CRITICISM . COM

Media Culture in the News

The following briefs contain news related to media culture, the Internet, or both. Many of the briefs have been culled from wire services, newspapers and magazines by Edupage, a Washington, D.C.-based consortium of colleges and universities seeking to transform education through the use of information technology.

NEW DISORDER, CYBERCHONDRIA, SWEEPS THE INTERNET

Overwhelming amounts of online medical information are leading researchers to coin a new psychological classification called "cyberchondria" that describes people who obsessively misdiagnose themselves using the Web. Like hypochondriacs constantly imagining they have various fatal illnesses, cyberchondriacs declare themselves outrageously sick after reading medical material on the Web. Because online drug stores bypass doctors to deliver drugs, medical professionals are beginning to take alarm at cyberchondriac behavior. Last month, the British Medical Association issued a first-round set of guidelines for online medical information; British experts estimate 25 percent of online medical information is inaccurate. Some doctors and surgeons also claim they are seeing a mixed effect from online medical information. In some cases, online medical information has helped patients cope with illnesses identified by their doctor, while in others, Web surfing has brought patients into doctors' offices asking for drugs they know nothing about. (New Zealand Herald Online, 28 April 2001)

ACLU ADS WARN OF 'MASSIVE' GOVERNMENT CYBER-SNOOPING

 The ACLU will launch a print and online ad campaign this month to raise awareness of government eavesdropping programs in cyberspace and in wireless devices. Full-page ACLU ads will appear in the "New Yorker" and "New York Times Magazine" assailing the federal government's Carnivore and Echelon programs that have broad powers to read and intercept online and wireless communications. Such programs violate an individual's Fourth Amendment right to privacy, argues the ACLU, and many prominent members of Congress agree, including House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas). An Armey spokesperson said Armey looks forward to addressing the issue in Congress this year. One ACLU ad will contain a picture of a wireless phone with a caption that reads, "Now Equipped With 3-Way Calling. You, Whoever You're Dialing, and the Government." (Newsbytes, 10 April 2001) 

BIG BROTHER-IN-LAW

The specter of Big Brother is looming ever larger as federal agencies such as the FBI and IRS continue to outsource their data-collection projects. The personal data of tens of millions of U.S. citizens is vulnerable to FBI agents who can enter a special Web page that provides access to personal data culled by the private sector. ChoicePoint, Lexis-Nexis, and other companies provide these services by rummaging through publicly available sources to collect the data. Electronic Privacy Information Center lawyer Marc Rotenberg said the government's practices amount to a violation of the 1974 Privacy Act. An FBI spokesperson denies this charge, noting that the agency's data-collection efforts are subjected to "a vigorous inspection process." Further, the spokesman pointed out that the data collection has helped uncover some 1,300 potential criminals. (Wall Street Journal, 13 April 2001)

FCC TO HOLD HEARINGS ON DISPARITIES IN TECHNOLOGY ACCESS

The Federal Communications Commission will hold hearings this fall to try to determine why minority groups are less likely to have telephone service or own a computer than white families. A U.S. Commerce Department reports indicates that 96% of white households have basic phone service, compared to about 86% of black households and Hispanic households; similarly about 41% of white families own a computer, compared to about 19% of black and Hispanic families. FCC chairman Bill Kennard says, "Does this gap in access to technology matter? You bet it does. How can you look for a job without a phone? How can you demonstrate that you have the skills to compete if you don't know which side of a diskette goes in first?" (AP 3 Aug 98)

HDTV SETS GO ON SALE

The first consumer high-definition TV sets are on sale now, with Panasonic offering 56-inch rear projection systems for about $5,500-6,000. Early adopters of the new technology will have to wait until fall for some local TV stations and satellite companies to start digital broadcasts. In the meantime, they can watch current TV shows using a built-in scan converter which boosts those signals for a better picture. The HDTV sets offer a screen resolution of 1,080 horizontal lines, compared with 525 offered by standard TV sets. (USA Today 3 Aug 98)

MICROSOFT INSIDE (OF YOUR TV)

Thomson Multimedia, one of the largest television manufacturers in the world, has reached an agreement with Microsoft to install its Windows CE operating software in Thomson-owned brands such as RCA and Saba. In exchange, Microsoft will buy a 7.5% stake in Thomson, which is owned by the French government. Alcatel, NEC and Hughes' DirectTV also are buying a 7.5% stake each. "We are seeding the market for interactive television," says a Thomson executive VP. "Disney is not going to develop interactive programming if, looking forward to 1999, there are only 200,000 people out there with the right TV sets. You need critical mass quickly." Microsoft has struck similar deals with Sony Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., maker of the Panasonic brand, although those agreements did not include investing in the Japanese companies. (Wall Street Journal 31 Jul 98)

STUDY SHOWS WIDENING GAP IN COMPUTER OWNERSHIP

A new study by the U.S. Commerce Department shows that PC ownership among all Americans grew by 52% between 1994 and 1997, with a penetration of 36.6% of U.S. households. But although penetration among blacks and Hispanics grew faster than the overall rate, the disparity between them and white households actually widened during that period. At the end of 1997, 40.8% of non-Hispanic white households owned a PC, compared to 19.4% of Hispanic and 19.3% of African-American households, a gap of 21.5%. In 1994, the Commerce Department reported a gap of 16.8%. The study also found that whites were much more likely to subscribe to an online service than either blacks or Hispanics. "The study exposes a growing problem in our economy, one that must be taken seriously: too many Americans are not able to take part in the growing digital economy," says Commerce Secretary William Daley. "The growing trend of information 'haves' and 'have-nots' is alarming." (Miami Herald 31 Jul 98)

ADMINISTRATION ENDORSES PRIVACY MEASURES

Saying that privacy in the age of electronic commerce is "a basic American value," Vice President Al Gore endorsed a number of bills being considered by Congress and suggested new Congressional action to tighten the security of financial and medical records and to protect children who use the Internet. Some privacy advocates have criticized the Administration for not going far enough to ensure the privacy of Internet-using adults. (New York Times 1 Aug 98)

JUSTICE SAYS MICROSOFT NOT COOPERATING WITH INVESTIGATION

The U.S. Justice Department is accusing Microsoft of failing to cooperate with its investigation of charges that Microsoft has violated antitrust laws. Justice says that Microsoft is withholding certain source code files and refusing to give government investigators reasonable access to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and other key executives of the company. (San Jose Mercury News 31 Jul 98)

RIOTS FOLLOW BRAZIL'S SALE OF NATIONAL PHONE SYSTEM

Brazil's national phone company Telebras has been sold for almost $19 billion in the largest privatization deal in Latin American history -- a deal dominated by Spain's Telefonica, Portugal's Telecom, and the U.S. company MCI. Police used tear gas, batons, and a water cannon to control thousands of angry demonstrators fearful that foreign owners of phone services will ignore the needs of the Brazilian poor. (Washington Post 30 Jul 98)

NET PRIVACY UNDER SIEGE

A series of court orders forcing Internet service providers to divulge the identities of their subscribers has privacy experts worried that free speech on the Net is in jeopardy. "I wouldn't call it a trend yet. These are the opening salvos," says one activist who runs the Anonymizer ISP service. "It's an attempt to chill speech. They're hoping people will self-censor out of fear." Most ISPs will give up private subscriber information when approached by the courts, although such action is usually a last resort for those who wish to stop defamatory or untrue Web postings because it's so expensive. "We respond to valid legal processes," says an America Online spokesman. "In a civil case, we do notify the member, to tell them they are the subject of a legal proceeding." (TechWeb 28 Jul 98)

FILTERING THE INTERNET

A study by the Denver-based education market research company Quality Education Data found that 39% of primary and secondary schools that make the Internet available to students use filtering software, but that 80% have "acceptable use policies" in place. A company executive explains: "If there's an acceptable use policy, some schools feel that is enough. Another reason may be that they don't have the money for the software yet or the software might be incompatible with their networks. And the software still hasn't been perfected." Many schools and library administrators are critical of new legislation proposed in the U.S. Senate by John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) to require filters to screen out pornography at all schools and libraries that accept new federal "E-Rate" subsidies for Internet access. (New York Times Cybertimes 28 Jul 98)

CLINTON WANTS NATIONAL HEALTH DATABASE

The Clinton Administration has been developing a plan to assign every American a unique identification code that would be part of a national database that would track everyone's life-long medical history. Proponents of the plan (including insurance companies and public health researchers) say it would reduce bureaucratic inefficiencies, improve public health, and offer vast opportunities for scientific study. Arguing in favor of the plan, epidemiologist Dr. Christopher Chute of the Mayo Foundation says that the alternative to a national health database is "to rely on folklore and anecdote in health care." But critics of the plan fear it would result in a massive invasion of privacy. A.G. Breitenstein of the Health Law Institute in Boston says, "That information will be irrevocably integrated into a cradle-to-grave medical record to which insurers, employers, government and law enforcement will have access is, to me, exactly what privacy is not. People are not going to feel comfortable going to the doctor, because now you are going to have a permanent record that will follow you around for the rest of your life that says you had syphilis, or depression, or an abortion or whatever else." (New York Times 20 Jul 98)

DOGBOT

Engineers at Sony's D21 lab have developed a robotic dog, complete with 64-bit central processing unit, 8 megabytes of memory, and a supersensitive camera "eye" that enables it to obey motion commands -- if you stick your hand out, Dogbot will sit. The robot is reconfigurable, so that the owner can swap out limbs or even the head, and each module is "intelligent" -- equipped with its own motor and control chip. Toshitada Doi, head of the D21 lab, says he thinks there will be a consumer market among children for the dogbots sometime around 2000. (Business Week 20 Jul 98)

U S WEST TO OFFER TV, INTERNET ACCESS OVER PHONE LINES

For a cost "comparable" to the monthly fees charged by Cox Communications (the primary cable company in Phoenix), U S West plans to offer its Phoenix customers a video and data services package via "variable digital subscriber lines," or VDSL. U S West says its service will include some 120 TV channels and Internet access. In the past year, cable companies have begun to offer Internet access as part of their monthly service, and an analyst with International Data says, "If you're a phone company, you're going to want to roll out a package of services that will blunt the attack from the cable companies, which are trying to take away phone customers." (Wall Street Journal 20 Apr 98)

COURT SAYS NET NAME-POACHING IS ILLEGAL

A federal appeals court in San Francisco has ruled that is illegal to register an Internet address that appropriates a name that has been previously trademarked by another company, and then to try to sell the address to the owner of that trademark. The appellant had argued, unsuccessfully, that trademark law did not apply to Internet addresses. (San Jose Mercury News 18 Apr 98)

CULTURE, NOT CURRENCY, MAKES A HAVE-NOT COUNTRY, "EXPERT" SAYS

Digital guru Don Tapscott says whether a nation remains a technology "have-not" depends on its mindset, not its bank balance: "It's not the poor countries that are blocking progress. It's countries that have a culture that impedes innovation, that cannot find the national will to go forward with technology. What is it about a national culture that enhances curiosity? You need countries to have an environment where companies have the potential to create wealth." (Upside Apr 98)
Criticism.Com Comments:
With the above remark, Tapscott has revealed the vastness of his cultural ignorance.

MICROSOFT TRIES TO DERAIL JAVA

In a move aimed at deflating the impact of Sun Microsystems' Java programming language, Microsoft has developed a rival product called Windows DNA, short for Distributed Net Applications. DNA uses Component Object Model technology to combine pieces of software written in any programming language, including Java, and is geared toward users of Windows 95 or Windows NT software. "The benefits of Java that have been claimed are something that we are delivering, but we're delivering it within the existing environment that people already have," says a Microsoft VP. The company hopes to prevent programmers from migrating to the Java alliance, which is supported by Sun, IBM, Oracle and Netscape. (Wall Street Journal 24 Sep 97)
Criticism.Com Comments:
Boycott Microsoft Corp. -- to the extent possible, anyway.

NEW OPPOSITION TO GOVERNMENT'S ENCRYPTION PLANS

A group of leading science, education and engineering organizations (including the American Association of the Advancement of Science, the American Mathematical Society, the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, and the American Association of University Professors) has written a letter to Congress opposing a Clinton Administration-backed plan to prohibit the manufacture, sale, distribution, export or import of encryption systems impregnable to monitoring by law enforcement agencies. The group says that strong cryptographic technology is crucial to the open exchange of information, the progress of scientific and technological research, and the growth of electronic commerce. (New York Times 24 Sep 97)

A NEW WEB STRATEGY: RINGS

Businesses are beginning to use Web rings -- clusters of Web sites united by a theme or topic -- to increase visibility for their individual Internet endeavors. "I would call Web rings a gimmick," says a member of the Horse Products Web Ring, "but it gives possible customers another way to find and view Web sites." The trend is rapidly gaining momentum -- in January, webring.com, a directory for Web rings, listed about 1,000 rings. By September, it listed 18,000, encompassing some 200,000 Web sites. Webring.com estimates that its number of "hits" is going up at a rate of 22% per quarter. (Investor's Business Daily 26 Sep 97)

INTERNET KEEPS GROWING AND GROWING

A survey by Christian Huitema of Bellcore indicates that the number of host computers grew from 14.7 million in September of 1996 to 26 million in September of 1997. The goal of the survey was to count centralized server computers, work stations, and each modem in the modem bank of Internet Service Providers. (New York Times 15 Sep 97)

MAYBE BANNER ADS WORK AFTER ALL

A new survey, conducted by WWP Group's Millward Brown International, finds that the banner ads now ubiquitous to most Web sites are actually working, and that they're responsible for 96% of what a consumer remembers about an advertiser online. Twelve people out of 100 were likely to recall seeing a Web ad after viewing it just once, vs. only 10 people who were likely to remember a TV commercial after one viewing. The June survey polled 17,000 respondents who frequented 12 Web sites. "For the last two-plus years, the industry has been marching down the path that the real ad is at the advertiser's site," says a senior VP at ESPN/ABC News Online Ventures. "What this research demonstrates is that the real ad is at the banner level." (Wall Street Journal 25 Sep 97)

MAN SHOOTS PC

An Issaquah, Wash., man apparently became frustrated with his personal computer, pulled out a gun and shot it. The computer, located in the man's home office, had four bullets holes in its hard drive and one in the monitor. Police evacuated the man's townhouse complex, contacted the irate PC owner by phone, and persuaded him to come out. "We don't know if it wouldn't boot up or what," says one of the police officers at the scene. (St. Petersburg Times 20 Jul 97)

VIRGINIA TECH WANTS GRADUATE WORK POSTED ON WEB

Virginia Tech is the first American university to require that all graduate theses and dissertations be posted on the Web. The new rule is intended to make the latest graduate research more timely and accessible and to strike a blow against the steadily increasing subscription prices of scholarly journals. Journal publishers and other critics maintain that posting of documents on the Internet diminishes the effectiveness of the "peer review process" for reviewing original research, but Virginia Tech vice president Earving L. Blythes says that the publishers are part of the problem: "What we've seen is cartel-like behavior. Essentially, what's happening is the research and scholarly work is produced on campus; they want it published so they give it to publishers, who sell it at exorbitant prices." (New York Times 28 Jul 97)

WHY IS THE ECONOMY HUMMING? "COMPUTERS," GREENSPAN SAYS

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan thinks the reason that inflation seems to be under control in spite of vigorous growth in the current economy is that information technology first introduced on a large scale in the 1980s is finally producing better business performance in the 1990s. "An expected result of the widespread and effective application of information and other technologies would be a significant increase in productivity and reduction in business costs." Is there also a downside to the good news? Technological innovation has "brought with it a heightened sense of job insecurity and, as a consequence, subdued wage gains ... It is one thing to believe that the economy, indeed the job market, will do well overall, but quite another to feel secure about one individual situation, given the accelerated pace of corporate restructuring and the heightened fear of skill obsolescence that has apparently characterized this expansion." (Atlanta Journal-Constitution 27 Jul 97)

WILL COMPUSERVE BE BOUGHT BY BERTELSMANN?

The German media conglomerate Bertelsmann A.G. is refusing to confirm or deny rumors that it will join with America Online to acquire rival online service CompuServe, which has lost money and subscribers in the past year, but which is still a significant competitor in the commercial Internet sector. (New York Times 5 Jul 97)
Criticism.Com Comments:
The acquisition should be banned by antitrust legislation in an attempt to keep the monopolization of the mass media, within which Bertelsmann is a major player, from further spreading to the Internet.

HELSINKI IN 3-D ... VIRTUALLY ALL OF IT

Helsinki, in a country that has the highest per-capita use of the Internet and mobile phones in the world, is developing an interactive guide to the city. Risto Linturi, the technology director for the project, says: "What we are making is a 3-D interface that will create 100,000 private television stations in the city, uniting people through a combination of the telephone, the computer, and Internet. You can check out what is happening on Main Street, or click a university and pick a lecture to attend in real time. Everyone who places a tiny camera, a cheap device that is already common, on their personal computer -- from your banker to your barber -- can be accessible by video and sound in real time."

Linturi's colleague, Immo Teperi says: "What is new is the mass application. Instead of making just one square or one building accessible, we are making a whole city accessible in a multimedia network with its everyday life." (New York Times 11 Jul 97)

"DOMAIN" ASSIGNMENT EXAMINED BY ANTITRUST INVESTIGATORS

Network Solutions Inc. (NSI), the Herndon, Virginia company selected by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1995 to control the assignment of all Internet domain names, is now under scrutiny by the Justice Department for possible violation of antitrust laws. NSF intends not to renew NSI's contract when it expires next year, but the company says it does not plan to give up its responsibility for the domains it registers (.com, .edu., .net., and .org). The company is also in the process of going public and is planning a stock offering worth as much as $35 million. (Washington Post 6 Jul 97)

TELECOMMUTER RANKS EXPANDING

A study released Wednesday by Telecommute America, a public/private telecommuting advocacy group, says the number of U.S. telecommuters has surged 30% in the past two years, to 11 million. That doesn't count the people who work at home full-time but have no corporate office. Meanwhile, one in four Fortune 1,000 companies now have employees who telecommute either part- or full-time, according to a study released this week by KPMG. (Tampa Tribune 3 Jul 97)

THE UNLINKING OF THE WEB?

Some companies are concerned about the Web's ability to link any two sites together, regardless of whether both parties agree to it or not. The recent lawsuits involving Ticketmaster vs. Microsoft, and six media companies vs. TotalNEWS.com are just the beginning, say some lawyers, who predict "link licenses" will become more commonplace in the near future. "Links establish a connection between two businesses, and people really want to be able to control that," says an intellectual property attorney. "A lot of our clients get upset with pornography sites linking to them -- they don't want that kind of connection." Meanwhile, a federal court's ruling two weeks ago, on First Amendment grounds, that a Georgia law forbidding use by a Web site of another company's trademark or symbol could be challenged appears to add some protection to the right to link. "That isn't to say you can't have some extensions of existing copyright and trademark protections to the Internet," says an ACLU lawyer, "but it's a very different matter altogether to say that people can't reference your site, which is what a link is." (Wall Street Journal 2 Jul 97)

NIELSEN HOOKS UP WITH LUCENT TO COUNT EYEBALLS

Nielsen Media Research, under fire for perceived inaccuracies in its current television-ratings system, is working with Lucent Technologies to develop new ways to count audiences for digital TV and the Internet. Much of the technology will be developed at Bell Laboratories, Lucent's research and technology arm. "It's not just doing the basic measurement task, it's figuring out ways to do it better, faster and cheaper," says Nielsen's president. The technology will have to accommodate digital television's hundreds of channels, each one transmitting dozens of programs at the same time. (Wall Street Journal 30 Jun 97) http://www.wsj.com

CASE DISMISSED AGAINST GERMAN WHO LINKED TO RADIKAL WEB SITE

A judge in Berlin has dismissed a case against a German woman who had linked her homepage to a Netherlands Web site for the left-wing magazine Radikal, which the German government has outlawed because it has published material considered seditious, including instructions for derailing trains. Because the judge's ruling was made on very narrow grounds, the decision will have very little impact on the legal and political questions related to attempts to regulate content on the Internet. (New York Times 1 Jul 97) http://www.nytimes.com

CLINTON ENDORSES MARKET RULE OF THE NET

The Clinton Administration has endorsed a policy study that says the Government should refrain from creating new taxes or regulations on Internet business, and that the private sector should be left alone to figure out the rules of cyberspace. The study, prepared by a task force led by Ira Magaziner, asserts: "Commerce on the Internet could total tens of billions of dollars by the turn of the century. For this potential to be realized fully, governments must adopt a non-regulatory, market-oriented approach." (Washington Post 30 Jun 97) http://www.washingtonpost.com.

INTERNET USE LEVELING OFF

The number of new Internet users appears to be stabilizing, with growth rates hovering at less than 5%, according to a demographics study released last week by the Georgia Institute of Technology. According to Tech's survey, the number of users is now around 30 million -- that's a good bit lower than Nielsen's recent estimate of 50 million. "What brought people online were all the different service providers really gearing up," says a Tech researcher. "We don't know whether it will pick up again. There hasn't been that much change of the last three surveys." (Tampa Tribune 16 Jun 97)

HOOKED ON THE NET

Police in Cincinnati have placed in protective custody two children whose mother neglected them to spend as much as 12 hours a day on the Internet. A policeman said: "She would lock the children in the room so as not to be bothered. The place was in complete shambles, but the computer area was clean." (Washington Post 17 Jun 97)

WEB ADS GET MORE PUSHY

Advertisers are moving toward more aggressive advertising methods for the Web, including "robot" programs designed to deliver animated sales pitches in chat rooms and full-screen ads that must be downloaded before users can see the content they've requested.

The shift is driven in part by advertisers' concerns that click-through rates are dropping as Web surfers tune out the traditional banner-type ads. "It started happening last spring or summer," says the chief technology officer at SF Interactive, "when users started figuring out that the flashy banners were ads," rather than graphics designed as part of the site.

The robot ads are the brainchild of Black Sun Interactive and are designed to pop up in response to information you divulge about yourself while "chatting" -- for instance, if you say, "My house is dirty," you might get a response like, "Hi, I'm Dusty -- would you like to know more about Black & Decker's Dustbuster?" Dusty is an avatar that looks like a dustbuster with big eyeballs and is programmed to zero in on words like "messy" or "clean." So far, only sites that use Black Sun's server can offer them. (Wall Street Journal 24 Apr 97)

CRACKERS OBTAINED GULF WAR MILITARY SECRETS

During the Gulf War, computer vandals working from Eindhoven in the Netherlands cracked into U.S. government computers at 34 military sites to steal information about troop movements, missile capabilities, and other secret information; they then offered it to the Iraquis, but the Iraquis rejected it because they considered the information a hoax.

Dr. Eugene Schultz, former head of computer security at the U.S. Department of Energy, has told the British Broadcasting Company: "We realized that these files should not have been stored on Internet-capable machines. They related to our military systems, they related to Operation Desert Shield at the time, and later Operation Desert Storm. This was a huge mistake." (London Telegraph 23 Mar 97)

TV-COMPUTER FROM COMPAQ AND THOMSON

Compaq Computer and Thomson Consumer Electronics say they will market a $5,000 "PC Theatre" that combines a Compaq computer with an RCA 36-inch television set (RCA is a Thomson brand). A number of other companies are developing similar products, in anticipation of consumers' need to replace or convert their existing analog TV sets for digital ones by the year 2006. The Compaq-Thomson product will be sold as two separate modular products -- a TV and a computer that can be combined into one system. (AP 28 Apr 97)

MICROSOFT INVADES TV LAND

Microsoft has seen the future and it is digital TV. The computer giant has been making deals with TV producers to launch proof-of-concept shows that incorporate Web-based features, and so far it's lined up gigs with Spelling Entertainment Group's "Moesha," and the USA Network's "Pacific Blue," "Silk Stalkings," and "Big Easy." In the new version, the original show appears as a window that fills about two-thirds of the screen, while a Web page wrapped around the left and bottom edges beckons with icons that promise more information on the actors' careers or outtakes from the show's production. Initially, viewers with intercasting capability will be able to watch these shows on their PCs, but Microsoft's real goal is to provide a reason for consumers to purchase WebTVs -- a company Microsoft bought last week for $425 million. (Wall Street Journal 16 Apr 97)

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BERKELEY CREATES "DISTILLING" PROCESS FOR WEB

Students and faculty members at the University of California at Berkeley have developed a "distillation" process that shrinks Web images, lowers their resolution and displays them in fewer colors, enabling users to load pages 3 to 10 times faster than they would using conventional technology. Users will be able to dictate the clarity and size of the distilled images, balancing individual need for speed against readability. They can then click on the distilled images and view them in their original format. The process is currently being tested and researchers say it should greatly improve the efficiency of the entire campus network. (Chronicle of Higher Education 18 Apr 97)

DON'T ASK RESEARCH PEOPLE WHY NET WAS SUCCESSFUL

Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold says the development of Mosaic and similar Web-oriented products were social and commercial breakthroughs (and "fine work"), but not technological breakthroughs. "If you'd said up front, 'My research program is that I'm going to allow bitmaps to get transferred over this simple protocol,' people would have said, 'That isn't research.' It isn't!" And so what, exactly, has happened? "It turned out that a low-tech social phenomenon called the Internet has suddenly arisen and surprised people. But it's like asking people in plastics research why the hula hoop was successful." (Upside Apr 97)

MAJOR EXPANSION OF INTERNET SHOPPING

Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retail company, will more than double the number of items (to about 80,000) that will be available to persons who shop on the Internet, making it possible for online shoppers to find as many items as they would find in any of Wal-Mart's 2,000 out-of-town discount stores. (Financial Times 27 Mar 97)

SEVENTH-GRADERS TO GET LAPTOPS FOR "TOTAL IMMERSION"

The Kent, Connecticut, school district has bought every one of its 36 seventh graders a $1,855 laptop computer, purchased through a program set up by Toshiba and Microsoft. A school administrator says: "It's like learning French in France rather than in Connecticut. It's total immersion as opposed to dabbling." Students will store their computers in locked cabinets during lunch and other periods when the systems are not being used. (New York Times 26 Mar 97)

AMAZON FILES FOR INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERING

Three-year-old Amazon.com, a company that sells books over the Internet, has filed for an initial public offering that places the value of the company at almost $300 million and reveals that Amazon aspires to become "the leading online retailer of information-based products and services" -- expanding eventually into videos and music. Last year Amazon had sales of $15.7 million, but the company's heavy investment in technology and marketing has prevented it from reaching profitability yet. (Wall Street Journal 25 Mar 97)

WEB PUBLISHING SHAKEOUT?

With the recent demise of such Web publishing ventures such as Politics Now and Out.com and the reduced activity of many others, industry analysts are talking about a Web publishing shakeout caused primarily by the slow growth of advertising support. Henry E. Scott, president of the parent company of Out.com says: "I became increasingly concerned that the resources we were putting into the Web product could have been better devoted to our core product, which is the magazine. Having a Web site is no longer a sign of being on the cutting edge. It might be a sign of not doing much original thinking... Newspapers have a classified advertising franchise to protect and just thinking about that you can make a pretty good case that newspapers need to be involved in the Web. But it's entirely unclear to me that a magazine Web site will ever reach profitability." (New York Times 25 Mar 97)

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IBM GEARS UP FOR TV MARKET

IBM plans to supply digital production and transmission equipment, such as video servers, for cable, broadcast and satellite TV systems, pitting the computer giant against entrenched electronics firms such as Sony Corp. IBM will work with about a dozen companies that have experience in the television equipment business. (Wall Street Journal 7 Apr 97) In addition, Big Blue will begin providing schematic boards and reference designs for TV set-top boxes. "We're not getting into the set-top business. We're in the silicon business, and we're just trying to provide (the technology)," says IBM's set-top box platform marketing manager. The reference design includes an IBM PowerPC embedded controller, a serial port for infrared remote, and a smart card interface with 4MB DRAM of video and an MPEG-2 transport chip. (Broadcasting & Cable 31 Mar 97)

VIEW THROUGH WINDOWS WILL BE WEBTV

Microsoft is acquiring WebTV Networks Inc., the Palo Alto, California, company that delivers Internet content directly to television sets. The $425-million purchase is intended to speed up the convergence of PC and TV and to make Microsoft's Windows operating system software a standard for the next generation of consumer devices. A Microsoft executive said about the deal: "We bought these guys because we have a vision of a better TV and a better PC." (Washington Post 7 Apr 97)

DIGITAL TV EXPECTED TO RULE BY 2006

The Federal Communications Commission voted to let every TV station in the country use a second channel for broadcasting digital versions of the programming now being distributed in analog format to conventional TV sets. By 2006, all broadcasts will be transmitted in digital form only, and all of the 240 million TV sets now in use in the U.S. will be obsolete at that time. Digital television sets -- which are expected to go on sale late next year --will offer extremely sharp, high-definition pictures on a new wide-screen monitor along with six-channel digital audio systems. For some period of time, the new digital programming will be available only by broadcast TV, not by cable or satellite television. (New York Times 4 Apr 97)

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PCs' BIG THREE ENTER DIGITAL-TV FRAY

Computer powerhouses Microsoft, Intel and Compaq Computer are still trying to persuade television broadcasters to adopt their technical standards for digital TV, which would emphasize Internet-based information services and interactivity, as well as high-definition picture quality. PC makers are hoping that their intervention will enable the large-screen personal computer to migrate from the den to the living room, eventually replacing the television set as the primary family entertainment device. "Any notion that consumer electronics are not going to get smart is fallacious," says Microsoft's senior VP of consumer products. "We are trying to stretch out a hand to the consumer-electronics and broadcast industries and say, 'We can help you with this transition.'" Computer makers favor a "progressive-scan" monitor technology, while consumer electronics companies have traditionally used an "interlaced" approach. PC makers anticipate the cost of building digital-TV technology into a personal computer to be around $100 to $150. "More people are gong to watch digital TV on the PC because it's going to be built into the architecture," says Compaq's senior VP for technology and corporate development. (Wall Street Journal 4 Apr 97)

DOES NET PLAY ROLE IN CULT ACTIVITIES?

Although many Internet enthusiasts argue that the Internet isn't creating cults like Heaven's Gate, the group that committed mass suicide this past week in Southern California, others see a dark side to the Net. University of Oregon psychologist Ray Hayman says: "Much of the stuff you find is nonsense, but because it comes off the computer it has the mark of being credible." Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future says: "The Web is a compelling new medium being put to all kinds of uses, by everyone from banks to Cub Scouts to flying saucer cults. That said, it can also be a powerful amplifier." (New York Times 28 Mar 97) But the Internet has large numbers of defenders, one of whom says: "I hate to watch news people talk about the Net. . . . One `expert' on CNN mentioned that cults often recruit on the Net because -- and I quote --`technical people are often more gullible and more trusting.' ... We get portrayed in a crappy light.. . . This time it's a cult. Usually, it's that we're all child pornographers." (Washington Post 29 Mar 97)

MULTIMEDIA WILL BE LIFE SKILL, AUTHOR SAYS

In a new college textbook, Fred T. Hofstetter of the University of Delaware says that "the ability to use multimedia will emerge as a life skill in the twenty-first century. Citizens who do not know how to use multimedia will become disenfranchised. Cut off from the Information Superhighway, they will end up watching life go by instead of living it fully." (Multimedia Literacy, McGraw-Hill, 1997)

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BOOKSELLER PRICE WAR ON NET

With the Barnes & Noble bookselling company opening an operation today on America Online (and moving ahead with plans to begin selling books on the Web later this Spring), its much smaller rival Amazon.com, currently the biggest bookseller in cyberspace, is increasing the discount on 700 popular titles to 40%. But Barnes & Noble, which had $2.4 billion in sales last year, will prove formidable competition for Amazon, which had 1996 sales of only $17 million. Forrester Research says: "It's a case of a relatively successful pipsqueak taking on a heavily fortified giant. They can only compete by finding a niche and providing superior service." Atlanta Journal-Constitution 18 Mar 97)

INTERNET SUPPRESSION IN BURMA

In an attack on the country's political dissidents, the military regime in Burma has outlawed the unauthorized possession of a computer with networking capability, and prison terms of 7 to 15 years in prison may be imposed on those who evade the law or who are found guilty of using a computer to send or receive information on such topics as state security, the economy and national culture. (Financial Times 5 Oct 96)

IRAN WARY OF WORLD WIDE WEB

With access to the Internet increasing in Iran, the government there is trying to centralize all access through the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications in order to ban sites of the Mujahedeen Khalq and other opposition groups, as well as sites of the B'ahai religion, pornography, or "Western propaganda." A senior Iranian official says: "There is stuff on the Internet that people have access to that is as offensive as 'The Satanic Verses' and it is updated every day. We believe a certain level of decency must be provided." (New York Times 8 Oct 96 A4)

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