day 75

the real internet 2: death of cybershoe salesmen

Yesterday, we looked at the level of revenues we can expect to see from Internet sources. Promises, promises, promises. In 1994 the marketing geniuses at big companies like Time-Warner, TCI, MCI, and AT&T promised us 500 channels over an interactive TV network. That flopped. Then they promised HDTV as the next revolution in consumer electronics. This idea was stillborn. Maybe they were simply posturing. After all, Rob Fulop, creative director of PF Magic, Inc., San Francisco, said in an interview in IEEE SPECTRUM (January 1995), "all these companies are trying to bluff each other out of the market." I don't think it was bluff; I think it was ignorance. The telephone companies were still thinking like monopolies in 1994 and 1995. The movie media moguls were thinking like smoke-stack marketers instead of cybershoe salesmen. Even cybershoe salesmen thought HDTV was to TV what CD-ROM was to audio tape. Their ignorance sidetracked them for at least 3 years. Now the outline of the future is clear: the goal of the Internet and Wired World in general is to displace TV. The Internet is to TV what TV was to the radio. Oh, sure, radio survived, but its place as the voice of the mainstream has long been taken over by the voice and eye of TV. Wired World is about to take over as the voice, eye, and body of mainstream consumerland. Wired World is gunning for the vastly larger, richer, and more lucrative bounty of TV-land. Tomorrow I will show you how the nerds of Wired World plan to do this.

the real internet 1 Daily Dose Index