THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION AND TV
The transformation of television, which is underway in the whole world, is in part influenced by the development and by the convergence of technological standards, but most of all by the Internet. Television, in turn, is influencing the net, as Internet services tend to include video distribution with television quality.
The use of digital technologies for TV will thus accelerate the fusion between these two universes, with the possibility of accessing Internet services from TV and vice-versa. It is therefore likely that the new generation of TV viewers expect from TV some characteristics that are typical of the Internet world.
To watch first-run films that have not yet reached theaters on television. That is the outlook offered by Video On Demand and which, according to Raymond W. Smith, president of Bell Atlantic, belongs to the near future. Smith explains that it takes the producers’ authorization to whom it can be offered to share up to 2$ for each user request. It is really an interesting hypothesis for the TV viewer of the future. It is the most revolutionary hypothesis for the whole film and television industry that has ever been linked to the traditional exploitation and that now will see pay-per-view ahead of the ticket counter. It has been talked about for years but now it seems that the time has come to translate the project into reality.
DIGITAL TV IS NOT ONLY BROADCASTING
Cybernetic networks may seem revolutionary compared to TV common usage. They are in terms of text because the networks’ hypermedia modalities suggest a re-definition of narrative structures, of values, of forms an of languages. They are in terms of creativity because they can favor a radical de-composing and re-composing of work thus regaining the craftsman’s quality with technological potency. They are in terms of production and distribution because they represent the fall of broadcasting’s centrality and the de-structuring of the product-consumer chain. They require, in addition, a political economy of the product in relation with the dynamics of globalization and localization of needs. They rely on the positive enjoyment of demanding and motivated audiences. To be multimedia means being able to be channeled on more supporting structures and according to various usage categories.
In fact, the fundamental opportunity to improve service quality is digital technology that is geared towards both satellite and terrestrial transmission. The radio-television firm in the new millenium is under very strong competition pressure due to the new transmitting and receiving devices having numerical or digital technology.
It was soon defined digital revolution. It is something that involves each aspect of production and knowledge management, from telecommunications to photography, from newspapers to business accounting. Digital connects in fact each compartment of communication, thus increasingly accentuating the convergence of a macro sector which promises to be, in the new millenium, the leading industry of the world’s economy.
TV AND PC
One billion televisions in the world, four hours of videoscreen daily per capita for Americans and little more than three and a half hours for Italians, but also more than eighty million computers connected between each other through the Internet. The Fifth Power will have to strive to successfully design its new relationship with a new public.
The anthropological mutation consists of a detachment from traditional TV. Public opinion seems more aware and cautious concerning the pressing influence of mass television.
In the 1950s and 1960s, television had few channels and programs were a careful mix of education and entertainment. With the multiplication of channels and with the remote control, the user sitting in front of the TV takes on a new decisional role compared to who, from behind the screen, loses power while designing television programs.
Because of this, television supply begins to pursue the audience of its taste. Taste indexes do not count anymore, but rather the Auditel results.
Today we realize that the television era is giving way to that of televisions: supply is no longer decided by the programming wizards because programming is being built through theme channels, it becomes in other words personal. Once more technology has been determinant. Besides, each one of us has always less time and therefore if he/she can, he/she will increasingly do only the things that particularly interest him. This is the great novelty that has led to the television renaissance. The satellite-computer-TV and computer technologies system tends to unify itself strategically in order to produce a completely original supply compared to the past.
It is clear that there will be an interaction between television and computer in the future. But it is imaginable that still for many years the living room will be destined for entertainment, even with all its possible simple interactivity like games or the request of programs. The studio or the computer corner, instead, will be places for interactive activities concerning management of more complex services like home banking and others. It is already possible to use web-TV or to receive in a corner of the computer’s monitor also Bloomberg TV with its economic news.
Impact and approach
If on the one hand there is extreme difficulty in thinking of culture in the same line of development as the Information Technology, on the other hand only the virtual space guaranteed by the digital platform allows national cultures the possibility of using market gobalization. For Italy and its particular technological evolution it is a survival need.
In the history of the relationship between industrial and postindustrial technologies and cultures, a continuous comparison-clash between the acceleration of innovative processes and the stabilization and conservation of assets has been prevalent. On one side the avant-guarde, ever more compatible with the “common cultures” of the current consumer society. On the other side traditionally elitist cultures which have hegemonized the flow of collective media top-down. Thus today the contraposition between experimental use and conservative use of the media does not hold.
There are cultures that have a totalizing vision of the media and cultures that instead feel their instrumental nature.
The former ones conceive Information Technology as an update of an endowment based on the television model. The latter ones feel the terminal as a simple means of access to services and contents. These are the authentic potential of the system. The choice, then, must be made between two different strategies of using the new-media. The choice of using them and privileging unidirectional languages is substantially regressive, while those who use them in an instrumental way are making identity their prevalent reason.
TV AND COMPETITION
In order to have an effective competition it is necessary to favor legislative competition mechanisms. In Europe, where the installation costs of ether and cable stations is prohibitive, the only possibilities of access for new subjects come from satellite.
Generalist TV has traditionally had two types of actors, that is television as it once was defined as public service and the commercial TVs. In time the two forms have been contaminated, as anyone can see first of all in Italy, so much that there is no conference that does not deal with the role of public service.
Generalist TV has elsewhere been shaken by a process that has seen the penetration, starting in the 1980s, of a second typology, that of pay tv and now sees the growing establishment of new supply modalities such as theme channels and globalizing channels. In this process of transformation, technology plays its part regarding satellite and cable and signal digitization. This process could play the same transformative role as that data transmission played in the telephone monopoly with the lowering, thanks to technology, of protective barriers of the natural monopoly, the increasing difficulties on the part of regulators, in avoiding the by-pass. In order to do this it is however necessary to find out more about the economy of channels.
THE ROLE OF LAW
Obviously there is a lot of material for the regulator and it is important, to this end, that the regulator be one. We recall that this aspect concerns other aspects such as questions concerning antitrust laws on TV and those on the surveillance of content and on the right to information.
It is the regulator’s capacity, starting from the European regulator, that can lead to competition. In fact, there is a revolution in this sector called netcasting. It is a modality to gradually introduce interactivity in the activities of broadcasting. This will be possible if the final consumer has, at low price, all the opportunities offered by technology and by the market. And this requires, in fact, that the competition mechanism work
ROLES AND CHALLENGES OF MULTIMEDIA
In order to participate in the challenge of television multimedia, no matter what the area of belonging is, it is important to fix long-term goals, to develop a wise investment policy and a close-knit network of dialogue and alliances with other operators, to be able to be ahead of others in the race.
The fine line that separates the different sectors of information will lead to an opposite tendency to that which we have seen from the 1980s onwards which professed the specialization of roles. It is credible to imagine that in a scenario where the areas of technological development are so close together to be overlapping, the strategy of the great multimedia participants will be geared in fact to the search of partners with different specializations and competencies with which to unify forces and globally control the market. This is why alliances between telecommunications, publishing and computer-related groups, as the sum of specific know-hows, will lead to a new form of globalization where it will be important to consider each single area by respecting a common strategy.
THE ADVENT OF AD-MATICS
New media pose the problem of understanding their technological content so that the best opportunities of utilization may be identified both in terms of expression and of pure cost-efficiency
Today a media planner does not have to know the technical aspects of a television transmission to arrive at the decision of using it in a spot.
But the dividing line between choice of channel, creation of the message, and technical execution for the most efficient result will be much finer thanks to the new computer technologies. The possibilities offered by computer technology are infinite already today and the communications solutions that could blend well with it are known to very few advertising executives.
In order to understand them it is necessary to plunge into technological matter, to live at close contact with it, follow step by step the birth of new products and communication channels.
The dialogue between publicity experts, particularly those who have best followed the evolution of media and who know the expressive possibilities of the new media, and computer experts, those who live in a technological environment, could give life to a new professional figure: the ad-matic, half advertiser and half computer expert.
THE TOTAL MEDIUM: TELEPUTER OR COMPUVISION?
The information superhighways hypothesized by Bill Gates of Microsoft and all the computer world are more near to be realized in North America, perhaps very soon, because it has accumulated a technological and content-wise advantage during the first years of their life and expansion. This advantage will guarantee their advent at the moment when infrastructures and wide band will be ready for use.
Interactive TV takes time to impose itself because of long and costly experimentation while waiting for the wide band which offers users a low level of interactivity. It should find millions of followers among American middle-class families who must have their daily dose of generalist TV and talk shows.
For PCs, the Internet and tens of millions of users in the world who are already navigating in the future of information, the wide band will be an exceptional launching pad.
PERSPECTIVES IN THE POST-TV ERA
In Italy there is still a generalist public, but there are also other audience aggregations that are quantitatively relevant defined, perhaps with limiting term, target or niche audiences.
When referring to these segments of audience, it may be thought of people who read the same books, listen to the same music, watch the same films, consume the same products. A much more extended segment than what could be imagined. This public does not find that the supply is adequate to their needs in mass television, and is searching for more innovative and quality programs through personalized channels. It may also be said that the passage from mass media to personal media, theorized by Negroponte in 1982 has found an initial yet imprecise demonstration in the explosion of theme channels.
The situation, although it is fluid, imposes urgent choices even if they work only on the medium term. The delay of the Italian experience compared to other European countries allows, under a certain profile, a certain advantage compared to those who started before. The advantage may be profitably used only taking into account stimuli and continuous evolutions that other entertainment forms have on our tastes, our way to be informed and to have fun.
Television products have always been mono-media. It happened sometimes that a film was made from a TV series, that a radio or theatrical performance was made of a TV sitcom. During the last few years a kind of production has established itself mostly for economic and market needs and it that can be defined as oligomedia, using the synergies between different media both in terms of product and of market.
Until now however nobody has conceived an enlarged multimedia form which operates at 360 degrees on the whole universe of media through a digital platform and which produces modular works where each version interacts with the others. This multimedia is different from the accidental one because it is an organic modality of design and not of production, a sort of engine where each medium accumulates and gives back energy. An important consequence of this way of thinking is in the fact that television structures will no longer have as their ultimate goal that of producing programs but rather material for multimedia and multichannel works. And the same can be said of publishing firms.
The day when it will be clear that multimedia is something more than a digital support, that is a different way of designing, executing and distributing products for all media, publishing companies and television structures will have to be radically re-designed in their structure and functioning.
In order to develop a culture capable of adapting to the new scenario of the digital platform it will be necessary to redesign the structures of the information industry following horizontal paths thus building a multitude of bridges that connect media to each other.
INTERACTIVE REVOLUTION AND FRUITION OF THE TELEVISION PRODUCT
Cybernetics today is seen by many as an instrument of a new alphabetized elite. And yet digital technology’s flexibility allows a simplification of functions such as the verbal command of programs and it brings a resulting decline in prices, probably greater than the corresponding decline of the initial television costs.
Cybernetics opens towards new forms of relationship, learning, representation and communication. Digital languages favor a progressive slide towards somatic, psychomotor languages, bodies that are increasingly less linked to the authority and the centrality of texts and increasingly more the actors of simulation rather than spectators, or creators of environments rather than inhabitants. It is in this sector that the Information Technology will play an epochal role, through a gradual renewal of the supply of the audiovisual product.
The interactive revolution permitted by the digital platform does not mean the disappearance of the passive fruition of the television product but rather progressively adding to mass television channels, theme channels, Pay TV those interactive services channels that, especially in the beginning, will be experienced by the average spectator as a sort of super televideo.
Startling indications come instead from the programming and fruition of videogames and from artistic experimentation, those that are turning to the Information Technology in radically alternative terms compared to the traditional audiovisual culture.
Not all that connects is global
Internet, key element of digitization, represents the fastest growing communications instrument in history. It is calculated that from 1999 to 2001 the number of users will go from approximately 150 million to more than 700 million. It can be asserted that the concept of distance and time has changed. In the meantime, we must stop and reflect on the magical potential of what we are saying.
Internet, loyal to its name, world wide web, is a world network which marvelously connects its users excluding however all others. The world could still be divided between rich and poor, schooled and illiterate, computerized and non. A computer costs the average inhabitant of Bangladesh an amount that is equivalent to eight years of his earnings, while the average American buys it with the salary of one month. 88% of Internet users lives in industrialized countries that represent only 17% of the global population. The United States possess more computers than the rest of the world taken together. South Asia, with 23% of world population hosts less than 11% of Internet users in the planet. These figures come from the 10th Report of the United Nations on human development of the year 1999.
Globalization, which finds in digitization the best ally, represents the free flow of money and merchandise and allows the growing interdependence between individuals. It is the magic through which space shrinks, time contracts, frontiers disappear. But this communication can also be a conversation with high tones which excludes those who have a weak voice. Let’s remember that English is used in almost 80% of websites although less than one person in ten speaks it in the world.
Without demonizing a phenomenon representing the key to access to the third millenium, it must be said that the globalization that we know does not satisfy all of humanity’s expectations for tomorrow. There is reason to believe that market forces alone will not correct inequalities, imbalances, contradictions. The illusion that the globalization process could work according to the principle of communicating vases miraculously leveling differences in people’s quality of life has been abandoned. We need awareness to act in this sense. We need a strong mind that does not give up when confronted with the current speed of communicated thought. We need a careful study elaborating the new horizons opened by the multimedia era. For this it is fundamental to try to understand problems through all aspects, reasoning while keeping in mind technology, law, economy, politics and society.
THE LIMITS OF CYBERSPACE
Cyberspace, interconnection of the computers of the whole world, tends to become the major production, management and economic transaction infrastructure. It will soon become the main collective memory phenomenon. In a few tens of years cyberspace, its virtual communities, its images, its interactive simulations, its texts and signs, will be the essential mediator of humanity’s collective intelligence. It would be wrong to think however that this will happen automatically with all positive implications. We must not forget that the defense of exclusive powers, institutional rigidity and mentality and culture inertia can lead to social utilization of the new technologies that are much less positive. The challenge is open.
We must not forget that in addition to the plane of technological potential there is the plane of contents. To this end we quote Mr. Wang, head of Wang computer multinational: “It is certain that in the future will we communicate more and more easily. It does not mean that we will communicate better”.
SOCIAL ASPECTS OF DIGITIZATION
The question of the inclusion, that is, of the participation of everybody is a central element of the emergent information society. The inclusion, or more commonly defined cohesion, is measured with degree of participation of an individual in society. It is hoped for that all individuals will be able to fully play their role in the social life of the collectivity. The information society should contribute to reducing exclusion and not to augment it.
And yet there are many who express the preoccupation that the new communications and information technologies will increase instead of diminish existing inequalities. The risk is that a society of two speeds may develop privileging those who dispose of information compared to those who have been excluded. In this sense, we must single out two levels of exclusion. The first concerns those within western society who remain outside of cyberspace for various reasons. The other comes from the contrast between industrialized countries and third world countries.
It is an ample and complex issue. Those who manage the new technologies will undoubtedly play an important role by creating more cohesive and integrated collectivities, creating opportunities to avoid the exclusion of disadvantaged or marginal groups.
On another plane the danger of increased individual isolation in the information society must be valued, although there are signals of the manifestation of new forms of conviviality and human interaction around the new media. Equally important is to keep in mind that the virtual environment created by the new technologies can alter our perception of concrete reality. In both cases there should be an in-depth study, and not a theoretical speculation, of the real effects of information and communications technologies. For example, it would be worth going into the phenomenon of identity falsification when navigating on the net. There are cases mostly of net alterations in the information on age or on the census. In fact, navigating on the net allows people to relate to one another forgetting or hiding their physical reality.
Finally it seems important to create the conditions so that people, particularly less active groups, will not be obligated to adapt to the new technologies, but on the contrary technologies may adapt to human needs. With this outlook we can hope that the information society will not create new excluded categories but rather improve social integration and quality of life.
DIGITIZATION: A UNITED EUROPE BUT DIVIDED BY LAW AND TECHNOLOGY
Given the new social challenges, there must be an incisive change in the policies of the European countries to go beyond the old industrial economies of scale and legal harmonization needs associated with economic and monetary integration. To obtain a minimum of economies of scale is an essential condition for the commercial success of many information services and products. To this end we must underline the distinction between services offered on the net and the information products. The connection is close thanks to the very characteristics of digital technologies but conceptually the difference must be kept in mind. In any case the new forms of economy will amply surpass those possible in the case of industrial goods. The promotion of a harmonized European market concerning many of those services constitutes an essential element for a rapid diffusion but it can be important also for the establishment of a competitive multimedia European industry which will not forget quality.
Therefore, the peculiar challenge posed by the European information society is in fact the search for competition based on cultural, education and social diversity. A new economic integration outlook is needed so that the emphasis will not be only on the standardization and harmonization of products and services and on the accessibility of infrastructures and a greater transparency of markets in Europe. What becomes fundamental in fact is the recognition and the enhancement of the great variety of tastes, cultures and talents.
How information society can transform the productive potential inherent in the enormous multicultural wealth of Europe into a competitive advantage is a central question which will have to be confronted in the next few years.
MULTIMEDIA AND MULTICULTURAL
The risk that is immediately perceived is that globalization may involve homogeneity. In the case of Europe this would signify a flattening with the loss of the specifically cultural of each country. And yet a multicultural vision of Europe can be maintained and even favored by information society. Thanks to the use of new technologies in fact it is possible to ensure the transmission of ideas and cultural creations thus encouraging direct contacts between different groups which are often very distant from each other.
In the Union variety expresses itself especially at local level because the local collectivity and the region constitute the advanced leaders where diversity can be fed, promoted and integrated in the global community. It thus becomes important to enhance the local dimension. And the first step is to increase cultural production and consumption at local level. It is an important aspect that contributes to the development of the natural creativity of people, especially in remote or peripheral areas, and which plays also an educative role. For this, however, cultural services must be conceived in such a way that they will contrast, rather than follow, tendencies that are too centralized.
WITHOUT FRONTIERS AND WITHOUT FILTERS
On the other hand, if we focus on media we realize that the internationalization of media operations tends to increasingly bypass the regulations of national governments. In this scenario the concentration of mass media could create a privileged group of able lobbyists and political leaders capable of handling the attention of mass media and therefore of users. Public access to neutral high quality information is essential for the adequate functioning of democracy. If they don’t have impartial information on what is happening in the collectivity, in the nation or in the world in general, citizens cannot play an active role in the running of society nor make conscious choices at the moment of elections.
In fact, even today, the information we receive is not selected and channeled in a completely neutral and transparent way. Mass media ownership becomes increasingly concentrated and a media conglomerate can control a whole series of newspapers, of television stations, of newscasts. If only a few organizations decide which information to give to the public and if there is no transparency on those who own the media, we must ask what limits to cultural and political pluralism in Europe derive from this. It must be underlined that in the current phase of technological and communications revolution new mass media forms, first of all the Internet, promote the decentralization of expression making it easier for the individual to communicate a message or his opinion to many other people.
CONCENTRATION EFFECT
A few EU countries have passed laws on mass media concentration but this legislation should be harmonized and coordinated at European level also to avoid distortions of competition between member states. It seems to be always more necessary to keep discussion always open on similar issues. In order to ensure a pluralistic representation of mass media, maintain freedom of expression and reinforce democratic debate in the EU, it is desirable to observe developments in the mass media environment.from an european point of observation, as better as possible.
It could ensure total transparency concerning cross-ownership of media, promote discussion and debate on issues concerning the distinction between information, knowledge and entertainment, study the influence of media on young people as well as the impact and the consequences of new technologies, like the Internet, on mass media and policy.
On the other hand, Digitization means having the possibility of touching any point and there creating a tangible effect through our electronic extensions. Surfaces are no longer satisfying. We are even trying to penetrate what is non-penetrable, the video screen. A literal expression of the digitization culture is represented by virtual reality machines which let us penetrate the world of the video and explore the infinite depth of human creativity in science, art and technology.
The digitization culture implies, therefore, seeing through. We see through matter, space and time with our techniques of information search. Every time a digital technology allows a physical and mental access to some place on earth or in the depth of space, beyond any previous border, our mind follows it. The cultural consideration has to be up to the situation of the present and of the future.
