Internet A Medium or a Message Essay Example For Students

Internet: A Medium or a Message? Essay Sam Vaknins Psychology, Philosophy, Economics and Foreign Affairs Web SitesThe State of the Net: An Interim Report about the Future of the InternetWho are the participants who constitute the Internet?Users connected to the net and interacting with itThe communications lines and the communications equipmentThe intermediaries (e.g. the suppliers of on-line information or access providers). Hardware manufacturersSoftware authors and manufacturers (browsers, site development tools, specific applications, smart agents, search engines and others). The Hitchhikers (search engines, smart agents, Artificial Intelligence AI tools and more)Content producers and providersSuppliers of financial wherewithal (currently corporate and institutional cash to be replaced, in the future, by advertising money)The fate of each of these components separately and in solidarity will determine the fate of the Internet. The Internet has hitherto been considered the territory of computer wizards. Thus, any attempt at predicting its future applied the Olympic formula : Faster, Higher, Stronger to its hardware and software determinants. Media experts, sociologists, psychologists, advertising and marketing executives were left out of the collective effort to determine the future face of the Internet. The Internet cannot be currently defined as a medium. It does not function as one rather it is a very disordered library, mostly incorporating the writings of non-distinguished megalomaniacs. It is the ultimate Narcissistic experience. Yet, ever since the invention of television there hasnt been anything as begging to become a medium as the Internet is. Three analogies spring to mind when contemplating the Internet in its current state:A chaotic libraryA neural network or the equivalent of a telephony network in the makingA new continent These metaphors prove to be very useful (even business-wise). They pe rmit us to define the commercial opportunities embedded in the Internet. Yet, they fail to assist us in predicting its future which lies in its transformation into a medium. How does an invention become a medium? What happens to it when it does become one? What is the thin line separating the basic function of the invention from its flowering in the form of a new medium? In other words: when can we tell that some technological advance gave birth to a new medium? This work also deals with the image of the Internet once transformed into a medium. The Internet has the most unusual attributes in the history of the media. It has no central structure or organization. It is hardware and software independent. It (almost) cannot be subjected to legislation or to regulation. Take on example: downloading music from the internet is it an act of recording music? This has been the crux of the legal battle between Diamond Multimedia (the manufacturers of the Rio MP3 device) and the recording indu stry in America. Its data transfer channels are not linear they are random. Most of its broadcast cannot be received at all. It allows for the narrowest of narrowcasting through the use of e-mail mailing lists, discussion groups, message boards and chats. And this is but a small portion of an impressive list of oddities. This idiosyncrasy will shape the nature of the Internet as a medium. Growing out of bizarre roots it is bound to yield strange fruit as a medium. So what are the business opportunities out there? I believe that they are to be found in two broad categories :The shaping of the Internet as a medium, using the right software and hardwareThe shaping of the Internet as a medium through contents The Map of Terra InterneticaThe Users How many users are there ? How many of them have access to the Web (World Wide Web WWW) and use it ? There are no unequivocal statistics. Those who presume to give the answers (including the ISOC the Internet SOCiety) rely on very partial and biased resources. Others just bluff for very unscientific reasons. Yet, all agree that there are, at least, 70 million active participants in North America (the Nielsen and Commerce-Net reports). The future is, inevitably, even more vague than the present. Authoritative consultancy firms predict 66 million active users in 10 years time. IBM envisages 700 million users. MCI is more modest with 300 million. At the end of 1999 there were 130 million users. This is not serious futurology. It is better to ignore these predictions and to face facts. The Internet an Elitist and Chauvinistic Medium The average user of the Internet is young (30), with academic background and high income. The percentage of the educated and the well-to-do among the users of the Web is three times as high as their proportion in the population. This is fast changing only because their children are joining them (6 million already had access to the Internet at the end of 1996 to be joined by another 24 milli on by the end of the decade). This may change only due to presidential initiatives (from Al Gore in the USA to Mahatir Mohammed in Malaysia), corporate largesse (Microsoft, for one) and institutional involvement (Open Society in Eastern Europe). These efforts will spread the benefits of this all-powerful tool among the less privileged. A bit more than 50% of all users are men and they are responsible for 60% of the activity in the net (as measured by data volume). Women seem to limit themselves to electronic mail (e-mail) and to electronic shopping of goods and services. Men prefer information because knowledge is power. Most of the users are of the experiencer variety. They are leaders of social change and innovative. This breed populates universities, fashionable neighbourhoods and trendy vocations. This is why many wonder if the Internet is not just another such fad, albeit an incredibly resilient one. Though most users have home access to the Internet they still prefer to acces s it from work, at the employers expense, though this preference is slight and being eroded. Most users are, therefore, exploitative in nature. Still, we must not forget that there are 37 million households of self employed and this possibly distorts the statistical picture somewhat. The Internet a North American Phenomenon Not European, not African, not Asian (with the exception of Israel and Japan), not Russian , nor a Third World phenomenon. It belongs squarely to the wealthy, sated world. It is the indulgence of those who have all else and their biggest worry is their choice of entertainment for the night. Between 60-70% of all Internet users live in the USA, 5% in Canada. They are rare in Europe (except in Germany and in Scandinavia). The Internet lost to the French Minitel because the latter provides more locally relevant content. Communications Most computer owners possess a 28,800 bps modem. This is much like driving a bicycle in a German Autobahn. The 56,600 bps is gradual ly replacing its slower predecessor (28% of computers with modem) but even it is hardly sufficient. To begin to enjoy video and audio (especially the former) data transfer rates need to be 50 times larger. Half the households in the USA have at least 2 telephones and one of them is usually dedicated to data processing (faxes or fax-modems). The ISDN could constitute the mid-term solution. This data transfer network is fairly speedy and covers 70% of the territory of the USA. It is growing by 100% annually and its sales topped 10 billion USD in 1995/6. Unfortunately, it is quite clear that ISDN is not THE answer. It is too slow, to user-unfriendly, has a bad interface with other network types. There is no point in investing in temporary solutions when the right solution is staring the Internet in the face, though it is not implemented due to political circumstances. A cable modem is 80 times speedier than the ISDN and 700 times faster than a 14,400 bps modem. However, is does have problems in accommodating two-way data transfer. There is also need to connect the fibre optic infrastructure which typifies cables to the old copper coaxial infrastructure which characterizes telephony. Cable users engage specially customized LANs (Ethernet) and the hardware is expensive (though equipment prices are forecast to collapse as demand increases). Cable companies simply did not invest in developing the technology : the law (prior to the 1996 Communications Act) forbade them to do anything that was not one way transfer of video by cables. Now, with the more liberal regulative environment, it is a mere question of time until the technology is found. Actually, most consumers single out bad customer relations as their biggest problem with the cable companies rather than technology. Experiments conducted with cable modems led to a doubling of usage time (from an average of 24 to 47 hours per month per user) which was wholly attributable to the increased speed. This comes clo se to a revolution in the culture and in the allocation of leisure time. Numerically speaking : 7 million households in the USA will be fitted with a two-way data transfer cable modem. This is a small number and it is anyones guess if it constitutes a critical mass. Sales of such modem amount to 1.3 billion USD annually. 50% of all cable subscribers also have a PC at home. To me it seems that the merging of the two technologies is inevitable. Other technological solutions such as the ADSL are being developed and implemented. Hardware and Software Most of the Internet users (62%) work with a Windows operating system. About 21% own a Mackintosh (much stronger graphically and more user-friendly). Only 7% continue to work on UNIX based systems (which, historically, fathered the Internet) and this number is fast declining. A strong entrant is the free source LINUX operating system. Virtually all the users employ a browsing software : most of them (56%) use Netscapes products (Navigato r and Communicator) and the minority shares the antiquated Mosaic (the SPRY version, for instance) and Microsofts Explorer (close to 40% of the market). The sales of browsers are expected to hit 4 billion USD in the year 2000 (Hembrecht and Quist). Browsers are in for a great transformation. Most of them will have 3-D, advanced audio, telephony / voice mail (v-mail), e-mail and conferencing capabilities integrated into the same session (and this includes video conferencing in the further future). They will become self-customizing, intelligent, Internet interfaces : they will memorize the history of usage and user preferences and adapt themselves accordingly. They will allow content-specificity : unidentifiable smart agents will scour the Internet, make recommendations, compare prices, order goods and services and customize contents in line with self-adjusting user profiles. Two important technological developments must be considered: Palmtops the ultimate personal (and office) comm unicators, easy to carry and providing Internet access anywhere, independent of suppliers and providers and of physical infrastructure (in an aeroplane, in the field, in a cinema). The second : wireless data transfer and wireless e-mail, whether through pagers, cellular phones, or through more sophisticated apparatus and ybrids such as smart phones. Geotechs products are an excellent example : e-mail, faxes, telephone calls and a connection to the Internet and to other, public and corporate, or proprietary, databases all provided by the same gadget. This is the embodiment of the electronic, physically detached, office. We have no way of gauging or intelligently guessing the part of the mobile Internet in the total future Internet market but it is likely to outweigh the fixed part. Wireless internet meshes well with the trend of pervasive computing and the intelligent household. Household gadgets such as microwave ovens, refrigerators and so on will connect to the internet via a w ireless interface to cull data, download information, order goods and services and perform basic maintenance functions upon themselves. Suppliers and Intermediaries Parasitic intermediaries occupy each stage in the Internet chain of food. Access to the Internet? Internet Service Providers (ISP) Content? content suppliers and so on. Some of these intermediaries are doomed to gradually fade or to suffer a substantial diminishing of their share of the market. What justification was there for the existence of the likes of CompuServe and America On line (AOL) had they not matched up with portals and content providers? Before the 1998/9 spat of mergers and acquisitions, in 1996 it was predicted that they will have only 16 million subscribers in the USA by 1997 and this was before the technical and corporate upheavals in AOL. By way of comparison, even today, ISPs have twice as many subscribers (worldwide). Admittedly, this adversely affects the quality of the service the infrastructure maintained by the phone companies is slow and often succumbs to bottlenecks. The unequivocal intention of the telephony giants to become major players in the Internet market should also be taken into account. The phone companies will, thus, play a dual role : they will supply the infrastructure to their competitors (sometimes, within a real or actual monopoly) and they will compete with their clients. The same can be said about the cable companies. Controlling the last mile to the users abode is the next big business of the internet. Companies such as AOL are disadvantaged by these trends. It is imperative for AOL to obtain equal access to the cable companys backbone and infrastructure if it wants to survive. No wonder that many of the ISPs judge this to be an unfair fight. On the other hand, it takes a minimal investment to become an ISP. 200 modems (which cost 200 USD each) are enough to satisfy the needs of 2000 average users who generate an income of 500,000 USD per annum to t he ISP. Routers are equally as cheap nowadays. This is a nice return on the ISPs capital, undoubtedly. The Hitchhikers The Web houses the equivalent of 10 million books. Search Engine applications are used to locate specific information in this impressive, constantly proliferating library. They will be replaced, in the near future, by Knowledge Structures gigantic encyclopaedias, whose text will contain references (hyperlinks) to other, relevant, sites. The far future will witness the emergence of the Intelligent Archives and the Personal Papers (read further for detailed explanations). Some software applications will summarize content, others will index and automatically reference and hyperlink texts (virtual bibliographies). An average user will have on-going interest in 500 sites. Special software will be needed to manage address books (bookmarks, favourites) and contents (Intelligent Addressbooks). The phenomenon of search engines dedicated to search a number of search engines simultaneously will grow (Hyper-engines). Hyperengines will work in the background and download hyperlinks and advertising (the latter is essential to secure the financial interest of site developers and owners). Statistical software which tracks (how long was what done), monitors (what did they do while in) and counts (how many) visitors to sites exist. Some of these applications have back-office facilities (accounting, follow-up, collections, even tele-marketing). They all provide time trails and some allow for auditing. This is but a small fragment of the rapidly developing net-scape : people and enterprises who make a living off the Internet craze rather than off the Internet itself. Everyone knows that there is more money in lecturing about how to make money in the Internet than in the Internet itself. This maxim still holds true despite the 32 billion US dollars in E-commerce in 1998. Content Suppliers This is the underprivileged sector of the Internet. They all lose money (e xcept sites offering basic, standardized goods books, CDs and sites connected to tourism). No one thanks them for content produced with the investment of a lot of effort and a lot of money. A really good, fully commerce enabled site costs up to 5,000,000 USD, excluding current updating site maintenance and customer and visitor services. They are constantly criticized for lack of creativity or for too much creativity. More and more is asked of them. They are exploited by intermediaries, hitchhikers and other parasites. Most of them produce Web content. 32 million men and women constantly access the Web but this number stands to grow (the median prediction: 120 million). Yet, while the Web is used by 35% of those with access to the Internet e-mail is used by more than 50%. E-mail is by far the most common function and specialized applications (Eudora, Internet Mail, Microsoft Exchange) have upgraded it to a state of art. Most of the users like to surf (browse, visit sites) the n et without reason or goal in mind. This makes it difficult to use traditional marketing parlance: what is the meaning of targeted audiences market shares in this context? If a surfer visits sites dealing with aberrant sex and nuclear physics during the same session what to make of it? People like the very act of surfing, then they want to be entertained, then they use the Internet as a working tool, mostly in the service of their employer, who, usually foots the bill. Users love free downloads (mainly software). Free is a key word in the Internet : it used to belong to the US Government and to a bunch of universities. Users like information, with emphasis on news and data about new products. But they do not like to shop on the net yet. Only 38% of all surfers made a purchase during 1998. 67% of them adore virtual sex. 50% of the sites most often visited are porno sites (this is reminiscent of the early days of the Video Cassette Recorder VCR). A- propos video : people dedicate th e same amount of time to watching video cassettes as they do to surfing the net. Sex is followed by music, sports, health, television, computers, cinema, politics, pets and cooking sites. People are drawn to interactive games. The Internet will shortly enable people to gamble, if not hampered by legislation. 10 billion USD in gambling money are predicted to pass through the net. This makes sense: nothing like a computer to provide immediate (monetary and psychological) rewards. Commerce on the net is another favourite. The Internet is a perfect medium for the sale of software and other digital products (e-books). The problem of data security is on its way to being solved with the SET (or other) world standard. The Internet has more than 100 virtual shopping malls and they were visited by 2.5 million shoppers in 1995 (probably by double this number in 1996). The predictions for 1999 : between 1-5 billion USD of net shopping (plus 2 billion USD through on-line information providers, s uch as CompuServe and AOL) proved woefully inaccurate. The actual number in 1998 was 7 times the prediction for 1999. It is also widely believed that circa 20% of the family budget will pass through the Internet as e-money and this amounts to 150 billion USD. The Internet will become a giant inter-bank clearing and varied banking and investment services will be provided through it. Basically, everything can be done through the Internet : looking for a job, for instance. Some sites already sport classified ads. This is not a bad way to defray expenses, though most classified ads are free (it is the advertising they attract that matters). Another developing trend is website-rating and critique. It will be treated the way todays printed editions are. It will have a limited influence on the consumption decisions of some of them. Browsers already display a button labelled Whats New and another one called Whats Hot. Most Search Engines recommend specific sites. Users are cautious. Studie s discovered that no user, no matter how heavy, has visited more than 200 site, a minuscule number. Also, a random at times, the wrong selection for the user. Web Critics, who work today mainly for the printed press, will publish their wares in the net and will attach themselves to intelligent software which will hyperlink, recommend and refer. Some web critics will be identified with specific applications really, expert systems which will embody their knowledge and experience. The MoneyWhere will the capital needed to finance all these developments come from? Again, there are two schools : One that says that sites will be financed through advertising and so will search engines, applets and any other application accessed by users. The second version is simpler and allows non-commercial content to exist : It proposes to collect negligible sums (cents or fractions of cents) from every user for every visit. These accumulated cents will enable the owners of old sites to update and t o maintain them and encourage entrepreneurs to develop new ones. The adherents of the first school point at the 5 million USD invested in advertising during 1995 and to the 60 million or so invested during 1996. Its opponents point exactly at the same numbers : ridiculously small when contrasted with more conventional advertising modes. The potential of advertising on the net is limited to 1.5 billion USD annually in 1998, thundered the pessimists (many think that even half of that would be very nice). The actual figure was double the prediction but still woefully small and inadequate to support the internets content development. Compare these figures to the sale of Internet software (4 billion), Internet hardware (3 billion), Internet access provision (4.2 billion in 1995). Hembrecht and Quist estimate that Internet related industries scoop up 23.2 billion USD annually (A report released in mid-1996). And what will follow advertising? The consumer will interact and the product will be posted to him. This is a much slower and more enervating epilogue to the exciting affair of ordering through the net at the speed of light. Too many consumers still complain that they did not receive what they ordered. The solution may lie in the integration of advertising and content. Pointcast, for instance, integrated advertising into its news broadcasts, continuously streamed to the users screen, even when inactive (active screen saver and ticker). Downloading of digital music, video and text (e-books) will lead to immediate gratification of the consumer and will increase the efficacy of advertising. Whatever the case may be, a uniform, agreed upon system of rating as a basis for charging advertisers, is highly needed. There is also the question of what does the advertiser pay for? Many advertisers (Procter and Gamble, for instance) refuse to pay by the number of hits or impressions (=entries, visits to a site). They agree to pay only according to the number of the times tha t their advertisement was hit. Resistance To Technology EssayInternet Space can be easily purchased or created. The investment is low. Then, infrastructure can be erected for a shopping mall, for free home pages, for a portal, or for another purpose. It is precisely this infrastructure that the developer can later sell, lease, franchise, or rent out. At the beginning, only members of the fringes and the avant-garde (inventors, risk assuming entrepreneurs, gamblers) invest in a new invention. The invention of a new communications technology is mostly accompanied by devastating silence. No one knows to say what are the optimal uses of the invention (in other words, what is its future). Many mostly members of the scientific and business elites argue that there is no real need for the invention and that it substitutes a new and untried way for more veteran and safe modes of doing the same thing (by implication : so why assume the risk?) These criticisms are founded: To start with, there is, indeed, no need for th e new medium. A new medium invents itself and the need for it. It also generates its own market to satisfy this newly found need. Two prime examples are: the personal computer and the compact disc. When the PC was invented, its uses were completely unclear. Its performance was lacking, its abilities limited, it was horribly user unfriendly. It suffered from faulty design, absent user comfort and ease of use and required considerable professional knowledge to operate. The worst part was that this knowledge was unique to the new invention (not portable). It reduced labour mobility and limited their professional horizons. There were many gripes among those assigned to tame the new beast. The PC was thought of, at the beginning, as a sophisticated gaming machine, an electronic baby-sitter. As the presence of a keyboard was detected and as the professional horizon cleared it was thought of in terms of a glorified typewriter or spreadsheet. It was used mainly as a word processor (and its existence justified solely on these grounds). The spreadsheet was the first real application and it demonstrated the advantages inherent to this new machine (mainly flexibility and speed). Still, it was more (speed) of the same. A quicker ruler or pen and paper. What was the difference between this and a hand held calculator (some of them already had computing, memory and programming features)? The PC was recognized as a medium only 30 years after it was invented with the introduction of multimedia software. All this time, the computer continued to spin off markets and secondary markets, needs and professional specialities. The talk as always how to improve on existing markets and solutions. The Internet is the computers first important breakthrough. Hitherto the computer was only quantitatively different the multimedia and the Internet have made him qualitatively superior, actually, sui generis, unique. This, precisely, is the ghost haunting the Internet: It has been invented, is maintained and is operated by computer professionals. For decades these people have been conditioned to think in Olympic terms: more, stronger, higher. Not: new, unprecedented, non-existent. To improve not to invent. They stumbled across the Internet it invented itself despite its own creators. Computer professionals (hardware and software experts alike) are linear thinkers. The Internet is non linear and modular. It is still the time of the computermen in the Internet. There is still a lot to be done in improving technological prowess and powers. But their control of the contents is waning and there they are being gradually replaced by communicators, creative people, advertising executives, psychologists and the totally unpredictable masses who flock to flaunt their home pages. These all are attuned to the user, his mental needs and his information and entertainment preferences. The compact disc is a different tale. It was intentionally invented to improve upon an existing tech nology (basically, Edisons Gramophone). Market-wise, this was a major gamble : the improvement was, at first, debatable (many said that the sound quality of the first generation of compact discs was inferior to that of its contemporary record players). Consumers had to be convinced to change both software and hardware and to dish out thousands of dollars just to listen to what the manufacturers claimed was better quality Bach. A better argument was the longer life of the software (though contrasted with the limited life expectancy of the consumer, some of the first sales pitches sounded absolutely morbid). The computer suffered from unclear positioning. The compact disc was very clear as to its main functions but had a rough time convincing the consumers. Every medium is first controlled by the technical people. Gutenberg was a printer not a publisher. Yet, he is the worlds most famous publisher. The technical cadre is joined by dubious or small-scale entrepreneurs and, together, they establish ventures with no clear vision, market-oriented thinking, or orderly plan of action. The legislator is also dumbfounded and does not grasp what is happening thus, there is no legislation to regulate the use of the medium. Witness the initial confusion concerning copyrighted software and the copyrights of ROM embedded software. Abuse or under-utilization of resources ow. Recall the sale of radio frequencies to the first cellular phone operators in the West a situation which repeats itself in Eastern and Central Europe nowadays. But then more complex transactions exactly as in real estate in real life begin to make their appearance. This distinction is important. While in real life it is possible to sell an undeveloped plot of land no one will buy pages. The supply of these is unlimited their scarcity (and, therefore, their virtual price) is zero. The second example involves the utilization of a site rather than its mere availability. A developer could open a site wherein first time authors will be able to publish their first manuscript for a fee. Evidently, such a fee will be a fraction of what it would take to publish a real life book. The author could collect money for any downloading of his book and split it with the site developer. The potential buyers will be provided with access to the contents and to a chapter of the books. This is currently being done by a few fledgling firms but a full scale publishing industry has not yet developed. The Life of a MediumThe internet is simply the latest in a series of networks which revolutionized our lives. A century before the internet, the telegraph and the telephone have been similarly heralded as global and transforming. Every medium of communications goes through the same evolutionary cycle: Anarchy The Public Phase At this stage, the medium and the resources attached to it are very cheap, accessible, under no regulatory constraints. The public sector steps in : higher education institution s, religious institutions, government, not for profit organizations, non governmental organizations (NGOs), trade unions, etc. Bedevilled by limited financial resources, they regard the new medium as a cost effective way of disseminating their messages. The Internet was not exempt from this phase which ended only a few months ago. It started with a complete computer anarchy 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 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 example 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 naturally associated with the public sector (Other Peoples Money OPM), 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, the equation private enterprise = democracy and more. 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 were compromised and sacrificed on the altar of commercialization and rating. Fears of monopolization and cartelization of the medium are evoked and justified, in due time. 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 legislated in the USA in 1934. It was meant to transform radio frequencies into a national resource to be sold to the private sector which will 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 others territories. Phone companies will be allowed to transmit video and cable companies will be allowed to transmit telephony, for instance. T his is all phased over a long period of time still, it is 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 Internets history, though, it seems, unbeknownst to 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 t hat 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 not succumb to these requirements will be deleted or neutralized. Content guidelines (euphemism for censorship) exist, even as we write, in all major content providers (CompuSer ve, AOL, Prodigy). The Bloodbath This is the phase of consolidation. The number of players is severely reduced. The number of browser types will be limited to 2-3 (Netscape, Microsoft and which else ?). Networks will merge to form privately owned mega-networks. Servers will merge to form hyper-servers run on supercomputers. The number of ISPs will be considerably down. 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 Moors Law which says that the number of transistors which can be put on a chip doubles itself every 18 months. As a r