The analogy with VCR technology is provocative, but mises the mark for the
following reasons:

1) When someone records a TV program on their home machine, it is indeed
for the convenience of replaying it, archiving it, etc.  Very few people
want to use a recorded program to make a statement.  Even if they did,
they would run afoul of copyright laws. 

2) VCR technology merely extended the range of consumer options, and hence
the market spectrum, for the existing population of passive television
viewers.  It did not change the nature of broadcasting, or movie
production. 

3) The evidence is accumulating that the primary appeal of the internet is 
that allow the hitherto anonymous individual to "make their presence 
known."  Hence, the explosive popularity of Web pages, most of which are 
content-poor and amateurish from a standard communications perspective.

4)  A better analogy would be talk radio, which has made a tremendous 
impact on radio broadcasting and the way in which information is "
de-privileged" in its mode of dissemination.  Talk radio also provides 
for instant feedback and response from its constituents, which is also 
the case with the internet.

5)  The Hot-Wired campaign against Time last month is instructive as to 
where interactive, new media is heading.  Hot Wired used the instantaneity 
and the interactivity of the net to do an investigative piece %against% 
an industry rival.  That campaign was effective enough to discredit Rimm 
and to leave Charles Grassley politically compromised.

6) New media is not mass media.  Like all "postmodernist" trends, it is
decentralizing and "deconstructive"of the mass.  If one calculates the 
effect of new media in terms of how many people in toto "sign on", one 
will miss the point.  I doubt that the internet will attract over 90 
percent of communications users within the same time VCRs captivated the 
universe of television viewers.  The internet is, in fact, an "elite" 
form of media to the extent that its primaary appeal is to upscale 
consumers who see themselves as active and egaged in the world.  It will 
be the media of choice for the new entrepreneurial class.

 On Fri, 4 Aug 1995, Eric K. Meyer wrote:

> Excepts from RASCHKE's comment, posted at 10:10 on 30 Jul 95:
> 
> > That is not why people become interactive users of the internet. It
> > is because THEY want to be their own publishers and broadcasters. 
> > If I want packaged content, it is easier to get through old media. 
> > If I want an infinite array of unbundled and undirected information
> > resources that I can both control and contribute to, I choose the
> > internet.
> 
> The growth of VCR technology last decade was astounding. But it 
> wasn't the RECORD button that people were pressing. It was the PLAY 
> button. Rather than create their own programing, people now flock to 
> Blockbuster to view someone else's. And they all tend to view the 
> same things. Technology didn't change the message. It just changed 
> the timing of delivery.
> 
> The fallacy of assuming that everyone who's rushing to the Net wants to be 
> interactive, publish on their own and choose from among infinite 
> offerings has a name: technological determinism. 
> 
> The control Internet users want may deal more with convenience than content.
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Eric K. Meyer            N E W S L I N K             1,703 media links
> meyer@newslink.org    research & consulting    http://www.newslink.org
> 

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End of online-news-digest V1 #271
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