by Jim Carroll, C.A., J.A. Carroll Consulting
Co-Author, Canadian Internet Handbook
Permission is given for this article to be redistributed throughout the Internet, with this header intact. The article remains Copyright(c) 1994 J.A. Carroll Consulting.
You know the type of article that I am talking about. The one that tells you how your house will talk to you in the year 2001? How you will be able to order a pizza through your TV remote control? How you can go shopping or banking without ever having to leave your home? How you will have 500 channels delivered direct to your television? How you will be able to guide yourself effortlessly through a world of information by pressing a few buttons on your remote control?
That's right, the information superhighway article. Well, folks, we'll steal a phrase from our grandparents to put all of this information highway hype into perspective.
It's all a bunch of hooey.
That's right -- hooey. It's a great word - the type your grandfather would use when he heard the local snake-oil salesman promising him that this elixir would cure his arthritis, make his hair grow again, and improve his libido.
"Hooey," granddad would say, spitting with contempt into the dirt. "It's a bunch of hooey."
Well, folks, let's all spit into the dirt, and say "hooey," the next time we hear about the information superhighway.
The past few months have seen a dizzying number of announcements about the highway, and an unbelievable amount of excitement in the media, in the press, in industry and in government. Yet, the reality is starting to sink in. That maybe people don't want to buy this stuff. That it is going to take a long time to build. That no one knows what the consumer might be willing to buy. That perhaps the hype is out-stripping the reality.
It's all a bunch of hooey. Nobody seems to know what the information highway is. Talk to the cable companies, and it runs down cable wires. Talk to the telephone companies, and it will run down telephone wires. Talk to publishers, and it will include their content. Yet, aside from the fact that we are promised that it is an instant solution to late 20th century economic malaise, no one knows exactly what it is. "Complicating the planning for architects of the information superhighway is that few companies agree on what the information superhighway - a broad term at best - will look like and what services, if any, will be embraced by consumers." wrote Paul Farhi in the Washington Post on April 7.
What is it, really? Talk to skeptics, and words like 'high-tech couch potato' enter the conversation. Many of us out here on the Internet, who understand the global importance of intercompany commerce through the world's largest computer network, have come to realize that there are two visions of the information highway emerging -- what we call the couch potato highway and the cerebral highway.
The couch potato highway has the television as the 'on-ramp.' This is the vision promoted by Stentor, the consortium of telephone companies, and is the entry point for the $750 million UBI initiative in Quebec, sponsored by Le Groupe Videotron ltee. Video on demand, interactive television, e-mail through your TV, home shopping from your remote control. Excuse me, but is anyone asking for this stuff? Oh, there are trials here and there, and press releases make it all sound wonderful. Yet, it seems to be a rather unique way of selling - come up with a product that no one has shown they want to buy. "No one has ever tested the market for services like video on demand among more than a few hundred households," wrote Farhi in his article.
It's all a bunch of hooey. What makes us think that the television and production companies involved in the superhighway will sell us anything more than a high-tech version of the awful schlock that we are already getting through our television tubes today? Come on - we all complain about how terrible television programming has become. What makes us believe that the information superhighway will be any better? Won't it just feed us more pap? In the same article in the Washington Post, it was noted that "yes, the info-highway might be an exciting development, but there is no reason to assume that it will be. Most likely the new road will be traveled by the same tired entertainment vehicles that made moguls millions in the now-waning Television Age."
There is a real risk that consumers just won't want to buy the junk that will be sold through the information superhypeway. In an article entitled "Looking for the on-ramp" in the January 1994 issue of Dealerscope Merchandising, author Richard Sherwin asked "wouldn't it be awful if the consumer opted to just watch reruns of I Love Lucy on an old TV/VCR, write on a simple word processor and call Mom on a standard telephone -- all because the various industry factions never learned to speak the same language and the result was a system that was too complicated and/or too expensive?"
What makes us think that telephone and cable companies know what the consumer wants? Listen to senior executives of Stentor, and you will hear the word 'multimedia' sprinkled throughout the conversation. The word is almost stated with reverence, as if multimedia is the solution to all the ills placed on the company by telecommunication deregulation.
Yet, what makes us think these nice people at Stentor even have a clue what they are talking about? They certainly don't have a good track record. Do any of us remember Telidon? Alex? iNet? Going back to an article about Alex in the April 11, 1988 edition of The Financial Post, it was noted that "This initiative contrasts sharply with Vista, Bell's previous foray with Telidon technology in the videotext market in the 1970s. Then, Bell discovered that the sophisticated technology of Telidon was far from market-driven despite its bells and whistles. As a result of Vista, Alex in its present form resembles less a Telidon and more a Minitel clone. ''This is not another Telidon videotext, let me assure you,'' says Andre Chapleau, Bell's spokesman for Alex."
This is not another Alex, let me assure you, the mavens of Stentor might say today.
But in fact, Bell was selling the same old tired applications then that it is trying to sell now. According to the 1988 Financial Post article, "Bell does say, however, that it intends to sign on a host of generic services such as home shopping and banking, newspapers, messages and classifieds, education and government services." Isn't that what we are hearing today?
Excuse me, but is someone recycling press releases?
It's all a bunch of hooey. Before the failure of iNet and Alex, there was Telidon. Remember Telidon? In the November 19, 1981 issue of the Globe and Mail, it was said that "Telidon may become as commonly used as the telephone and will have just as great a social impact, a representative of the Videotex Consultative Committee told the Canadian Computer Show and Conference in Toronto."
Right.
It's not just Bell and Stentor that are at fault here : anyone in the telecommunications industry is guilty of selling this new age snake oil. Yet, many of us ask ourselves whether companies that are very good at stringing wires and building very sophisticated and advanced telecommunication networks, even have a clue as to what the consumer wants to buy. We doubt it - and treat the information superhypeway with the proper degree of disdain.
"The reality of the information superhighway is meeting up with the rhetoric," wrote Paul Farhi in the Washington Post on April 7. Forester Research, a respected Cambridge, Massachusetts research firm, concluded recently that those companies investing billions in the information hypeway will find that their hopes for profit are "dashed, at least in the near term." According to Fortune magazine, there is now a bet down on Wall Street with respect to which company will be the first to lose a billion dollars on the information highway. "The recent collapse of three high-profile business deals are the most tangible signs that futuristic new communications services won't arrive in your living room for many years, despite the assurances of industry and g overnment officials as recently as a few months ago" wrote Farhi in his April article.
The level of hype is incredible for something that doesn't exist, other than in the form of the Internet. In an article in the April 3, 1994 edition of the Washington Post, it was noted that "We have gone through all this before, within living memory. Futurists, the technical community and the public were at least as excited about television in the '30s and '40s as we are today about the information highway. Commercial television, one observer confidently predicted in 1942, would reinvigorate family ties and make cities unnecessary."
Gosh, we found that it turned us all into a bunch of couch potatoes.
Finally, couldn't we come up with a better phrase? The phrase is overused. Art Buchwald, the humor columnist, wrote recently that "I am also starting a campaign to stop people from using the phrase "information highway" as a means of describing a new method of communicating with another electronic system. I am recommending a five-day jail term for anyone who uses the term."
That's the best thing I've heard so far.
There is no doubt that there will be some wonderful developments as telephones, televisions and computers come together over time.
But in the meantime, when it comes to the information highway, it's all a bunch of hooey.