Multimedia mogul Marc Canter calls interactive television "the fulfillment of multimedia." Computer companies (Apple, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Silicon Graphics, Zenith), communications companies (AT&T, Bell Atlantic, Comsat, General Magic, PBS, TCI, Whittle Communications), and others (3DO, General Instruments, Industrial Light and Magic, Kaleida Labs, Sony, Time Warner, US West) are investing and partnering and turf-taking in interactive TV. And now, the best minds in the field think they've hit upon interactive TV's killer app, the interactive application that will make it pay off big.
I don't know about you, but for me, this raises some questions. As a matter of fact, everything I read lately raises questions.
Why did three magazines in one month decide to portray virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier in remarkably similar ways? Wired (June/July, 1993) and The Red Herring (premiere issue, 1993) make him look like a religious icon, Upside (June, 1993) like a combination wizard and orchestra conductor, all three emphasizing the beatific glow of his eyes.
I understand being hypnotized by those eyes. And I know why Jaron was news that month. He had just lost his company and his virtual-reality patents to his vulture capitalists. Jaron, I'm happy to say, is weathering the setback well and has started a new VR company, but these messianic images give the impression that he died and rose from the grave. He's a nice guy and incredibly mellow, but do they think he's Jesus Christ?
Speaking of mellow, are the Republicans really going to run Bob Dole for President in 1996? A man who comes across like Richard Nixon without the personal warmth?
Which reminds me, the latest news from Microsoft is Cablesoft, Microsoft's not-yet-final-at-press-time deal with TCI and Time-Warner with the object of putting together a standard interactive television system. Standard by clout, as it were. Are you as thrilled as I am?
My question is, who's going to write the software?
Can you say "Windows for Interactive Television?" Sure you can, but can Joe Couchpotato? My guess is, Microsoft will get into consumer-product user interfaces when it acquires a company that knows how to do it. Relating to ordinary people is not something that the Microsoft culture prepares you for.
Then again, I wouldn't have guessed that Larry Flynt published Maternity Beauty & Fashion, or that Pretty Woman would marry Eraserhead, so what do I know?
I know better than to offer advice to Apple's new president, Michael Spindler, although I may be the only Apple watcher to exercise such restraint. How would you like to be in Spindler's shoes? Your boss grooms you for his job for two years, letting you run the company while he's off schmoozing with politicians. Then when profits look gloomy and the company needs to cut a thousand employees or so, he tells you this might be a good time for you to take over. Now was that nice, John?
Is there even one other person troubled by this one? One other person who memorized the names of all the Mercury astronauts? Scott Carpenter, John Glenn, and the rest? And then was totally confused when an actor named Scott Glenn was cast in one of the Mercury astronaut roles in the movie The Right Stuff? And now can never remember the name of the actor who played John Glenn? It sure would be nice to know I'm not alone.
There's a whole conference this fall on electronic books. Help me on this one. I understand electronic dictionaries and reference books, even picture books turning into electronic moving-picture books, but a lot of the interest of the players in this game seems to be focused on electronic novels. Now, is there any existing or even planned hardware platform that you know of that is capable of holding the text of a book and displaying it readably and that doesn't weigh a lot more than a book? Granted, one platform can support many books, but how many novels do you lug around with you at one time? And what battery stays charged long enough to read a novel?
If we're going to replace books with something else, shouldn't the something else be at least as good?
I'm just asking.
Michael Swaine
editor-at-large
Copyright © 1993, Dr. Dobb's Journal