E-books and e-publishing - Samuel Vaknin (best historical fiction books of all time .TXT) 📗
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manifested in ad hoc networks, local networks, networks of
organizations (mainly universities and organs of the
government such as DARPA, a part of the defence establishment,
in the USA). Non commercial entities jumped on the bandwagon
and started sewing these networks together (an activity fully
subsidized by government funds). The result was a globe
encompassing network of academic institutions. The American
Pentagon established the network of all networks, the ARPANET.
Other government departments joined the fray, headed by the
National Science Foundation (NSF) which withdrew only lately
from the Internet.
The Internet (with a different name) became semi-public
property - with access granted to the chosen few.
Radio took precisely this course. Radio transmissions started
in the USA in 1920. Those were anarchic broadcasts with no
discernible regularity. Non commercial organizations and not
for profit organizations began their own broadcasts and even
created radio broadcasting infrastructure (albeit of the cheap
and local kind)dedicated to their audiences. Trade unions,
certain educational institutions and religious groups
commenced “public radio” broadcasts.
The Commercial Phase
When the users (e.g., listeners in the case of the radio, or
owners of PCs and modems in the case of the Internet) reach a
critical mass - the business sector is alerted. In the name of
capitalist ideology (another religion, really) it demands
“privatization” of the medium. This harps on very sensitive
strings in every Western soul: the efficient allocation of
resources which is the result of competition. Corruption and
inefficiency are intuitively associated with the public sector
(“Other People’s Money” - OPM). This, together with the
ulterior motives of members of the ruling political echelons
(the infamous American Paranoia), a lack of variety and of
catering to the tastes and interests of certain audiences and
the automatic equation of private enterprise with democracy
lead to a privatization of the young medium.
The end result is the same: the private sector takes over the
medium from “below” (makes offers to the owners or operators
of the medium that they cannot possibly refuse) - or from
“above” (successful lobbying in the corridors of power leads
to the appropriate legislation and the medium is
“privatized”). Every privatization - especially that of a
medium - provokes public opposition. There are (usually
founded) suspicions that the interests of the public are
compromised and sacrificed on the altar of commercialization
and rating.
Fears of monopolization and cartelization of the medium are
evoked - and proven correct in due course. Otherwise, there is
fear of the concentration of control of the medium in a few
hands. All these things do happen - but the pace is so slow
that the initial fears are forgotten and public attention
reverts to fresher issues.
A new Communications Act was enacted in the USA in 1934. It
was meant to transform radio frequencies into a national
resource to be sold to the private sector which was supposed
to use it to transmit radio signals to receivers. In other
words : the radio was passed on to private and commercial
hands. Public radio was doomed to be marginalized.
The American administration withdrew from its last major
involvement in the Internet in April 1995, when the NSF ceased
to finance some of the networks and, thus, privatized its
hitherto heavy involvement in the net.
A new Communications Act was legislated in 1996. It permitted
“organized anarchy”. It allowed media operators to invade each
other’s territories. Phone companies were allowed to transmit
video and cable companies were allowed to transmit telephony,
for instance. This was all phased over a long period of time -
still, it was a revolution whose magnitude is difficult to
gauge and whose consequences defy imagination. It carries an
equally momentous price tag - official censorship. “Voluntary
censorship”, to be sure, somewhat toothless standardization
and enforcement authorities, to be sure - still, a censorship
with its own institutions to boot. The private sector reacted
by threatening litigation - but, beneath the surface it is
caving in to pressure and temptation, constructing its own
censorship codes both in the cable and in the internet media.
Institutionalization
This phase is the next in the Internet’s history, though, it
seems, few realize it.
It is characterized by enhanced activities of legislation.
Legislators, on all levels, discover the medium and lurch at
it passionately. Resources which were considered “free”,
suddenly are transformed to “national treasures not to be
dispensed with cheaply, casually and with frivolity”.
It is conceivable that certain parts of the Internet will be
“nationalized” (for instance, in the form of a licensing
requirement) and tendered to the private sector. Legislation
will be enacted which will deal with permitted and disallowed
content (obscenity ? incitement ? racial or gender bias ?) No
medium in the USA (not to mention the wide world) has eschewed
such legislation. There are sure to be demands to allocate
time (or space, or software, or content, or hardware) to
“minorities”, to “public affairs”, to “community business”.
This is a tax that the business sector will have to pay to
fend off the eager legislator and his nuisance value.
All this is bound to lead to a monopolization of hosts and
servers. The important broadcast channels will diminish in
number and be subjected to severe content restrictions. Sites
which will refuse to succumb to these requirements - will be
deleted or neutralized. Content guidelines (euphemism for
censorship) exist, even as we write, in all major content
providers (CompuServe, AOL, Yahoo!-Geocities, Tripod,
Prodigy).
The Bloodbath
This is the phase of consolidation. The number of players is
severely reduced. The number of browser types will settle on
2-3 (Netscape, Microsoft and Opera?). Networks will merge to
form privately owned mega-networks. Servers will merge to form
hyper-servers run on supercomputers in “server farms”. The
number of ISPs will be considerably cut. 50 companies ruled
the greater part of the media markets in the USA in 1983. The
number in 1995 was 18. At the end of the century they will
number 6.
This is the stage when companies - fighting for financial
survival - strive to acquire as many users/listeners/viewers
as possible. The programming is shallowed to the lowest (and
widest) common denominator. Shallow programming dominates as
long as the bloodbath proceeds.
From Rags to Riches
Tough competition produces four processes:
1. A Major Drop in Hardware PricesThis happens in every medium but it doubly applies to a
computer-dependent medium, such as the Internet. Computer
technology seems to abide by “Moore’s Law” which says that the
number of transistors which can be put on a chip doubles every
18 months. As a result of this miniaturization, computing
power quadruples every 18 months and an exponential series
ensues. Organic-biological-DNA computers, quantum computers,
chaos computers - prompted by vast profits and spawned by
inventive genius will ensure the continued applicability of
Moore’s Law.
The Internet is also subject to “Metcalf’s Law”.
It says that when we connect N computers to a network - we get
an increase of N to the second power in its computing
processing power. And these N computers are more powerful
every year, according to Moore’s Law. The growth of computing
powers in networks is a multiple of the effects of the two
laws. More and more computers with ever increasing computing
power get connected and create an exponential 16 times growth
in the network’s computing power every 18 months.
2. Content related FeesThis was prevalent in the Net until recently. Even potentially
commercial software can still be downloaded for free. In many
countries television viewers still pay for television
broadcasts - but in the USA and many other countries in the
West, the basic package of television channels comes free of
charge.
As users / consumers form a habit of using (or consuming) the
software - it is commercialized and begins to carry a price
tag. This is what happened with the advent of cable television
: contents are sold for subscription or per usage (Pay Per
View - PPV) fees.
Gradually, this is what will happen to most of the sites and
software on the Net. Those which survive will begin to collect
usage fees, access fees, subscription fees, downloading fees
and other, appropriately named, fees. These fees are bound to
be low - but it is the principle that counts. Even a few cents
per transaction may accumulate to hefty sums with the traffic
which characterizes some web sites on the Net (or, at least
its more popular locales).
3. Increased User FriendlinessAs long as the computer is less user friendly and less
reliable (predictable) than television - less of a black box -
its potential (and its future) is limited. Television attracts
3.5 billion users daily. The Internet stands to attract -
under the
most exuberant scenario - less than one tenth of this number
of people. The only reasons for this disparity are (the lack
of) user friendliness and reliability. Even browsers, among
the most user friendly applications ever -are not sufficiently
so. The user still needs to know how to use a keyboard and
must possess some basic acquaintance with the operating
system. The more mature the medium, the more friendly it
becomes. Finally, it will be operated using speech or common
language. There will be room left for user “hunches” and built
in flexible responses.
4. Social TaxesSooner or later, the business sector has to mollify the God of
public opinion with offerings of political and social nature.
The Internet is an affluent, educated, yuppie medium. It
requires literacy and numeracy, live interest in information
and
its various uses (scientific, commercial, other), a lot of
resources (free time, money to invest in hardware, software
and connect time). It empowers - and thus deepens the divide
between the haves and have-nots, the developed and the
developing world, the knowing and the ignorant, the computer
illiterate.
In short: the Internet is an elitist medium. Publicly, this is
an unhealthy posture. “Internetophobia” is already
discernible. People (and politicians) talk about how unsafe
the Internet is and about its possible uses for racial, sexist
and pornographic purposes. The wider public is in a state of
awe.
So, site builders and owners will do well to begin to improve
their image: provide free access to schools and community
centres, bankroll internet literacy classes, freely distribute
contents and software to educational institutions, collaborate
with researchers and social scientists and engineers. In
short: encourage the view that the Internet is a medium
catering to the needs of the community and the
underprivileged, a mostly altruist endeavour. This also
happens to make good business sense by educating and
conditioning a future generation of users. He who visited a
site when a student, free of charge - will pay to do so when
made an executive. Such a user will also pass on the
information within and without his organization. This is
called media exposure. The future will, no doubt, will be
witness to public Internet terminals, subsidized ISP accounts,
free Internet classes and an alternative “non-commercial,
public” approach to the Net. This may prove to be one more
source of revenue to content creators and distributors.
Jamaican Overdrive - LDC’s and LCD’s
By: Sam Vaknin
OverDrive - an e-commerce, software conversion and e-publishing applications leader - has just expanded an e-book
technology centre by adding 200 e-book editors. This happened
in Montego Bay, Jamaica - one of the less privileged spots on
earth. The centre now provides a vertical e-publishing service
- from manuscript editing to conversion to Quark (for POD),
Adobe, and MS Reader ebook formats. Thus, it is not confined
to the classic sweatshop cum production centre so common in
Less Developed Countries (LDC’s). It is a full fledged
operation with access to cutting edge technology.
The Jamaican OverDrive is the harbinger of things to come and
the outcome of a confluence of a few trends.
First, there is the insatiable appetite big publishers (such
as McGraw-Hill, Random House,
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