Category: Technology Trends

The World Wide Web turned 20 this month. At 20 it’s worth reflecting on why the Web did prevail as it did. It was far from obvious that the web would succeed. Microsoft, CompuServ and others had plans for proprietary networks, usually calling them “Information Superhighways”.

The WWW succeeded due to two reasons in my mind. First was simplicity. The HTTP protocol is relatively simple protocol and ignored problems such as back-linking (later researched by the Google founders).

Second was the generic (or maybe generative) nature of the web. Anybody can create applications, and the list is long due to the countless ideas out there. The proprietary networks would never have done anything similar.

But at 20 the interesting part is this: if we compare the web with the car, we’re at 1905. Imagine cars from 1905 and remember Ford is starting out around this time. I think the web is in its early stages and that we are just beginning.

One of the topics in my New Technology course is changes in movie distribution due to digital content and the Internet. This is an example of disruption due to the global network. For years I have predicted that DVD movie rentals would decline as people adopt on-line stores. The change was slow and not noticeable until last year when something changed. The internet is finally chancing viewing in a dramatic way.

I did a small survey among my students. Here are the results:

Average number of hours watching TV per day: 1,6
Average number of times visiting cinema in one month: 0,75
Average number of times going to the Video Rental Store in one month: 0,19
Average number of on-line TV shows and movies watched in one month (streaming): 8,8. If we only count those that do streaming: 17,6
Average number of TV shows and movies downloading in one month: 17. If we only count those that do downloads: 24,6

So the conclusion is this: TV watching in the group in significantly below the average of 3 hours per day, video rentals are way down and the cinema is not very popular in this group. Only one person went more than 2 times to the cinema. Streaming and downloads on the other hand are more popular. This confirms that TV viewing is moving away from the traditional TV set and to the Internet.

In short, people don’t watch TV anymore. They watch the Internet. But then the TV is becoming one of the screens for STB and computers.

Note that this survey is based on small group and not to be taken as general trends. But it does represent an obvious trend. Video rentals are moving to the Internet.

Amazon’s ebook machine, Kindle has been out for a while. As a device for books in electronic format, it has not disrupted the traditional model of book distribution very much. Book publishers and book store owners are not getting upset about it – at least not yet. However, a feature in the new Kindle is causing some disruption. The US based Author’s Guild, an organization of authors, claims that Kindle’s text-to-speech feature is violating copyright.

This feature takes text and converts it into speech. It may seem like an obvious feature to have in a digital book device and can be viewed as an alternative way to consume the text, the normal way being using your eyes to read text. The guild disagrees and says that authors have the right to read the text and the device is violating that right. Comparing a professional reading by a human to a software that creates audio, it sounds like the authors are overreacting. Even so Amazon decided to back down and avoid the fight.

Indeed, the performance of the software is lower than the human. This is often the case with disruptive technologies. The benefits of the software is of course that it is much cheaper and readily available as soon as there is text. And don’t fall into the trap of dismissing technology due to its current performance. It’s the trend that is more important. Text-to-speech technology has improved dramatically in few years and will continue to due so, until they become good-enough and even more flexible than human reading allowing users to control type of voice, the speed, accent and other features.

Following text-to-speech we will see text-to-video. What will TV hosts, news anchors, and even teachers say when a device will conjure up life size hologram? The Author’s Guild might have won this round, but in the context of technology changes it will we an uphill battle for them.