Oct 19, 1998
by John Martellaro
Contributing Columnist
Death is the lot of all of us and the only way the human race has ever
conquered death is by treating it with contempt.
-- Robert Heinlein Guest of Honor Speech at the 19th World Science
Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961.
The Web community is a community of change. We change our Website
appearance frequently to meet the needs of the readers, attract new readers,
and respond to the ever changing advertising models. Our OSes change,
sometimes dramatically every six months. And the industry changes. New
alliances form, whether it's the Federation and the Klingon Empire or Apple
Computer and Microsoft, Inc.
Change is a way of life on the Web.
A Transition State
There is another industry that is trying to change, but it's not yet clear
whether they get it entirely. It's the print media. Wait, you say. Barnes and
Noble has a Website, and they'll tell you that only a small percent of their
sales are on the Net. Amazon.com is taking in millions selling paper and
shipping atoms, not electrons, all across the country. PC Magazines cover
the newstand at the local supermarket. I think, as you will see, that it's all
just the calm before the storm.
There is a nice analogy in Quantum Mechanics. When we radiate an atom
with a photon of just the right energy, an energy equal to the difference
between two orbital states, the electron absorbs the photon and jumps to the
higher energy level. But during that transition, the electron oscillates back
and forth very quickly between both states. For a very short period of time,
the electron appears to be in both states. Then it settles down to the final
state.
That's what's happening now in the publishing industry. If you look
around, you'll see both states. The print medium looks reasonably healthy
and the Web is very energetic. But we're in a state of change, and the final
energy state is not in doubt.
The Elements of Change
In any revolution, there are three elements that play an important factor. The
first is key enabling technologies, the second is infrastructure, and the
third
is the business model.
We have seen in the past how certain key technologies suddenly become
enabled and change the course of technology and business. The
microprocessor revolution put computing power in the hands of the general
population. Everything since then has simply been engineering refinement.
Putting personal computers in the hands of the general public more or less
terminated the typewriter industry, secretarial dictation, many art
departments, and created millions and millions of new jobs. Before we
could have people with the job title "Web Master," we needed the enabling
technology.
In another example, the enabling technologies for routine supersonic flight
were the turbojet engine and the all-flying horizontal stabilizer* first
developed on the (rocket powered) Bell X-1. Fifty years after the North
American F-100 Super Sabre, the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor still has
those basics: turbojet engines and an all-flying tail. With respect to the
airframe and propulsion, the last 50 years have essentially been engineering
refinement.
The second element is infrastructure. The Web itself is a perfect example of
infrastructure breeding a technological change. The old Arpanet and Milnet
were essentially a military experiment. A packet switching network was the
engineering solution to the problem of nuclear weapons wiping out major
communication centers. Packets are intended to weave their way through a
grid which has been partially damaged. But for many years, we only used
the original Internet Protocols like FTP, POP, SMTP and TELNET. When
Tim Berners-Lee invented the HTTP protocol (on a NeXT cube!) as a
means of visually linking scientific documents, he created a major revolution
in technology. Old fashioned Bulletin Board Systems could not support this
technology. It required the infrastructure of the Internet before HTTP could
create a revolution.
The third element requires a tenable business model. Right now, the
advertising business model is shackled by screen technology. There is a
world of difference between beautiful color pictures of Vodka on ice or the
cockpit of a Lexus 400. These lush photographs, printed at 1200 dots per
inch are quite impressive compared to the small Java driven graphics
displayed on our monitors at 72 dots per inch. The visual impact is just not
there. Even if we had the display technology to portray attractive color
advertisements at 1200 dots per inch, we don't have the bandwidth into the
home to support the required data rate of megabits per second. As a
consequence, many advertisers still feel that their advertising dollars are
better spent in the print medium.
Getting Into Focus
High Definition TV (HDTV) got off to a rocky start, but it's now (almost) a
done deal. First generation HDTVs are in the showrooms, and broadcasting
starts in ten major cities next month - by FCC edict. In 1999, twenty more
cities will be added to the list. Cable companies and satellite
broadcasters are
squirming on how to incorporate the extra bandwidth into their existing
systems, but eventually it will come to pass there as well. These HDTV
systems have a maximum resolution of 1080 (vertical, interlaced) x 1920
horizontal. The most general description I've seen of the image is: "It's like
looking out a window." In about five years, this technology will be wide
spread in the U.S. The impact of this kind of visual display technology,
when linked to a satellite broadcast system, has not yet been estimated. But
unlike NTSC systems that are just pitiful displaying text, an HDTV will
display text very nicely. And guess what?
Microsoft owns 100% of WebTV.
In terms of the traditional data communication lines into the home, it appears
that xDSL technology, after a slow start, is finally taking hold. While five
more years for routine use of xDSL seems like a long time, recall that it took
ISDN over ten years to finally take hold. There is no question that today's
computer savvy customers will demand, and get, much faster
communications into the home. Believe me, if you've ever visited a friend
who has ISDN or xDSL, you'll want it, and you'll want it now.
The biggest stumbling block so far has been our display technology. These
monstrous Cathode Ray Tubes, weighing in at 20 to 30 kg are fairly obtuse
instruments. They were designed to display 24 x 80 character text, and only
by engineering brilliance have we coerced them into displaying Web
graphics. Regrettably, 72 dots per inch still makes for moderately fuzzy
graphics even at 118 Hz refresh (the iMac). What we need is to make a
breakthrough in the visual display of Web graphics - something on the order
of 300 dots per inch. IBM has been working on a new flat panel display
technology that falls short of that, but it just might be the father of the
display revolution. The IBM code name is Roentgen, and it has a resolution
of about 200 pixels per inch.
We are only a few years away from the critical mass of high resolution flat
panel displays that look as good as photographs and the bandwidth into the
home to display it in a flash. This will enable the advertising industry in
terms of getting high quality, visually appealing still and motion pictures
into your face. When that happens, the floodgates will open, and advertising
will shift sharply away from the printed medium.
In 2003, when you have a PowerBook (or an iBook) with a wireless
megabit modem and a 300 dpi screen, you won't need to buy too many
books. You'll have one book, a single screen, but access to a trillion pages.
(Expect to pay for the privilege of reading the latest Tom Clancy Novel,
however.)
A PowerBook display at 300 dpi changes everything.
Still skeptical? Consider that when an ad is placed on the Web, the
advertiser knows a lot about you. He knows what kind of computer you
have and what OS you are using. He can tap on-line databases and gear his
ads to your interests. For example, I recently visited the website of a
company that sells digital cameras. I perused the specs and then left. The
NEXT day, I got spam email from an entirely different company that makes
digital cameras. A coincidence? I don't think so. With this kind of data
leverage, advertisers will soon discover that paying for paper ads that end
up in the bottom of a parakeet cage or in magazines lost under the sofa is a
waste of time and money.
Early Casualties
Todd Stauffer (Tstauffer@aol.com) wrote in Peak Computing, a local
Denver computer magazine, on June 4, 1998:
The Mac magazine market is a microcosm of things to
come. Look at the demographics for MacWeek. - the
most wired, most tech-savvy group of Mac managers out
there. Resoundingly, they seem to be saying that they don't
need the print weekly anymore - they can get enough from
the Web.
Indeed, because the Web can deliver information faster, more cheaply, and
because the Macintosh market is smaller and competition for advertising
dollars is keener, the demise of MacWeek is just the first casualty in this
transition to Web advertising. (Some have said that the real reason
MacWeek folded was because the Mac Web was doing a better job of
delivering information than MacWeek. That's a chicken an egg situation.
Assuming that were true, where would you advertise?)
Another example is the recent publication of the Ken Starr report. It was
released on a Thursday, as I recall, and some book publishers bragged
about how they would have it in the bookstores, in paperback, by Tuesday.
Most newspapers printed it in its entirety on Saturday. Never mind. We all
read it on the Web on Friday. By Tuesday, seeing it in the bookstore was a
startling refresher course in technology leverage.
Ask yourself where you are now reading Andy Ihnatko. In MacUser
magazine? Nope. It's gone. Now you read Andy at www.maccentral.com.
Why should an advertiser bury an ad inside a paper tomb once a month
when they can have it on your computer screen every day? When the
communication and display technologies out in the general population reach
a critical, enabling level, this kind of advertising will cascade into all
product
areas, not just the computer industry.
Move Electrons, Not Atoms
Dr. Nicholas Negroponte, director of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology Media Lab, advises us that we need to move electrons, not
atoms. It's expensive to print high quality ink on good glossy paper and
then spew hydrocarbons into the atmosphere getting that paper into your
hands. Those who position themselves to cash in on the enabling
technologies of high resolution displays and significant bandwidth into the
home will prosper in the 21st Century. Those that don't will join the ranks
of the typewriter companies.
We are in a transition state right now. You see both energy levels of the
electron. All of a sudden, before your eyes, it's going to settle into its
final
state. Borrowing a line from Blade Runner, the print media needs to wake
up. It's time to die.
* Subsonic aircraft have a leading horizontal stabilizer and a trailing
elevator
for pitch control. The X-1 test flights in 1947 proved that this configuration
fails at transonic and supersonic speeds, and the horizontal stabilizer needs
to be all one piece, the so-called all-flying tail. It was a well kept
military
secret until the mid 1950s.
Copyright 1998, John Martellaro. All rights reserved.
Photo credit: Winter morning in Northern Tharsis
Malin Space Science Systems/NASA
--Go sell crazy somewhere else, we're full up here. ...Nicholson
<> tbyars@earthlink.net <> --============_-1303220791==_ma============ Content-Type: text/enriched; charset="us-ascii"
Oct 19, 1998
by John Martellaro
Contributing Columnist
Death is the lot of all of us and the only way the human race has ever
conquered death is by treating it with contempt.
-- Robert Heinlein Guest of Honor Speech at the 19th World Science
Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961.
The Web community is a community of change. We change our Website
appearance frequently to meet the needs of the readers, attract new readers,
and respond to the ever changing advertising models. Our OSes change,
sometimes dramatically every six months. And the industry changes. New
alliances form, whether it's the Federation and the Klingon Empire or Apple
Computer and Microsoft, Inc.
Change is a way of life on the Web.
A Transition State
There is another industry that is trying to change, but it's not yet clear
whether they get it entirely. It's the print media. Wait, you say. Barnes and
Noble has a Website, and they'll tell you that only a small percent of their
sales are on the Net. Amazon.com is taking in millions selling paper and
shipping atoms, not electrons, all across the country. PC Magazines cover
the newstand at the local supermarket. I think, as you will see, that it's all
just the calm before the storm.
There is a nice analogy in Quantum Mechanics. When we radiate an atom
with a photon of just the right energy, an energy equal to the difference
between two orbital states, the electron absorbs the photon and jumps to the
higher energy level. But during that transition, the electron oscillates back
and forth very quickly between both states. For a very short period of time,
the electron appears to be in both states. Then it settles down to the final
state.
That's what's happening now in the publishing industry. If you look
around, you'll see both states. The print medium looks reasonably healthy
and the Web is very energetic. But we're in a state of change, and the final
energy state is not in doubt.
The Elements of Change
In any revolution, there are three elements that play an important factor. The
first is key enabling technologies, the second is infrastructure, and the third
is the business model.
We have seen in the past how certain key technologies suddenly become
enabled and change the course of technology and business. The
microprocessor revolution put computing power in the hands of the general
population. Everything since then has simply been engineering refinement.
Putting personal computers in the hands of the general public more or less
terminated the typewriter industry, secretarial dictation, many art
departments, and created millions and millions of new jobs. Before we
could have people with the job title "Web Master," we needed the enabling
technology.
In another example, the enabling technologies for routine supersonic flight
were the turbojet engine and the all-flying horizontal stabilizer* first
developed on the (rocket powered) Bell X-1. Fifty years after the North
American F-100 Super Sabre, the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor still has
those basics: turbojet engines and an all-flying tail. With respect to the
airframe and propulsion, the last 50 years have essentially been engineering
refinement.
The second element is infrastructure. The Web itself is a perfect example of
infrastructure breeding a technological change. The old Arpanet and Milnet
were essentially a military experiment. A packet switching network was the
engineering solution to the problem of nuclear weapons wiping out major
communication centers. Packets are intended to weave their way through a
grid which has been partially damaged. But for many years, we only used
the original Internet Protocols like FTP, POP, SMTP and TELNET. When
Tim Berners-Lee invented the HTTP protocol (on a NeXT cube!) as a
means of visually linking scientific documents, he created a major revolution
in technology. Old fashioned Bulletin Board Systems could not support this
technology. It required the infrastructure of the Internet before HTTP could
create a revolution.
The third element requires a tenable business model. Right now, the
advertising business model is shackled by screen technology. There is a
world of difference between beautiful color pictures of Vodka on ice or the
cockpit of a Lexus 400. These lush photographs, printed at 1200 dots per
inch are quite impressive compared to the small Java driven graphics
displayed on our monitors at 72 dots per inch. The visual impact is just not
there. Even if we had the display technology to portray attractive color
advertisements at 1200 dots per inch, we don't have the bandwidth into the
home to support the required data rate of megabits per second. As a
consequence, many advertisers still feel that their advertising dollars are
better spent in the print medium.
Getting Into Focus
High Definition TV (HDTV) got off to a rocky start, but it's now (almost) a
done deal. First generation HDTVs are in the showrooms, and broadcasting
starts in ten major cities next month - by FCC edict. In 1999, twenty more
cities will be added to the list. Cable companies and satellite broadcasters are
squirming on how to incorporate the extra bandwidth into their existing
systems, but eventually it will come to pass there as well. These HDTV
systems have a maximum resolution of 1080 (vertical, interlaced) x 1920
horizontal. The most general description I've seen of the image is: "It's like
looking out a window." In about five years, this technology will be wide
spread in the U.S. The impact of this kind of visual display technology,
when linked to a satellite broadcast system, has not yet been estimated. But
unlike NTSC systems that are just pitiful displaying text, an HDTV will
display text very nicely. And guess what?
Microsoft owns 100% of WebTV.
In terms of the traditional data communication lines into the home, it appears
that xDSL technology, after a slow start, is finally taking hold. While five
more years for routine use of xDSL seems like a long time, recall that it took
ISDN over ten years to finally take hold. There is no question that today's
computer savvy customers will demand, and get, much faster
communications into the home. Believe me, if you've ever visited a friend
who has ISDN or xDSL, you'll want it, and you'll want it now.
The biggest stumbling block so far has been our display technology. These
monstrous Cathode Ray Tubes, weighing in at 20 to 30 kg are fairly obtuse
instruments. They were designed to display 24 x 80 character text, and only
by engineering brilliance have we coerced them into displaying Web
graphics. Regrettably, 72 dots per inch still makes for moderately fuzzy
graphics even at 118 Hz refresh (the iMac). What we need is to make a
breakthrough in the visual display of Web graphics - something on the order
of 300 dots per inch. IBM has been working on a new flat panel display
technology that falls short of that, but it just might be the father of the
display revolution. The IBM code name is Roentgen, and it has a resolution
of about 200 pixels per inch.
We are only a few years away from the critical mass of high resolution flat
panel displays that look as good as photographs and the bandwidth into the
home to display it in a flash. This will enable the advertising industry in
terms of getting high quality, visually appealing still and motion pictures
into your face. When that happens, the floodgates will open, and advertising
will shift sharply away from the printed medium.
In 2003, when you have a PowerBook (or an iBook) with a wireless
megabit modem and a 300 dpi screen, you won't need to buy too many
books. You'll have one book, a single screen, but access to a trillion pages.
(Expect to pay for the privilege of reading the latest Tom Clancy Novel,
however.)
A PowerBook display at 300 dpi changes everything.
Still skeptical? Consider that when an ad is placed on the Web, the
advertiser knows a lot about you. He knows what kind of computer you
have and what OS you are using. He can tap on-line databases and gear his
ads to your interests. For example, I recently visited the website of a
company that sells digital cameras. I perused the specs and then left. The
NEXT day, I got spam email from an entirely different company that makes
digital cameras. A coincidence? I don't think so. With this kind of data
leverage, advertisers will soon discover that paying for paper ads that end
up in the bottom of a parakeet cage or in magazines lost under the sofa is a
waste of time and money.
Early Casualties
Todd Stauffer (Tstauffer@aol.com) wrote in Peak Computing, a local
Denver computer magazine, on June 4, 1998:
The Mac magazine market is a microcosm of things to
come. Look at the demographics for MacWeek. - the
most wired, most tech-savvy group of Mac managers out
there. Resoundingly, they seem to be saying that they don't
need the print weekly anymore - they can get enough from
the Web.
Indeed, because the Web can deliver information faster, more cheaply, and
because the Macintosh market is smaller and competition for advertising
dollars is keener, the demise of MacWeek is just the first casualty in this
transition to Web advertising. (Some have said that the real reason
MacWeek folded was because the Mac Web was doing a better job of
delivering information than MacWeek. That's a chicken an egg situation.
Assuming that were true, where would you advertise?)
Another example is the recent publication of the Ken Starr report. It was
released on a Thursday, as I recall, and some book publishers bragged
about how they would have it in the bookstores, in paperback, by Tuesday.
Most newspapers printed it in its entirety on Saturday. Never mind. We all
read it on the Web on Friday. By Tuesday, seeing it in the bookstore was a
startling refresher course in technology leverage.
Ask yourself where you are now reading Andy Ihnatko. In MacUser
magazine? Nope. It's gone. Now you read Andy at www.maccentral.com.
Why should an advertiser bury an ad inside a paper tomb once a month
when they can have it on your computer screen every day? When the
communication and display technologies out in the general population reach
a critical, enabling level, this kind of advertising will cascade into all product
areas, not just the computer industry.
Move Electrons, Not Atoms
Dr. Nicholas Negroponte, director of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology Media Lab, advises us that we need to move electrons, not
atoms. It's expensive to print high quality ink on good glossy paper and
then spew hydrocarbons into the atmosphere getting that paper into your
hands. Those who position themselves to cash in on the enabling
technologies of high resolution displays and significant bandwidth into the
home will prosper in the 21st Century. Those that don't will join the ranks
of the typewriter companies.
We are in a transition state right now. You see both energy levels of the
electron. All of a sudden, before your eyes, it's going to settle into its final
state. Borrowing a line from Blade Runner, the print media needs to wake
up. It's time to die.
* Subsonic aircraft have a leading horizontal stabilizer and a trailing elevator
for pitch control. The X-1 test flights in 1947 proved that this configuration
fails at transonic and supersonic speeds, and the horizontal stabilizer needs
to be all one piece, the so-called all-flying tail. It was a well kept military
secret until the mid 1950s.
Copyright 1998, John Martellaro. All rights reserved.
Photo credit: Winter morning in Northern Tharsis
Malin Space Science Systems/NASA
--
Go sell crazy somewhere else,
we're full up here. ...Nicholson
<<> tbyars@earthlink.net <<>
--============_-1303220791==_ma============--