communicate: IRC,
MIRC e-mail and e-mail fora
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