"Digitized information, especially on the Internet, has such rapid turnover these days that total loss is the norm. Civilization is developing severe amnesia as a result; indeed it may have become too amnesiac already to notice the problem properly."
(Stewart Brand, President, The Long Now Foundation )
Thousands of articles and essays posted by hundreds of authors were lost forever when themestream.com surprisingly shut its virtual gates. A sizable portion of the 1960 census, recorded on UNIVAC II-A tapes, is now inaccessible. Web hosts crash daily, erasing in the process valuable content. Access to web sites is often suspended - or blocked altogether - because of a real (or imagined) violation by the webmaster of the host's Terms of Service (TOS). Millions of other web sites - the results of collective, multi-annual, transcontinental efforts - contain unique stores of information in the form of databases, articles, discussion threads, and links to other web sites. Consider "Central Europe Review". Its archives comprise more than 2500 articles and essays about every conceivable aspect of Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkan. It is one of countless such collections.
Similar and much larger treasures have perished since the dawn of the digital age in the 1920's. Very few early radio and TV programs have survived, for instance. The current "digital dark age" can be compared only to the one which followed the torching of the Library of Alexandria. The more accessible and abundant the information available to us - the more devalued and common it becomes and the less institutional and cultural memory we seem to possess. In the battle between paper and screen, the former has won formidably. Newspaper archives, dating back to the 1700's are now being digitized - testifying to the endurance, resilience, and longevity of paper.
Enter the "Internet Libraries", or Digital Archival Repositories (DAR). These are libraries that provide free access to digital materials replicated across multiple servers ("safety in redundancy"). They contain Web pages, television programming, films, e-books, archives of discussion lists, etc. Such materials can help linguists trace the development of language, journalists conduct research, scholars compare notes, students learn, and teachers teach. The Internet's evolution mirrors closely the social and cultural history of North America at the end of the 20th century. If not preserved, our understanding of who we are and where we are going will be severely hampered. The clues to our future lie ensconced in our past. It is the only guarantee against repeating the mistakes of our predecessors. Long gone Web pages cached by the likes of Google and Alexa constitute the first tier of such archival undertaking.
The Stanford Archival Vault (SAV) in Stanford University assigns a numerical handle to every digital "object" (record) in a repository. The handle is the clever numerical result of a mathematical formula whose input is the number of information bits in the original object being deposited. This allows to track and uniquely identify records across multiple repositories. It also prevents tampering. SAV also offers application layers. These allow programmers to develop digital archive software and permit users to change the "view" (the interface) of an archive and thus to mine data. Its "reliability layer" verifies the completeness and accuracy of digital repositories.
The Internet Archive, a leading digital depository, in its own words:
"...is working to prevent the Internet — a new medium with major historical significance — and other "born-digital" materials from disappearing into the past. Collaborating with institutions including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian, we are working to permanently preserve a record of public material."
Data storage is the first phase. It is not as simple as it sounds. The proliferation of formats of digital content has made it necessary to develop a standard for archiving Internet objects. The size of the digitized collections must pose a serious challenge as far as timely retrieval is concerned. Interoperability issues (numerous formats and readers) probably requires software and hardware plug-ins to render a smooth and transparent user interface.
Moreover, as time passes, digital data, stored on magnetic media, tend to deteriorate. It must be copied to newer media every 10 years or so ("migration"). Advances in hardware and software applications render many of the digital records indecipherable (try reading your word processing files from 1981, stored on 5.25" floppies!). Special emulators of older hardware and software must be used to decode ancient data files. And, to ameliorate the impact of inevitable natural disasters, accidents, bankruptcies of publishers, and politically motivated destruction of data - multiple copies and redundant systems and archives must be maintained. As time passes, data formatting "dictionaries" will be needed. Data preservation is hardly useful if the data cannot be searched, retrieved, extracted, and researched. And, as "The Economist" put it ("The Economist Technology Quarterly, September 22nd, 2001), without a "Rosetta Stone" of data formats, future deciphering of stored the data might prove to be an insurmountable obstacle.
Last, but by no means least, Internet libraries are Internet based. They themselves are as ephemeral as the historical record they aim to preserve. This tenuous cyber existence goes a long way towards explaining why our paperless offices consume much more paper than ever before.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Monday, February 27, 2006
The Ghost in the Net
However far modern science and technology have fallen short of their inherent possibilities, they have taught mankind at least one lesson: Nothing is impossible.
Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet.
By his very success in inventing laboursaving devices, modern man has manufactured an abyss of boredom that only the privileged classes in earlier civilizations have ever fathomed.
For most Americans, progress means accepting what is new because it is new, and discarding what is old because it is old.
I would die happy if I knew that on my tombstone could be written these words, "This man was an absolute fool. None of the disastrous things that he reluctantly predicted ever came to pass!"
Lewis Mumford (1895-1990)
Dear Sam,
We begin our series on great personalities of the 20th century with Lewis Mumford. Of course, this is only an excuse to develop our own ideas. Those who are interested in the ideas of "our" characters can go to the nearest bookstore and read directly form the fountain. Anyway, for the sake of those who are not acquainted with Mumford, I will draw a brief biography.
Lewis Mumford was born in 1895 (the same year X-rays were discovered by Roentgen and the Dreyfus affair was another significant "success"). Mumford started his career in the US Patent Office (overseeing "cement and concrete"), which gave him a first person insight into technological innovation processes. Later he made contact with his late master Patrick Geddes (and other great thinkers like Victor Branford). These encounters converted him into a generalist. His writing career extended over six decades in which he made significant contributions to the literature of history, philosophy, art, and architectural criticism. Perhaps best known for his work on urban planning and the study of technology, Mumford was co-founder of the Regional Planning Association of America and, for 32 years, wrote the "Sky Line" column on architecture for the New Yorker. He served on the faculties of several institutions, including Stanford university, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT, and was appointed to the New York City Board of Higher Education. He received many awards, as the National Medal for Literature and The National Medal for the Arts.
His first literary work was "The Story of Utopias", which advanced one of the major themes of his life: the utopian (technological) literature and its impact on human development. After some other minor works (which included a beautiful book on Herman Melville, 1929), he published his first great opus, "Technics and Civilization (1934)", one of the first historical works on technology. It was even incorporated in the curricula of technological institutes, like Cal tech, the first technological university to have a historical course. This book was, though with some doubts, technologically oriented. After the war, his point of view, regarding this as well as other matters, changed somewhat. In 1938 he presented "The Culture of Cities", the first work pertaining to the other leitmotif of his life: urbanism and architecture. In the forties and fifties, Mumford produced sevearl works on the "human condition", sanity, city development and arts. In 1961 appeared another major work of his, "The city in History", a complete survey of the city and its cycles.
In the "decisive years", during the sixties, Mumford wrote, in our humble opinion, his major work: "The Myth of the Machine". It was partly based on the ideas of Oswald Spengler as refined by Alfred Toynbee, and, distilling nearly sixty years of investigation, Lewis Mumford brings to a head his radical revisions of the stale popular conceptions of human and technological progress. "The Myth" is a fully developed historical explanation of the irrationalities that have undermined the highest achievements of modern technology - speed, mass production, automation, instant communication, and remote control. These have inevitably brought about pollution, waste, ecological disruption and human extermination. And he makes a comparison - part historical and part artistic - between the state machine of the Pyramid Age and the global cybernetic techno-machine of our "strange days" (the Pentagon of Power).
As the generalist work of Mumford covers practically all fields of knowledge, I propose to you to focus our dialogue on the problem of technology and life (with some linkage to his other major field: urbanism). Indeed, this is a hot topic nowadays (the "mad cow disease" issue).
Highlights of this theme are:
* Mumford discussion of cybernetics and the "automation of automation" (Wiener)
* Mumford's polemics with McLuhan and the audio-visual tribe - a humbug, in LM words
* And especially, his proposal to change the actual mega-technology into the life plenitude of organic polytechnology - anticipating the ecological views of today.
As you are interested in technological media (i.e. your essay on the Internet), here is a first strike courtesy Mr. Mumford:
".... It is to replace human autonomy in every form by an up-to-date electronic model of the megamachine. The mass media, he demonstrates, are 'put out before they are thought out'. In fact, 'their being put out tends to cancel the possibility of their being thought out at all". Precisely. Here McLuhan gives the whole show away. Because every technical apparatus is an extension of man´s bodily organs, including his brain, this peripheral structure, by Mcluhan´s analysis, must, by its very mass and ubiquity, replace all autonomous needs or desires: since now for us 'technology is a part our bodies', no detachment or divorce is possible. 'Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulations of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don´t really have any rights (read autonomy) left' ".
"This latter point might well be taken as a warning to disengage ourselves, as soon as possible, from the power system so menacingly described: for McLuhan it leads, rather, to a demand for unconditional surrender. 'Under electric technology', he observes, 'the entire business of man becomes learning and knowing'. Apart from the fact that this is a pathetically academic picture of the potentialities of man, the kind of learning and knowing that McLuhan becomes enraptured over is precisely that which can be programmed on a computer: 'We are now in position...', he observes, 'to transfer the entire show to the memory of a computer'. No better formula could be found for arresting and ultimately suppressing human development..."
Well, this is my opening movement, Your turn, Mr. Vaknin.
Dear RCM,
Good to renew our dialogues. I will get straight to the point, or, rather, to the points. I intend to deal with each and every one of them extensively - but, as is our habit, I am just mapping the territory.
1. Is it meaningful to discuss technology separate from life, as opposed to life, or compared to life? Is it not the inevitable product of life, a determinant of life and part of its definition? Francis Bacon and, centuries later, the visionary Ernst Kapp, thought of technology as a means to conquer and master nature - an expression of the classic dichotomy between observer and observed. But there could be other ways of looking at it (consider, for instance, the seminal work of Friedrich Dessauer). Kapp was the first to talk of technology as "organ projection" (preceding McLuhan by more than a century). Freud wrote in "Civilization and its Discontents": "Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic god. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on to him and they still give him much trouble at times."
2. On the whole, has technology contributed to human development or arrested it?
3. Even if we accept that technology is alien to life, a foreign implant and a potential menace - what frame of reference can accommodate the new convergence between life and technology (mainly medical technology and biotechnology)? What are cyborgs - life or technology? What about clones? Artificial implants? Life sustaining devices (like heart-kidney machines)? Future implants of chips in human brains? Designer babies, tailored to specifications by genetic engineering? What about ARTIFICIAL intelligence?
4. Is technology IN-human or A-human? In other words, are the main, immutable and dominant attributes of technology alien to humans, to the human spirit, or to the human brain? Is this possible at all? Is such non-human technology likely to be developed by artificial intelligence machines in the future? Finally, is this kind of technology automatically ANTI-human as well? Mumford's classification of all technologies to polytechnic (human-friendly) and monotechnic (human averse) springs to mind.
5. Is the impact technology has on the INDIVIDUAL necessarily identical or even comparable to the impact it has on human collectives and societies? Think Internet - the answer in this case is clearly NEGATIVE.
6. Is it possible to define what is technology at all?
If we adopt Monsma's definition of technology (1986) as "the systematic treatment of an art" - is art to be treated as a variant of technology? Robert Merton's definition is a non-definition because it is so broad it encompasses all teleological human actions: "any complex of standardized means for attaining a predetermined result". Jacques Ellul resorted to tautology: "the totality of methods
rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency in every field of human activity" (1964). H.D. Lasswell (whose work is mainly media-related) proffered an operative definition: "the ensemble of practices by which one uses available resources to achieve certain valued ends". It is clear how unclear and indefensible these definitions are.
7. The use of technology involves choices and the exercise of free will. Does technology enhance our ability to exercise free will - or does it detract from it? Is there an inherent and insolvable contradiction between technology and ethical and moral percepts? Put more simply: is technology inherently unethical and immoral or a-moral? If so, is it fatalistic, or deterministic, as Thurstein Veblen suggested (in "Engineers and the Price System")? To rephrase the question; does technology DETERMINE our choices and actions? Does it CONSTRAIN our possibilities and LIMIT our potentials? We are all acquainted with utopias (and dystopias) based on technological advances (just recall the millenarian fervour with which electricity, the telegraph, railways, the radio, television and the Internet were greeted). Technology seems to shape cultures, societies, ideals and expectations. It is an ACTIVE participant in social dynamics. This is the essence of Mumford's "megamachine", the "rigid, hierarchical social organization". Contrast this with Dessauer's view of technology as a kind of moral and aesthetic statement or doing, a direct way of interacting with things-in-themselves. The latter's views place technology neatly in the Kantian framework of categorical imperatives.
8. Is technology IN ITSELF neutral? Can the the undeniable harm caused by technology be caused, as McLuhan put it, by HUMAN mis-use and abuse: "[It] is not that there is anything good or bad about [technology] but that unconsciousness of the effect of any force is a disaster, especially a force that we have made ourselves". If so, why blame technology and exonerate ourselves? Displacing the blame is a classic psychological defence mechanism but it leads to fatal behavioural rigidities and pathological thinking.
Sam
About The Author
Sam Vaknin is the author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited" and "After the Rain - How the West Lost the East". He is a columnist in "Central Europe Review", United Press International (UPI) and ebookweb.org and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com. Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.
Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet.
By his very success in inventing laboursaving devices, modern man has manufactured an abyss of boredom that only the privileged classes in earlier civilizations have ever fathomed.
For most Americans, progress means accepting what is new because it is new, and discarding what is old because it is old.
I would die happy if I knew that on my tombstone could be written these words, "This man was an absolute fool. None of the disastrous things that he reluctantly predicted ever came to pass!"
Lewis Mumford (1895-1990)
Dear Sam,
We begin our series on great personalities of the 20th century with Lewis Mumford. Of course, this is only an excuse to develop our own ideas. Those who are interested in the ideas of "our" characters can go to the nearest bookstore and read directly form the fountain. Anyway, for the sake of those who are not acquainted with Mumford, I will draw a brief biography.
Lewis Mumford was born in 1895 (the same year X-rays were discovered by Roentgen and the Dreyfus affair was another significant "success"). Mumford started his career in the US Patent Office (overseeing "cement and concrete"), which gave him a first person insight into technological innovation processes. Later he made contact with his late master Patrick Geddes (and other great thinkers like Victor Branford). These encounters converted him into a generalist. His writing career extended over six decades in which he made significant contributions to the literature of history, philosophy, art, and architectural criticism. Perhaps best known for his work on urban planning and the study of technology, Mumford was co-founder of the Regional Planning Association of America and, for 32 years, wrote the "Sky Line" column on architecture for the New Yorker. He served on the faculties of several institutions, including Stanford university, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT, and was appointed to the New York City Board of Higher Education. He received many awards, as the National Medal for Literature and The National Medal for the Arts.
His first literary work was "The Story of Utopias", which advanced one of the major themes of his life: the utopian (technological) literature and its impact on human development. After some other minor works (which included a beautiful book on Herman Melville, 1929), he published his first great opus, "Technics and Civilization (1934)", one of the first historical works on technology. It was even incorporated in the curricula of technological institutes, like Cal tech, the first technological university to have a historical course. This book was, though with some doubts, technologically oriented. After the war, his point of view, regarding this as well as other matters, changed somewhat. In 1938 he presented "The Culture of Cities", the first work pertaining to the other leitmotif of his life: urbanism and architecture. In the forties and fifties, Mumford produced sevearl works on the "human condition", sanity, city development and arts. In 1961 appeared another major work of his, "The city in History", a complete survey of the city and its cycles.
In the "decisive years", during the sixties, Mumford wrote, in our humble opinion, his major work: "The Myth of the Machine". It was partly based on the ideas of Oswald Spengler as refined by Alfred Toynbee, and, distilling nearly sixty years of investigation, Lewis Mumford brings to a head his radical revisions of the stale popular conceptions of human and technological progress. "The Myth" is a fully developed historical explanation of the irrationalities that have undermined the highest achievements of modern technology - speed, mass production, automation, instant communication, and remote control. These have inevitably brought about pollution, waste, ecological disruption and human extermination. And he makes a comparison - part historical and part artistic - between the state machine of the Pyramid Age and the global cybernetic techno-machine of our "strange days" (the Pentagon of Power).
As the generalist work of Mumford covers practically all fields of knowledge, I propose to you to focus our dialogue on the problem of technology and life (with some linkage to his other major field: urbanism). Indeed, this is a hot topic nowadays (the "mad cow disease" issue).
Highlights of this theme are:
* Mumford discussion of cybernetics and the "automation of automation" (Wiener)
* Mumford's polemics with McLuhan and the audio-visual tribe - a humbug, in LM words
* And especially, his proposal to change the actual mega-technology into the life plenitude of organic polytechnology - anticipating the ecological views of today.
As you are interested in technological media (i.e. your essay on the Internet), here is a first strike courtesy Mr. Mumford:
".... It is to replace human autonomy in every form by an up-to-date electronic model of the megamachine. The mass media, he demonstrates, are 'put out before they are thought out'. In fact, 'their being put out tends to cancel the possibility of their being thought out at all". Precisely. Here McLuhan gives the whole show away. Because every technical apparatus is an extension of man´s bodily organs, including his brain, this peripheral structure, by Mcluhan´s analysis, must, by its very mass and ubiquity, replace all autonomous needs or desires: since now for us 'technology is a part our bodies', no detachment or divorce is possible. 'Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulations of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don´t really have any rights (read autonomy) left' ".
"This latter point might well be taken as a warning to disengage ourselves, as soon as possible, from the power system so menacingly described: for McLuhan it leads, rather, to a demand for unconditional surrender. 'Under electric technology', he observes, 'the entire business of man becomes learning and knowing'. Apart from the fact that this is a pathetically academic picture of the potentialities of man, the kind of learning and knowing that McLuhan becomes enraptured over is precisely that which can be programmed on a computer: 'We are now in position...', he observes, 'to transfer the entire show to the memory of a computer'. No better formula could be found for arresting and ultimately suppressing human development..."
Well, this is my opening movement, Your turn, Mr. Vaknin.
Dear RCM,
Good to renew our dialogues. I will get straight to the point, or, rather, to the points. I intend to deal with each and every one of them extensively - but, as is our habit, I am just mapping the territory.
1. Is it meaningful to discuss technology separate from life, as opposed to life, or compared to life? Is it not the inevitable product of life, a determinant of life and part of its definition? Francis Bacon and, centuries later, the visionary Ernst Kapp, thought of technology as a means to conquer and master nature - an expression of the classic dichotomy between observer and observed. But there could be other ways of looking at it (consider, for instance, the seminal work of Friedrich Dessauer). Kapp was the first to talk of technology as "organ projection" (preceding McLuhan by more than a century). Freud wrote in "Civilization and its Discontents": "Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic god. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on to him and they still give him much trouble at times."
2. On the whole, has technology contributed to human development or arrested it?
3. Even if we accept that technology is alien to life, a foreign implant and a potential menace - what frame of reference can accommodate the new convergence between life and technology (mainly medical technology and biotechnology)? What are cyborgs - life or technology? What about clones? Artificial implants? Life sustaining devices (like heart-kidney machines)? Future implants of chips in human brains? Designer babies, tailored to specifications by genetic engineering? What about ARTIFICIAL intelligence?
4. Is technology IN-human or A-human? In other words, are the main, immutable and dominant attributes of technology alien to humans, to the human spirit, or to the human brain? Is this possible at all? Is such non-human technology likely to be developed by artificial intelligence machines in the future? Finally, is this kind of technology automatically ANTI-human as well? Mumford's classification of all technologies to polytechnic (human-friendly) and monotechnic (human averse) springs to mind.
5. Is the impact technology has on the INDIVIDUAL necessarily identical or even comparable to the impact it has on human collectives and societies? Think Internet - the answer in this case is clearly NEGATIVE.
6. Is it possible to define what is technology at all?
If we adopt Monsma's definition of technology (1986) as "the systematic treatment of an art" - is art to be treated as a variant of technology? Robert Merton's definition is a non-definition because it is so broad it encompasses all teleological human actions: "any complex of standardized means for attaining a predetermined result". Jacques Ellul resorted to tautology: "the totality of methods
rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency in every field of human activity" (1964). H.D. Lasswell (whose work is mainly media-related) proffered an operative definition: "the ensemble of practices by which one uses available resources to achieve certain valued ends". It is clear how unclear and indefensible these definitions are.
7. The use of technology involves choices and the exercise of free will. Does technology enhance our ability to exercise free will - or does it detract from it? Is there an inherent and insolvable contradiction between technology and ethical and moral percepts? Put more simply: is technology inherently unethical and immoral or a-moral? If so, is it fatalistic, or deterministic, as Thurstein Veblen suggested (in "Engineers and the Price System")? To rephrase the question; does technology DETERMINE our choices and actions? Does it CONSTRAIN our possibilities and LIMIT our potentials? We are all acquainted with utopias (and dystopias) based on technological advances (just recall the millenarian fervour with which electricity, the telegraph, railways, the radio, television and the Internet were greeted). Technology seems to shape cultures, societies, ideals and expectations. It is an ACTIVE participant in social dynamics. This is the essence of Mumford's "megamachine", the "rigid, hierarchical social organization". Contrast this with Dessauer's view of technology as a kind of moral and aesthetic statement or doing, a direct way of interacting with things-in-themselves. The latter's views place technology neatly in the Kantian framework of categorical imperatives.
8. Is technology IN ITSELF neutral? Can the the undeniable harm caused by technology be caused, as McLuhan put it, by HUMAN mis-use and abuse: "[It] is not that there is anything good or bad about [technology] but that unconsciousness of the effect of any force is a disaster, especially a force that we have made ourselves". If so, why blame technology and exonerate ourselves? Displacing the blame is a classic psychological defence mechanism but it leads to fatal behavioural rigidities and pathological thinking.
Sam
About The Author
Sam Vaknin is the author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited" and "After the Rain - How the West Lost the East". He is a columnist in "Central Europe Review", United Press International (UPI) and ebookweb.org and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com. Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
The Seamless Web
The hype over ubiquitous (or pervasive) computing (computers everywhere) has masked a potentially more momentous development. It is the convergence of computing devices interfaces with web (or other) content. Years ago - after Bill Gates overcame his misplaced scepticism - Microsoft introduced their "internet-ready" applications. Its word processing software ("Word"), other Office applications, and the Windows operating system handle both "local" documents (resident on the user's computer) and web pages smoothly and seamlessly. The transition between the desktop or laptop interfaces and the web is today effortlessly transparent.
The introduction of e-book readers and MP3 players has blurred the anachronistic distinction between hardware and software. Common speech reflects this fact. When we say "e-book", we mean both the device and the content we access on it. As technologies such as digital ink and printable integrated circuits mature - hardware and software will have completed their inevitable merger.
This erasure of boundaries has led to the emergence of knowledge management solutions and personal and shared workspaces. The LOCATION of a document (one's own computer, a colleague's PDA, or a web page) has become irrelevant. The NATURE of the document (e-mail message, text file, video snippet, soundbite) is equally unimportant. The SOURCE of the document (its extension, which tells us on which software it was created and can be read) is increasingly meaningless. Universal languages (such as Java) allow devices and applications to talk to each other. What matters are accessibility and logical and user-friendly work-flows.
Enter Enfish. In its own words, it provides:
"...Personalized portal solution linking personal and corporate knowledge with relevant information from the Internet, ...live-in desktop environment providing co-branding and customization opportunities on and offline, a unique, private communication channel to users that can be used also for eBusiness solutions, ...Knowledge Management solution that requires no user set-up or configuration."
The principle is simple enough - but the experience is liberating (try their online flash demo). Suddenly, instead of juggling dozens of windows, a single interface provides the tortured user (that's I) with access to all his applications: e-mail, contacts, documents, the company's intranet or network, the web and OPC's (other people's computers, other networks, other intranets). There is only a single screen and it is dynamically and automatically updated to respond to the changing information needs of the user.
"The power underlying Enfish Onespace is its patented DEX 'engine.' This technology creates a master, cross-referenced index of the contents of a user's email, documents and Internet information. The Enfish engine then uses this master index as a basis to understand what is relevant to a user, and to provide them with appropriate information. In this manner Enfish Onespace 'personalizes' the Internet for each user, automatically connecting relevant information and services from the Internet with the user's desktop information.
As an example, by clicking on a person or company, Enfish Onespace automatically assembles a page that brings together related emails, documents, contact information, appointments, news and relevant news headlines from the Internet. This is accomplished without the user working to find and organize this information. By having everything in one place and in context, our users are more informed and better prepared to perform tasks such as handling a phone call or preparing for a business meeting. This results in ... benefits in productivity and efficiency."
It is, indeed, addictive. The inevitable advent of transparent computing (smart houses, smart cards, smart clothes, smart appliances, wireless Internet) - coupled with the single GUI (Graphic User Interface) approach can spell revolution in our habits. Information will be available to us anywhere, through an identical screen, communicated instantly and accurately from device to device, from one appliance to another and from one location to the next as we move. The underlying software and hardware will become as arcane and mysterious as are the ASCII and ASSEMBLY languages to the average computer user today. It will be a real partnership of biological and artificial intelligence on the move.
The introduction of e-book readers and MP3 players has blurred the anachronistic distinction between hardware and software. Common speech reflects this fact. When we say "e-book", we mean both the device and the content we access on it. As technologies such as digital ink and printable integrated circuits mature - hardware and software will have completed their inevitable merger.
This erasure of boundaries has led to the emergence of knowledge management solutions and personal and shared workspaces. The LOCATION of a document (one's own computer, a colleague's PDA, or a web page) has become irrelevant. The NATURE of the document (e-mail message, text file, video snippet, soundbite) is equally unimportant. The SOURCE of the document (its extension, which tells us on which software it was created and can be read) is increasingly meaningless. Universal languages (such as Java) allow devices and applications to talk to each other. What matters are accessibility and logical and user-friendly work-flows.
Enter Enfish. In its own words, it provides:
"...Personalized portal solution linking personal and corporate knowledge with relevant information from the Internet, ...live-in desktop environment providing co-branding and customization opportunities on and offline, a unique, private communication channel to users that can be used also for eBusiness solutions, ...Knowledge Management solution that requires no user set-up or configuration."
The principle is simple enough - but the experience is liberating (try their online flash demo). Suddenly, instead of juggling dozens of windows, a single interface provides the tortured user (that's I) with access to all his applications: e-mail, contacts, documents, the company's intranet or network, the web and OPC's (other people's computers, other networks, other intranets). There is only a single screen and it is dynamically and automatically updated to respond to the changing information needs of the user.
"The power underlying Enfish Onespace is its patented DEX 'engine.' This technology creates a master, cross-referenced index of the contents of a user's email, documents and Internet information. The Enfish engine then uses this master index as a basis to understand what is relevant to a user, and to provide them with appropriate information. In this manner Enfish Onespace 'personalizes' the Internet for each user, automatically connecting relevant information and services from the Internet with the user's desktop information.
As an example, by clicking on a person or company, Enfish Onespace automatically assembles a page that brings together related emails, documents, contact information, appointments, news and relevant news headlines from the Internet. This is accomplished without the user working to find and organize this information. By having everything in one place and in context, our users are more informed and better prepared to perform tasks such as handling a phone call or preparing for a business meeting. This results in ... benefits in productivity and efficiency."
It is, indeed, addictive. The inevitable advent of transparent computing (smart houses, smart cards, smart clothes, smart appliances, wireless Internet) - coupled with the single GUI (Graphic User Interface) approach can spell revolution in our habits. Information will be available to us anywhere, through an identical screen, communicated instantly and accurately from device to device, from one appliance to another and from one location to the next as we move. The underlying software and hardware will become as arcane and mysterious as are the ASCII and ASSEMBLY languages to the average computer user today. It will be a real partnership of biological and artificial intelligence on the move.
Friday, February 24, 2006
Revolt of the Scholars
Scindex's Instant Publishing Service is about empowerment. The price of scholarly, peer-reviewed journals has skyrocketed in the last few years, often way out of the limited means of libraries, universities, individual scientists and scholars. A "scholarly divide" has opened between the haves (academic institutions with rich endowments and well-heeled corporations) and the haves not (all the others). Paradoxically, access to authoritative and authenticated knowledge has declined as the number of professional journals has proliferated. This is not to mention the long (and often crucial) delays in publishing research results and the shoddy work of many under-paid and over-worked peer reviewers.
The Internet was suppose to change all that. Originally, a computer network for the exchange of (restricted and open) research results among scientists and academics in participating institutions - it was supposed to provide instant publishing, instant access and instant gratification. It has delivered only partially. Preprints of academic papers are often placed online by their eager authors and subjected to peer scrutiny. But this haphazard publishing cottage industry did nothing to dethrone the print incumbents and their avaricious pricing.
The major missing element is, of course, respectability. But there are others. No agreed upon content or knowledge classification method has emerged. Some web sites (such as Suite101) use the Dewey decimal system. Others invented and implemented systems of their making. Additionally, one click publishing technology (such as Webseed's or Blogger's) came to be identified strictly to non-scholarly material: personal reminiscences, correspondence, articles and news.
Enter Scindex and its Academic Resource Channel. Established by academics and software experts from Bulgaria, it epitomizes the tearing down of geographical barriers heralded by the Internet. But it does much more than that. Scindex is a whole, self-contained, stand-alone, instant self-publishing and self-assembly system. Self-publishing systems do exist (for instance, Purdue University's) - but they incorporate only certain components. Scindex covers the whole range.
Having (freely) registered as a member, a scientist or a scholar can publish their papers, essays, research results, articles and comments online. They have to submit an abstract and use Sciendex's classification ("call") numbers and science descriptors, arranged in a massive directory available in the "RealSci Locator". The Locator can be also downloaded and used off-line and its is surprisingly user-friendly. The submission process itself is totally automated and very short.
The system includes a long series of thematic journals. These journals self-assemble, in accordance with the call numbers selected by the submitters. An article submitted with certain call numbers will automatically be included in the relevant journals.
The fly in the ointment is the absence of peer review. As the system moves from beta to commercialization, Scindex intends to address this issue by introducing a system of incentives and inducements. Reviewers will be granted "credit points" to be applied against the (paid) publication of their own papers, for instance.
Scindex is the model of things to come. Publishing becomes more and more automated and knowledge-orientated. Peer reviewed papers become more outlandishly expensive and irrelevant. Scientists and scholars are getting impatient and rebellious. The confluence of these three trends spells - at the least - the creation of a web based universe of parallel and alternative scholarly publishing.
The Internet was suppose to change all that. Originally, a computer network for the exchange of (restricted and open) research results among scientists and academics in participating institutions - it was supposed to provide instant publishing, instant access and instant gratification. It has delivered only partially. Preprints of academic papers are often placed online by their eager authors and subjected to peer scrutiny. But this haphazard publishing cottage industry did nothing to dethrone the print incumbents and their avaricious pricing.
The major missing element is, of course, respectability. But there are others. No agreed upon content or knowledge classification method has emerged. Some web sites (such as Suite101) use the Dewey decimal system. Others invented and implemented systems of their making. Additionally, one click publishing technology (such as Webseed's or Blogger's) came to be identified strictly to non-scholarly material: personal reminiscences, correspondence, articles and news.
Enter Scindex and its Academic Resource Channel. Established by academics and software experts from Bulgaria, it epitomizes the tearing down of geographical barriers heralded by the Internet. But it does much more than that. Scindex is a whole, self-contained, stand-alone, instant self-publishing and self-assembly system. Self-publishing systems do exist (for instance, Purdue University's) - but they incorporate only certain components. Scindex covers the whole range.
Having (freely) registered as a member, a scientist or a scholar can publish their papers, essays, research results, articles and comments online. They have to submit an abstract and use Sciendex's classification ("call") numbers and science descriptors, arranged in a massive directory available in the "RealSci Locator". The Locator can be also downloaded and used off-line and its is surprisingly user-friendly. The submission process itself is totally automated and very short.
The system includes a long series of thematic journals. These journals self-assemble, in accordance with the call numbers selected by the submitters. An article submitted with certain call numbers will automatically be included in the relevant journals.
The fly in the ointment is the absence of peer review. As the system moves from beta to commercialization, Scindex intends to address this issue by introducing a system of incentives and inducements. Reviewers will be granted "credit points" to be applied against the (paid) publication of their own papers, for instance.
Scindex is the model of things to come. Publishing becomes more and more automated and knowledge-orientated. Peer reviewed papers become more outlandishly expensive and irrelevant. Scientists and scholars are getting impatient and rebellious. The confluence of these three trends spells - at the least - the creation of a web based universe of parallel and alternative scholarly publishing.
Monday, February 20, 2006
The Polyglottal Internet
The Internet started off as a purely American phenomenon and seemed to perpetuate the fast-emerging dominance of the English language. A negligible minority of web sites were in other languages. Software applications were chauvinistically ill-prepared (and still are) to deal with anything but English. And the vast majority of net users were residents of the two North-American colossi, chiefly the USA.
All this started to change rapidly about two years ago. Early this year, the number of American users of the Net was surpassed by the swelling tide of European and Japanese ones. Non-English web sites are proliferating as well. The advent of the wireless Internet - more widespread outside the USA - is likely to strengthen this unmistakable trend. By 2005, certain analysts expect non-English speakers to make up to 70% of all netizens. This fragmentation of an hitherto unprecedentedly homogeneous market - presents both opportunities and costs. It is much more expensive to market in ten languages than it is in one. Everything - from e-mail to supply chains has to be re-tooled or customized.
It is easy to translate text in cyberspace. Various automated, web-based, and free applications (such as Babylon or Travlang) cater to the needs of the casual user who doesn't mind the quality of the end-result. Virtually every search engine, portal and directory offers access to these or similar services.
But straightforward translation is only one kind of solution to the tower of Babel that the Internet is bound to become.
Enter WorldWalla. A while back I used their multi-lingual e-mail application. It converted text I typed on a virtual keyboard to images (of characters). My addressees received the message in any language I selected. It was more than cool. It was liberating. Along the same vein, WorldWalla's software allows application and content developers to work in 66 languages. In their own words:
"WordWalla allows device manufacturers and application developers to meet this challenge by developing products that support any language. This simplifies testing and configuration management, accelerates time to market, lowers unit costs and allows companies to quickly and easily enter new markets and offer greater levels of personalization and customer satisfaction."
GlobalVu converts text to device-independent images. GlobalEase Web is a "Java-based multilingual text input and display engine". It includes virtual keyboards, front-end processors, and a contextual processor and text layout engine for left to right and right to left language formatting. They have versions tailored to the specifications of mobile devices.
The secret is in generating and processing images (bitmaps), compressing them and transmitting them. In a way, WordWalla generates a FACSIMILE message (the kind we receive on our fax machines) every time text is exchanged. It is transparent to both sender and receiver - and it makes a user-driven polyglottal Internet a reality.
All this started to change rapidly about two years ago. Early this year, the number of American users of the Net was surpassed by the swelling tide of European and Japanese ones. Non-English web sites are proliferating as well. The advent of the wireless Internet - more widespread outside the USA - is likely to strengthen this unmistakable trend. By 2005, certain analysts expect non-English speakers to make up to 70% of all netizens. This fragmentation of an hitherto unprecedentedly homogeneous market - presents both opportunities and costs. It is much more expensive to market in ten languages than it is in one. Everything - from e-mail to supply chains has to be re-tooled or customized.
It is easy to translate text in cyberspace. Various automated, web-based, and free applications (such as Babylon or Travlang) cater to the needs of the casual user who doesn't mind the quality of the end-result. Virtually every search engine, portal and directory offers access to these or similar services.
But straightforward translation is only one kind of solution to the tower of Babel that the Internet is bound to become.
Enter WorldWalla. A while back I used their multi-lingual e-mail application. It converted text I typed on a virtual keyboard to images (of characters). My addressees received the message in any language I selected. It was more than cool. It was liberating. Along the same vein, WorldWalla's software allows application and content developers to work in 66 languages. In their own words:
"WordWalla allows device manufacturers and application developers to meet this challenge by developing products that support any language. This simplifies testing and configuration management, accelerates time to market, lowers unit costs and allows companies to quickly and easily enter new markets and offer greater levels of personalization and customer satisfaction."
GlobalVu converts text to device-independent images. GlobalEase Web is a "Java-based multilingual text input and display engine". It includes virtual keyboards, front-end processors, and a contextual processor and text layout engine for left to right and right to left language formatting. They have versions tailored to the specifications of mobile devices.
The secret is in generating and processing images (bitmaps), compressing them and transmitting them. In a way, WordWalla generates a FACSIMILE message (the kind we receive on our fax machines) every time text is exchanged. It is transparent to both sender and receiver - and it makes a user-driven polyglottal Internet a reality.
The Internet And The Library
"In this digital age, the custodians of published works are at the center of a global copyright controversy that casts them as villains simply for doing their job: letting people borrow books for free."
(ZDNet quoted by "Publisher's Lunch on July 13, 2001)
It is amazing that the traditional archivists of human knowledge - the libraries - failed so spectacularly to ride the tiger of the Internet, that epitome and apex of knowledge creation and distribution. At first, libraries, the inertial repositories of printed matter, were overwhelmed by the rapid pace of technology and by the ephemeral and anarchic content it spawned. They were reduced to providing access to dull card catalogues and unimaginative collections of web links. The more daring added online exhibits and digitized collections. A typical library web site is still comprised of static representations of the library's physical assets and a few quasi-interactive services.
This tendency - by both publishers and libraries - to inadequately and inappropriately pour old wine into new vessels is what caused the recent furor over e-books.
The lending of e-books to patrons appears to be a natural extension of the classical role of libraries: physical book lending. Libraries sought also to extend their archival functions to e-books. But librarians failed to grasp the essential and substantive differences between the two formats. E-books can be easily, stealthily, and cheaply copied, for instance. The source of the e-book - scanned printed titles, or converted digital files - is immaterial and irrelevant. The minute a title becomes an e-book, copyright violations are a real and present danger. Moreover, e-books are not a tangible product. "Lending" an e-book - is tantamount to copying an e-book. In other words, e-books are not books at all. They are software products. Libraries have pioneered digital collections (as they have other information technologies throughout history) and are still the main promoters of e-publishing. But now they are at risk of becoming piracy portals.
Solutions are, appropriately, being borrowed from the software industry. NetLibrary has lately granted multiple user licences to a university library system. Such licences allow for unlimited access and are priced according to the number of the library's patrons, or the number of its reading devices and terminals. Another possibility is to implement the shareware model - a trial period followed by a purchase option or an expiration, a-la Rosetta's expiring e-book.
Distributor Baker & Taylor have unveiled at the recent ALA a prototype e-book distribution system jointly developed by ibooks and Digital Owl. It will be sold to libraries by B&T's Informata division and Reciprocal.
The annual subscription for use of the digital library comprises "a catalog of digital content, brandable pages and web based tools for each participating library to customize for their patrons. Patrons of participating libraries will then be able to browse digital content online, or download and check out the content they are most interested in. Content may be checked out for an extended period of time set by each library, including checking out eBooks from home." Still, it seems that B&T's approach is heavily influenced by software licencing ("one copy one use").
But, there is an underlying, fundamental incompatibility between the Internet and the library. They are competitors. One vitiates the other. Free Internet access and e-book reading devices in libraries notwithstanding - the Internet, unless harnessed and integrated by libraries, threatens their very existence by depriving them of patrons. Libraries, in turn, threaten the budding software industry we, misleadingly, call "e-publishing".
There are major operational and philosophical differences between physical and virtual libraries. The former are based on the tried and proven technology of print. The latter on the chaos we know as cyberspace and on user-averse technologies developed by geeks and nerds, rather than by marketers, users, and librarians.
Physical libraries enjoy great advantages, not the least being their habit-forming head start (2,500 years of first mover advantage). Libraries are hubs of social interaction and entertainment (the way cinemas used to be). Libraries have catered to users' reference needs in reference centres for centuries (and, lately, through Selective Dissemination of Information, or SDI). The war is by no means decided. "Progress" may yet consist of the assimilation of hi-tech gadgets by lo-tech libraries. It may turn out to be convergence at its best, as librarians become computer savvy - and computer types create knowledge and disseminate it.
(ZDNet quoted by "Publisher's Lunch on July 13, 2001)
It is amazing that the traditional archivists of human knowledge - the libraries - failed so spectacularly to ride the tiger of the Internet, that epitome and apex of knowledge creation and distribution. At first, libraries, the inertial repositories of printed matter, were overwhelmed by the rapid pace of technology and by the ephemeral and anarchic content it spawned. They were reduced to providing access to dull card catalogues and unimaginative collections of web links. The more daring added online exhibits and digitized collections. A typical library web site is still comprised of static representations of the library's physical assets and a few quasi-interactive services.
This tendency - by both publishers and libraries - to inadequately and inappropriately pour old wine into new vessels is what caused the recent furor over e-books.
The lending of e-books to patrons appears to be a natural extension of the classical role of libraries: physical book lending. Libraries sought also to extend their archival functions to e-books. But librarians failed to grasp the essential and substantive differences between the two formats. E-books can be easily, stealthily, and cheaply copied, for instance. The source of the e-book - scanned printed titles, or converted digital files - is immaterial and irrelevant. The minute a title becomes an e-book, copyright violations are a real and present danger. Moreover, e-books are not a tangible product. "Lending" an e-book - is tantamount to copying an e-book. In other words, e-books are not books at all. They are software products. Libraries have pioneered digital collections (as they have other information technologies throughout history) and are still the main promoters of e-publishing. But now they are at risk of becoming piracy portals.
Solutions are, appropriately, being borrowed from the software industry. NetLibrary has lately granted multiple user licences to a university library system. Such licences allow for unlimited access and are priced according to the number of the library's patrons, or the number of its reading devices and terminals. Another possibility is to implement the shareware model - a trial period followed by a purchase option or an expiration, a-la Rosetta's expiring e-book.
Distributor Baker & Taylor have unveiled at the recent ALA a prototype e-book distribution system jointly developed by ibooks and Digital Owl. It will be sold to libraries by B&T's Informata division and Reciprocal.
The annual subscription for use of the digital library comprises "a catalog of digital content, brandable pages and web based tools for each participating library to customize for their patrons. Patrons of participating libraries will then be able to browse digital content online, or download and check out the content they are most interested in. Content may be checked out for an extended period of time set by each library, including checking out eBooks from home." Still, it seems that B&T's approach is heavily influenced by software licencing ("one copy one use").
But, there is an underlying, fundamental incompatibility between the Internet and the library. They are competitors. One vitiates the other. Free Internet access and e-book reading devices in libraries notwithstanding - the Internet, unless harnessed and integrated by libraries, threatens their very existence by depriving them of patrons. Libraries, in turn, threaten the budding software industry we, misleadingly, call "e-publishing".
There are major operational and philosophical differences between physical and virtual libraries. The former are based on the tried and proven technology of print. The latter on the chaos we know as cyberspace and on user-averse technologies developed by geeks and nerds, rather than by marketers, users, and librarians.
Physical libraries enjoy great advantages, not the least being their habit-forming head start (2,500 years of first mover advantage). Libraries are hubs of social interaction and entertainment (the way cinemas used to be). Libraries have catered to users' reference needs in reference centres for centuries (and, lately, through Selective Dissemination of Information, or SDI). The war is by no means decided. "Progress" may yet consist of the assimilation of hi-tech gadgets by lo-tech libraries. It may turn out to be convergence at its best, as librarians become computer savvy - and computer types create knowledge and disseminate it.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Bright Planet, Deep Web
www.allwatchers.com and www.allreaders.com are web sites in the sense that a file is downloaded to the user's browser when he or she surfs to these addresses. But that's where the similarity ends. These web pages are front-ends, gates to underlying databases. The databases contain records regarding the plots, themes, characters and other features of, respectively, movies and books. Every user-query generates a unique web page whose contents are determined by the query parameters. The number of singular pages thus capable of being generated is mind boggling. Search engines operate on the same principle - vary the search parameters slightly and totally new pages are generated. It is a dynamic, user-responsive and chimerical sort of web.
These are good examples of what www.brightplanet.com call the "Deep Web" (previously inaccurately described as the "Unknown or Invisible Internet"). They believe that the Deep Web is 500 times the size of the "Surface Internet" (a portion of which is spidered by traditional search engines). This translates to c. 7500 TERAbytes of data (versus 19 terabytes in the whole known web, excluding the databases of the search engines themselves) - or 550 billion documents organized in 100,000 deep web sites. By comparison, Google, the most comprehensive search engine ever, stores 1.4 billion documents in its immense caches at www.google.com. The natural inclination to dismiss these pages of data as mere re-arrangements of the same information is wrong. Actually, this underground ocean of covert intelligence is often more valuable than the information freely available or easily accessible on the surface. Hence the ability of c. 5% of these databases to charge their users subscription and membership fees. The average deep web site receives 50% more traffic than a typical surface site and is much more linked to by other sites. Yet it is transparent to classic search engines and little known to the surfing public.
It was only a question of time before someone came up with a search technology to tap these depths (www.completeplanet.com).
LexiBot, in the words of its inventors, is...
"...the first and only search technology capable of identifying, retrieving, qualifying, classifying and organizing "deep" and "surface" content from the World Wide Web. The LexiBot allows searchers to dive deep and explore hidden data from multiple sources simultaneously using directed queries. Businesses, researchers and consumers now have access to the most valuable and hard-to-find information on the Web and can retrieve it with pinpoint accuracy."
It places dozens of queries, in dozens of threads simultaneously and spiders the results (rather as a "first generation" search engine would do). This could prove very useful with massive databases such as the human genome, weather patterns, simulations of nuclear explosions, thematic, multi-featured databases, intelligent agents (e.g., shopping bots) and third generation search engines. It could also have implications on the wireless internet (for instance, in analysing and generating location-specific advertising) and on e-commerce (which amounts to the dynamic serving of web documents).
This transition from the static to the dynamic, from the given to the generated, from the one-dimensionally linked to the multi-dimensionally hyperlinked, from the deterministic content to the contingent, heuristically-created and uncertain content - is the real revolution and the future of the web. Search engines have lost their efficacy as gateways. Portals have taken over but most people now use internal links (within the same web site) to get from one place to another. This is where the deep web comes in. Databases are about internal links. Hitherto they existed in splendid isolation, universes closed but to the most persistent and knowledgeable. This may be about to change. The flood of quality relevant information this will unleash will dramatically dwarf anything that preceded it.
These are good examples of what www.brightplanet.com call the "Deep Web" (previously inaccurately described as the "Unknown or Invisible Internet"). They believe that the Deep Web is 500 times the size of the "Surface Internet" (a portion of which is spidered by traditional search engines). This translates to c. 7500 TERAbytes of data (versus 19 terabytes in the whole known web, excluding the databases of the search engines themselves) - or 550 billion documents organized in 100,000 deep web sites. By comparison, Google, the most comprehensive search engine ever, stores 1.4 billion documents in its immense caches at www.google.com. The natural inclination to dismiss these pages of data as mere re-arrangements of the same information is wrong. Actually, this underground ocean of covert intelligence is often more valuable than the information freely available or easily accessible on the surface. Hence the ability of c. 5% of these databases to charge their users subscription and membership fees. The average deep web site receives 50% more traffic than a typical surface site and is much more linked to by other sites. Yet it is transparent to classic search engines and little known to the surfing public.
It was only a question of time before someone came up with a search technology to tap these depths (www.completeplanet.com).
LexiBot, in the words of its inventors, is...
"...the first and only search technology capable of identifying, retrieving, qualifying, classifying and organizing "deep" and "surface" content from the World Wide Web. The LexiBot allows searchers to dive deep and explore hidden data from multiple sources simultaneously using directed queries. Businesses, researchers and consumers now have access to the most valuable and hard-to-find information on the Web and can retrieve it with pinpoint accuracy."
It places dozens of queries, in dozens of threads simultaneously and spiders the results (rather as a "first generation" search engine would do). This could prove very useful with massive databases such as the human genome, weather patterns, simulations of nuclear explosions, thematic, multi-featured databases, intelligent agents (e.g., shopping bots) and third generation search engines. It could also have implications on the wireless internet (for instance, in analysing and generating location-specific advertising) and on e-commerce (which amounts to the dynamic serving of web documents).
This transition from the static to the dynamic, from the given to the generated, from the one-dimensionally linked to the multi-dimensionally hyperlinked, from the deterministic content to the contingent, heuristically-created and uncertain content - is the real revolution and the future of the web. Search engines have lost their efficacy as gateways. Portals have taken over but most people now use internal links (within the same web site) to get from one place to another. This is where the deep web comes in. Databases are about internal links. Hitherto they existed in splendid isolation, universes closed but to the most persistent and knowledgeable. This may be about to change. The flood of quality relevant information this will unleash will dramatically dwarf anything that preceded it.
Friday, February 17, 2006
The Miraculous Conversion
The recent bloodbath among online content peddlers and digital media proselytisers can be traced to two deadly sins. The first was to assume that traffic equals sales. In other words, that a miraculous conversion will spontaneously occur among the hordes of visitors to a web site. It was taken as an article of faith that a certain percentage of this mass will inevitably and nigh hypnotically reach for their bulging pocketbooks and purchase content, however packaged. Moreover, ad revenues (more reasonably) were assumed to be closely correlated with "eyeballs". This myth led to an obsession with counters, page hits, impressions, unique visitors, statistics and demographics.
It failed, however, to take into account the dwindling efficacy of what Seth Godin, in his brilliant essay ("Unleashing the IdeaVirus"), calls "Interruption Marketing" - ads, banners, spam and fliers. It also ignored, at its peril, the ethos of free content and open source prevalent among the Internet opinion leaders, movers and shapers. These two neglected aspects of Internet hype and culture led to the trouncing of erstwhile promising web media companies while their business models were exposed as wishful thinking.
The second mistake was to exclusively cater to the needs of a highly idiosyncratic group of people (Silicone Valley geeks and nerds). The assumption that the USA (let alone the rest of the world) is Silicone Valley writ large proved to be calamitous to the industry.
In the 1970s and 1980s, evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins and Rupert Sheldrake developed models of cultural evolution. Dawkins' "meme" is a cultural element (like a behaviour or an idea) passed from one individual to another and from one generation to another not through biological -genetic means - but by imitation. Sheldrake added the notion of contagion - "morphic resonance" - which causes behaviour patterns to suddenly emerged in whole populations. Physicists talked about sudden "phase transitions", the emergent results of a critical mass reached. A latter day thinker, Michael Gladwell, called it the "tipping point".
Seth Godin invented the concept of an "ideavirus" and an attendant marketing terminology. In a nutshell, he says, to use his own summation:
"Marketing by interrupting people isn't cost-effective anymore. You can't afford to seek out people and send them unwanted marketing, in large groups and hope that some will send you money. Instead the future belongs to marketers who establish a foundation and process where interested people can market to each other. Ignite consumer networks and then get out of the way and let them talk."
This is sound advice with a shaky conclusion. The conversion from exposure to a marketing message (even from peers within a consumer network) - to an actual sale is a convoluted, multi-layered, highly complex process. It is not a "black box", better left unattended to. It is the same deadly sin all over again - the belief in a miraculous conversion. And it is highly US-centric. People in other parts of the world interact entirely differently.
You can get them to visit and you get them to talk and you can get them to excite others. But to get them to buy - is a whole different ballgame. Dot.coms had better begin to study its rules.
It failed, however, to take into account the dwindling efficacy of what Seth Godin, in his brilliant essay ("Unleashing the IdeaVirus"), calls "Interruption Marketing" - ads, banners, spam and fliers. It also ignored, at its peril, the ethos of free content and open source prevalent among the Internet opinion leaders, movers and shapers. These two neglected aspects of Internet hype and culture led to the trouncing of erstwhile promising web media companies while their business models were exposed as wishful thinking.
The second mistake was to exclusively cater to the needs of a highly idiosyncratic group of people (Silicone Valley geeks and nerds). The assumption that the USA (let alone the rest of the world) is Silicone Valley writ large proved to be calamitous to the industry.
In the 1970s and 1980s, evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins and Rupert Sheldrake developed models of cultural evolution. Dawkins' "meme" is a cultural element (like a behaviour or an idea) passed from one individual to another and from one generation to another not through biological -genetic means - but by imitation. Sheldrake added the notion of contagion - "morphic resonance" - which causes behaviour patterns to suddenly emerged in whole populations. Physicists talked about sudden "phase transitions", the emergent results of a critical mass reached. A latter day thinker, Michael Gladwell, called it the "tipping point".
Seth Godin invented the concept of an "ideavirus" and an attendant marketing terminology. In a nutshell, he says, to use his own summation:
"Marketing by interrupting people isn't cost-effective anymore. You can't afford to seek out people and send them unwanted marketing, in large groups and hope that some will send you money. Instead the future belongs to marketers who establish a foundation and process where interested people can market to each other. Ignite consumer networks and then get out of the way and let them talk."
This is sound advice with a shaky conclusion. The conversion from exposure to a marketing message (even from peers within a consumer network) - to an actual sale is a convoluted, multi-layered, highly complex process. It is not a "black box", better left unattended to. It is the same deadly sin all over again - the belief in a miraculous conversion. And it is highly US-centric. People in other parts of the world interact entirely differently.
You can get them to visit and you get them to talk and you can get them to excite others. But to get them to buy - is a whole different ballgame. Dot.coms had better begin to study its rules.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
The Medium and the Message
A debate is raging in e-publishing circles: should content be encrypted and protected (the Barnes and Noble or Digital goods model) - or should it be distributed freely and thus serve as a form of viral marketing (Seth Godin's "ideavirus")? Publishers fear that freely distributed and cost-free "cracked" e-books will cannibalize print books to oblivion.
The more paranoid point at the music industry. It failed to co-opt the emerging peer-to-peer platforms (Napster) and to offer a viable digital assets management system with an equitable sharing of royalties. The results? A protracted legal battle and piracy run amok. "Publishers" - goes this creed - "are positioned to incorporate encryption and protection measures at the very inception of the digital publishing industry. They ought to learn the lesson."
But this view ignores a vital difference between sound and text. In music, what matter are the song or the musical piece. The medium (or carrier, or packing) is marginal and interchangeable. A CD, an audio cassette, or an MP3 player are all fine, as far as the consumer is concerned. The listener bases his or her purchasing decisions on sound quality and the faithfulness of reproduction of the listening experience (for instance, in a concert hall). This is a very narrow, rational, measurable and quantifiable criterion.
Not so with text.
Content is only one element of many of equal footing underlying the decision to purchase a specific text-"carrier" (medium). Various media encapsulating IDENTICAL text will still fare differently. Hence the failure of CD-ROMs and e-learning. People tend to consume content in other formats or media, even if it is fully available to them or even owned by them in one specific medium. People prefer to pay to listen to live lectures rather than read freely available online transcripts. Libraries buy print journals even when they have subscribed to the full text online versions of the very same publications. And consumers overwhelmingly prefer to purchase books in print rather than their e-versions.
This is partly a question of the slow demise of old habits. E-books have yet to develop the user-friendliness, platform-independence, portability, brows ability and many other attributes of this ingenious medium, the Gutenberg tome. But it also has to do with marketing psychology. Where text (or text equivalents, such as speech) is concerned, the medium is at least as important as the message. And this will hold true even when e-books catch up with their print brethren technologically.
There is no doubting that finally e-books will surpass print books as a medium and offer numerous options: hyperlinks within the e-book and without it - to web content, reference works, etc., embedded instant shopping and ordering links, divergent, user-interactive, decision driven plotlines, interaction with other e-books (using Bluetooth or another wireless standard), collaborative authoring, gaming and community activities, automatically or periodically updated content, ,multimedia capabilities, database, Favourites and History Maintenance (records of reading habits, shopping habits, interaction with other readers, plot related decisions and much more), automatic and embedded audio conversion and translation capabilities, full wireless piconetworking and scatternetworking capabilities and more.
The same textual content will be available in the future in various media. Ostensibly, consumers should gravitate to the feature-rich and much cheaper e-book. But they won't - because the medium is as important as the text message. It is not enough to own the same content, or to gain access to the same message. Ownership of the right medium does count. Print books offer connectivity within an historical context (tradition). E-books are cold and impersonal, alienated and detached. The printed word offers permanence. Digital text is ephemeral (as anyone whose writings perished in the recent dot.com bloodbath or Deja takeover by Google can attest). Printed volumes are a whole sensorium, a sensual experience - olfactory and tactile and visual. E-books are one dimensional in comparison. These are differences that cannot be overcome, not even with the advent of digital "ink" on digital "paper". They will keep the print book alive and publishers' revenues flowing.
People buy printed matter not merely because of its content. If this were true e-books will have won the day. Print books are a packaged experience, the substance of life. People buy the medium as often and as much as they buy the message it encapsulates. It is impossible to compete with this mistique. Safe in this knowledge, publishers should let go and impose on e-books "encryption" and "protection" levels as rigorous as they do on the their print books. The latter are here to stay alongside the former. With the proper pricing and a modicum of trust, e-books may even end up promoting the old and trusted print versions.
The more paranoid point at the music industry. It failed to co-opt the emerging peer-to-peer platforms (Napster) and to offer a viable digital assets management system with an equitable sharing of royalties. The results? A protracted legal battle and piracy run amok. "Publishers" - goes this creed - "are positioned to incorporate encryption and protection measures at the very inception of the digital publishing industry. They ought to learn the lesson."
But this view ignores a vital difference between sound and text. In music, what matter are the song or the musical piece. The medium (or carrier, or packing) is marginal and interchangeable. A CD, an audio cassette, or an MP3 player are all fine, as far as the consumer is concerned. The listener bases his or her purchasing decisions on sound quality and the faithfulness of reproduction of the listening experience (for instance, in a concert hall). This is a very narrow, rational, measurable and quantifiable criterion.
Not so with text.
Content is only one element of many of equal footing underlying the decision to purchase a specific text-"carrier" (medium). Various media encapsulating IDENTICAL text will still fare differently. Hence the failure of CD-ROMs and e-learning. People tend to consume content in other formats or media, even if it is fully available to them or even owned by them in one specific medium. People prefer to pay to listen to live lectures rather than read freely available online transcripts. Libraries buy print journals even when they have subscribed to the full text online versions of the very same publications. And consumers overwhelmingly prefer to purchase books in print rather than their e-versions.
This is partly a question of the slow demise of old habits. E-books have yet to develop the user-friendliness, platform-independence, portability, brows ability and many other attributes of this ingenious medium, the Gutenberg tome. But it also has to do with marketing psychology. Where text (or text equivalents, such as speech) is concerned, the medium is at least as important as the message. And this will hold true even when e-books catch up with their print brethren technologically.
There is no doubting that finally e-books will surpass print books as a medium and offer numerous options: hyperlinks within the e-book and without it - to web content, reference works, etc., embedded instant shopping and ordering links, divergent, user-interactive, decision driven plotlines, interaction with other e-books (using Bluetooth or another wireless standard), collaborative authoring, gaming and community activities, automatically or periodically updated content, ,multimedia capabilities, database, Favourites and History Maintenance (records of reading habits, shopping habits, interaction with other readers, plot related decisions and much more), automatic and embedded audio conversion and translation capabilities, full wireless piconetworking and scatternetworking capabilities and more.
The same textual content will be available in the future in various media. Ostensibly, consumers should gravitate to the feature-rich and much cheaper e-book. But they won't - because the medium is as important as the text message. It is not enough to own the same content, or to gain access to the same message. Ownership of the right medium does count. Print books offer connectivity within an historical context (tradition). E-books are cold and impersonal, alienated and detached. The printed word offers permanence. Digital text is ephemeral (as anyone whose writings perished in the recent dot.com bloodbath or Deja takeover by Google can attest). Printed volumes are a whole sensorium, a sensual experience - olfactory and tactile and visual. E-books are one dimensional in comparison. These are differences that cannot be overcome, not even with the advent of digital "ink" on digital "paper". They will keep the print book alive and publishers' revenues flowing.
People buy printed matter not merely because of its content. If this were true e-books will have won the day. Print books are a packaged experience, the substance of life. People buy the medium as often and as much as they buy the message it encapsulates. It is impossible to compete with this mistique. Safe in this knowledge, publishers should let go and impose on e-books "encryption" and "protection" levels as rigorous as they do on the their print books. The latter are here to stay alongside the former. With the proper pricing and a modicum of trust, e-books may even end up promoting the old and trusted print versions.
The Fall and Fall of the p-Zine
The circulation of print magazines has declined precipitously in the last 24 months. This dissolution of subscriber bases has accelerated dramatically as economic recession set in. But a diminishing wealth effect is only partly to blame. The managements of printed periodicals - from dailies to quarterlies - failed miserably to grasp the Internet's potential and potential threat. They were fooled by the lack of convenient and cheap e-reading devices into believing that old habits die hard. They do - but magazine reading is not habit forming. Readers' loyalties are fickle and shift according to content and price. The Web offers cornucopial and niche-targeted content - free of charge or very cheaply. This is hard to beat and is getting harder by the day as natural selection among dot.bombs spares only quality content providers.
Consider Ploughshares, the Literary Journal.
It is a venerable, not for profit, print journal published by Emerson College, now marking its 30th anniversary. It recently inaugurated its web sibling. The project consumed three years and $125,000 (grant from the Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds). Every title Ploughshares has ever published was indexed (over 18,000 journal pages digitized). In all, the "website will offer free access to over 2,750 poems and short stories from past and current issues."
The more than 2000 (!) authors ever published in Ploughshares will each maintain a personal web page comprising biographical notes, press releases, new books and events announcements and links to other web sites. This is the Yahoo! formula. Content generated by the authors will thus transform Ploughshares into a leading literary portal.
But Ploughshares did not stop at this standard features. A "bookshelf" will link to book reviews contributed online (and augmented by the magazine's own prestigious offerings). An annotated bookstore is just a step away (though Ploughshares' web site does not include one hitherto). The next best thing is a rights-management application used by the journal's authors to grant online publishing permissions for their work to third parties.
No print literary magazine can beat this one stop shop. So, how can print publications defend themselves?
By being creative and by not conceding defeat is how.
Consider WuliWeb's example of thinking outside the printed box.
It is a simple online application which enables its users to "send, save and share material from print publications". Participating magazines and newspapers print "WuliCodes" on their (physical) pages and WuliWeb subscribers barcode-scan, or manually enter them into their online "Content Manager" via keyboard, PDA, pager, cell phone, or fixed phone (using a PIN). The service is free (paid for by the magazine publishers and advertisers) and, according to WuliWeb, offers these advantages to its users:
"Once you choose to use WuliWeb's free service, you will no longer have to laboriously "tear and share" print articles or ads that you want to archive or share with colleagues or friends. You will be able to store material sourced from print publications permanently in your own secure, electronic files, and you can share this material instantly with any number of people. Magazine and Newspaper Publishers will now have the ability to distribute their online content more widely and to offer a richer experience to their readers. Advertisers will be able to deploy dynamic and media-rich content to attract and convert customers, and will be able to communicate more completely with their customers."
Links to the shared material are stored in WuliWeb's central database and users gain access to them by signing up for a (free) WuliWeb account. Thus, the user's mailbox is unencumbered by huge downloads. Moreover, WuliWeb allows for a keywords-based search of articles saved.
Perhaps the only serious drawback is that WuliWeb provides its users only with LINKS to content stored on publishers' web sites. It is a directory service - not a full text database. This creates dependence. Links may get broken. Whole web sites vanish. Magazines and their publishers go under. All the more reason for publishers to adopt this service and make it their own.
Consider Ploughshares, the Literary Journal.
It is a venerable, not for profit, print journal published by Emerson College, now marking its 30th anniversary. It recently inaugurated its web sibling. The project consumed three years and $125,000 (grant from the Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds). Every title Ploughshares has ever published was indexed (over 18,000 journal pages digitized). In all, the "website will offer free access to over 2,750 poems and short stories from past and current issues."
The more than 2000 (!) authors ever published in Ploughshares will each maintain a personal web page comprising biographical notes, press releases, new books and events announcements and links to other web sites. This is the Yahoo! formula. Content generated by the authors will thus transform Ploughshares into a leading literary portal.
But Ploughshares did not stop at this standard features. A "bookshelf" will link to book reviews contributed online (and augmented by the magazine's own prestigious offerings). An annotated bookstore is just a step away (though Ploughshares' web site does not include one hitherto). The next best thing is a rights-management application used by the journal's authors to grant online publishing permissions for their work to third parties.
No print literary magazine can beat this one stop shop. So, how can print publications defend themselves?
By being creative and by not conceding defeat is how.
Consider WuliWeb's example of thinking outside the printed box.
It is a simple online application which enables its users to "send, save and share material from print publications". Participating magazines and newspapers print "WuliCodes" on their (physical) pages and WuliWeb subscribers barcode-scan, or manually enter them into their online "Content Manager" via keyboard, PDA, pager, cell phone, or fixed phone (using a PIN). The service is free (paid for by the magazine publishers and advertisers) and, according to WuliWeb, offers these advantages to its users:
"Once you choose to use WuliWeb's free service, you will no longer have to laboriously "tear and share" print articles or ads that you want to archive or share with colleagues or friends. You will be able to store material sourced from print publications permanently in your own secure, electronic files, and you can share this material instantly with any number of people. Magazine and Newspaper Publishers will now have the ability to distribute their online content more widely and to offer a richer experience to their readers. Advertisers will be able to deploy dynamic and media-rich content to attract and convert customers, and will be able to communicate more completely with their customers."
Links to the shared material are stored in WuliWeb's central database and users gain access to them by signing up for a (free) WuliWeb account. Thus, the user's mailbox is unencumbered by huge downloads. Moreover, WuliWeb allows for a keywords-based search of articles saved.
Perhaps the only serious drawback is that WuliWeb provides its users only with LINKS to content stored on publishers' web sites. It is a directory service - not a full text database. This creates dependence. Links may get broken. Whole web sites vanish. Magazines and their publishers go under. All the more reason for publishers to adopt this service and make it their own.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Will Content Ever be Profitable?
THE CURRENT WORRIES
1. Content Suppliers
The Ethos of Free Content
Content Suppliers is the underprivileged sector of the Internet. They all lose money (even sites which offer basic, standardized goods - books, CDs), with the exception of sites profering sex or tourism. No user seems to be grateful for the effort and resources invested in creating and distributing content. The recent breakdown of traditional roles (between publisher and author, record company and singer, etc.) and the direct access the creative artist is gaining to its paying public may change this attitude of ingratitude but hitherto there are scarce signs of that. Moreover, it is either quality of presentation (which only a publisher can afford) or ownership and (often shoddy) dissemination of content by the author. A really qualitative, fully commerce enabled site costs up to 5,000,000 USD, excluding site maintenance and customer and visitor services. Despite these heavy outlays, site designers are constantly criticized for lack of creativity or for too much creativity. More and more is asked of content purveyors and creators. They are exploited by intermediaries, hitch hiker sand other parasites. This is all an off-shoot of the ethos of the Internet as a free content area.
Most of the users like to surf (browse, visit sites) the net without reason or goal in mind. This makes it difficult to apply to the web traditional marketing techniques.
What is the meaning of "targeted audiences" or "market shares" in this context? If a surfer visits sites which deal with aberrant sex and nuclear physics in the same session - what to make of it?
Moreover, the public and legislative backlash against the gathering of surfer's data by Internet ad agencies and other web sites - has led to growing ignorance regarding the profile of Internet users, their demography, habits, preferences and dislikes.
"Free" is a key word on 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.
It would seem that users will not pay for content unless it is unavailable elsewhere or qualitatively rare or made rare. One way to "rarefy" content is to review and rate it.
2. Quality-Rated Content
There is a long term trend of clutter-breaking website-rating and critique. It may have a limited influence on the consumption decisions of some users and on their willingness to pay for content. Browsers already sport "What's New" and "What's Hot" buttons. Most Search Engines and directories recommend specific sites. But users are still cautious. Studies discovered that nouser, no matter how heavy, has consistently re-visited more than 200 sites, a minuscule number. Some recommendation services often produce random - at times, wrong - selections for their users. There are also concerns regarding privacy issues. The backlash against Amazon's "readers circles" is an example. Web Critics, who work today mainly for the printed press, publish their wares on the net and collaborate with intelligent software which hyperlinks to web sites, recommends them and refers users to them. Some web critics (guides) became identified with specific applications - really, expert systems -which incorporate their knowledge and experience. Most volunteer-based directories (such as the "Open Directory" and the late "Go" directory) work this way.
The flip side of the coin of content consumption is investment in content creation, marketing, distribution and maintenance.
3. The Money
Where is the capital needed to finance content likely to come from?
Again, there are two schools:
According to the first, sites will be financed through advertising - and so will search engines and other applications accessed by users.
Certain ASPs (Application Service Providers which rent out access to application software which resides on their servers) are considering this model.
The recent collapse in online advertising rates and click-through rates raised serious doubts regarding the validity and viability of this model. Marketing gurus, such as Seth Godin went as far as declaring "interruption marketing" (=ads and banners) dead.
The second approach is simpler and allows for the existence of non-commercial content.
It proposes to collect negligible sums (cents or fractions of cents) from every user for every visit ("micro-payments"). These accumulated cents will enable the site-owners to update and to maintain them and encourage entrepreneurs to develop new content and invest in it. Certain content aggregators (especially of digital textbooks) have adopted this model (Questia, Fathom).
The adherents of the first school point to 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. The actual figure was double the prediction but still woefully small and inadequate to support the internet's 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 alone!).
Even if online advertising were to be restored to its erstwhile glory days, other bottlenecks remain. Advertising encourages the consumer to interact and to initiate the delivery of a product to him. This - the delivery phase - is a slow and enervating epilogue to the exciting affair of ordering online. Too many consumers still complain of late delivery of the wrong or defective products.
The solution may lie in the integration of advertising and content. The late Pointcast, for instance, integrated advertising into its news broadcasts, continuously streamed to the user's screen, even when inactive (it had an active screen saver and ticker in a "push technology"). Downloading of digital music, video and text (e-books) leads to the immediate gratification of consumers and increases the efficacy of advertising.
Whatever the case may be, a uniform, agreed upon system of rating as a basis for charging advertisers, is sorely needed. There is also the question of what does the advertiser pay for? The rates of many advertisers (Procter and Gamble, for instance) are based not on the number of hits or impressions (=entries, visits to a site). - but on the number of the times that their advertisement was hit (page views), or clicked through.
Finally, there is the paid subscription model - a flop to judge by the experience of the meagre number of sites of venerable and leading newspapers that are on a subscription basis. Dow Jones (Wall Street Journal) and The Economist. Only two.
All this is not very promising. But one should never forget that the Internet is probably the closest thing we have to an efficient market. As consumers refuse to pay for content, investment will dry up and content will become scarce (through closures of web sites). As scarcity sets in, consumer may reconsider.
Your article deals with the future of the Internet as a medium. Will it be able to support its content creation and distribution operations economically?
If the Internet is a budding medium - then we should derive great benefit from a study of the history of its predecessors.
The Future History of the Internet as a Medium
The internet is simply the latest in a series of networks which revolutionized our lives. A century before the internet, the telegraph, the railways, the radio 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 institutions, religious institutions, government, not for profit organizations, non governmental organizations (NGOs), trade unions, etc. Be deviled 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 years 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 semi-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 institution sand 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 case 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 are intuitively associated with the public sector ("Other People's Money" - OPM). This, together with 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 and the automatic equation of private enterprise with democracy lead to a privatization of the young medium.
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 are compromised and sacrificed on the altar of commercialization and rating. Fears of monopolization and cartelization of the medium are evoked - and proven correct in due course. 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 enacted in the USA in 1934. It was meant to transform radio frequencies into a national resource to be sold to the private sector which was supposed to 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 other's territories. Phone companies were allowed to transmit video and cable companies were allowed to transmit telephony, for instance. This was all phased over a long period of time - still, it was 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 Internet's history, though, it seems, few realize 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 that 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 refuse to succumb to these requirements - will be deleted or neutralized. Content guidelines (euphemism for censorship) exist, even as we write, in all major content providers (CompuServe, AOL, Yahoo!-Geocities, Tripod, Prodigy).
The Bloodbath
This is the phase of consolidation. The number of players is severely reduced. The number of browser types will settle on 2-3 (Netscape, Microsoft and Opera?). Networks will merge to form privately owned mega-networks. Servers will merge to form hyper-servers run on supercomputers in "server farms". The number of ISPs will be considerably cut. 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 shall owed 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 Prices
This happens in every medium but it doubly applies to a computer-dependent medium, such as the Internet.
Computer technology seems to abide by "Moore's Law" which says that the number of transistors which can be put on a chip doubles every 18 months. As a result of this miniaturization, computing power quadruples every 18 months and an exponential series ensues. Organic-biological-DNA computers, quantum computers, chaos computers - prompted by vast profits and spawned by inventive genius will ensure the continued applicability of Moore's Law.
The Internet is also subject to "Metcalf's Law".
It says that when we connect N computers to a network - we get an increase of N to the second power in its computing processing power. And these N computers are more powerful every year, according to Moore's Law. The growth of computing powers in networks is a multiple of the effects of the two laws. More and more computers with ever increasing computing power get connected and create an exponential 16 times growth in the network's computing power every 18 months.
2. Content Related Fees
This was prevalent in the Net until recently. Even potentially commercial software can still be downloaded for free. In many countries television viewers still pay for television broadcasts - but in the USA and many other countries in the West, the basic package of television channels comes free of charge.
As users / consumers form a habit of using (or consuming) the software - it is commercialized and begins to carry a price tag. This is what happened with the advent of cable television: contents are sold for subscription or per usage (Pay Per View - PPV) fees.
Gradually, this is what will happen to most of the sites and software on the Net. Those which survive will begin to collect usage fees, access fees, subscription fees, downloading fees and other, appropriately named, fees. These fees are bound to be low - but it is the principle that counts. Even a few cents per transaction may accumulate to hefty sums with the traffic which characterizes some web sites on the Net (or, at least its more popular locales).
3. Increased User Friendliness
As long as the computer is less user friendly and less reliable (predictable) than television - less of a black box - its potential (and its future) is limited. Television attracts 3.5 billion users daily. The Internet stands to attract - under the most exuberant scenario - less than one tenth of this number of people. The only reasons for this disparity are (the lack of) user friendliness and reliability. Even browsers, among the most user friendly applications ever -are not sufficiently so. The user still needs to know how to use a keyboard and must possess some basic acquaintance with the operating system. The more mature the medium, the more friendly it becomes. Finally, it will be operated using speech or common language. There will be room left for user "hunches" and built in flexible responses.
4. Social Taxes
Sooner or later, the business sector has to mollify the God of public opinion with offerings of political and social nature. The Internet is an affluent, educated, yuppie medium. It requires literacy and numeracy, live interest in information and its various uses (scientific, commercial, other), a lot of resources (free time, money to invest in hardware, software and connect time). It empowers - and thus deepens the divide between the haves and have-nots, the developed and the developing world, the knowing and the ignorant, the computer illiterate.
In short: the Internet is an elitist medium. Publicly, this is an unhealthy posture. "Internetophobia" is already discernible. People (and politicians) talk about how unsafe the Internet is and about its possible uses for racial, sexist and pornographic purposes. The wider public is in a state of awe.
So, site builders and owners will do well to begin to improve their image: provide free access to schools and community centres, bankroll internet literacy classes, freely distribute contents and software to educational institutions, collaborate with researchers and social scientists and engineers. In short: encourage the view that the Internet is a medium catering to the needs of the community and the underprivileged, a mostly altruist endeavour. This also happens to make good business sense by educating and conditioning a future generation of users. He who visited a site when a student, free of charge - will pay to do so when made an executive. Such a user will also pass on the information within and without his organization. This is called media exposure. The future will, no doubt, will be witness to public Internet terminals, subsidized ISP accounts, free Internet classes and an alternative "non-commercial, public" approach to the Net. This may prove to be one more source of revenue to content creator sand distributors.
1. Content Suppliers
The Ethos of Free Content
Content Suppliers is the underprivileged sector of the Internet. They all lose money (even sites which offer basic, standardized goods - books, CDs), with the exception of sites profering sex or tourism. No user seems to be grateful for the effort and resources invested in creating and distributing content. The recent breakdown of traditional roles (between publisher and author, record company and singer, etc.) and the direct access the creative artist is gaining to its paying public may change this attitude of ingratitude but hitherto there are scarce signs of that. Moreover, it is either quality of presentation (which only a publisher can afford) or ownership and (often shoddy) dissemination of content by the author. A really qualitative, fully commerce enabled site costs up to 5,000,000 USD, excluding site maintenance and customer and visitor services. Despite these heavy outlays, site designers are constantly criticized for lack of creativity or for too much creativity. More and more is asked of content purveyors and creators. They are exploited by intermediaries, hitch hiker sand other parasites. This is all an off-shoot of the ethos of the Internet as a free content area.
Most of the users like to surf (browse, visit sites) the net without reason or goal in mind. This makes it difficult to apply to the web traditional marketing techniques.
What is the meaning of "targeted audiences" or "market shares" in this context? If a surfer visits sites which deal with aberrant sex and nuclear physics in the same session - what to make of it?
Moreover, the public and legislative backlash against the gathering of surfer's data by Internet ad agencies and other web sites - has led to growing ignorance regarding the profile of Internet users, their demography, habits, preferences and dislikes.
"Free" is a key word on 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.
It would seem that users will not pay for content unless it is unavailable elsewhere or qualitatively rare or made rare. One way to "rarefy" content is to review and rate it.
2. Quality-Rated Content
There is a long term trend of clutter-breaking website-rating and critique. It may have a limited influence on the consumption decisions of some users and on their willingness to pay for content. Browsers already sport "What's New" and "What's Hot" buttons. Most Search Engines and directories recommend specific sites. But users are still cautious. Studies discovered that nouser, no matter how heavy, has consistently re-visited more than 200 sites, a minuscule number. Some recommendation services often produce random - at times, wrong - selections for their users. There are also concerns regarding privacy issues. The backlash against Amazon's "readers circles" is an example. Web Critics, who work today mainly for the printed press, publish their wares on the net and collaborate with intelligent software which hyperlinks to web sites, recommends them and refers users to them. Some web critics (guides) became identified with specific applications - really, expert systems -which incorporate their knowledge and experience. Most volunteer-based directories (such as the "Open Directory" and the late "Go" directory) work this way.
The flip side of the coin of content consumption is investment in content creation, marketing, distribution and maintenance.
3. The Money
Where is the capital needed to finance content likely to come from?
Again, there are two schools:
According to the first, sites will be financed through advertising - and so will search engines and other applications accessed by users.
Certain ASPs (Application Service Providers which rent out access to application software which resides on their servers) are considering this model.
The recent collapse in online advertising rates and click-through rates raised serious doubts regarding the validity and viability of this model. Marketing gurus, such as Seth Godin went as far as declaring "interruption marketing" (=ads and banners) dead.
The second approach is simpler and allows for the existence of non-commercial content.
It proposes to collect negligible sums (cents or fractions of cents) from every user for every visit ("micro-payments"). These accumulated cents will enable the site-owners to update and to maintain them and encourage entrepreneurs to develop new content and invest in it. Certain content aggregators (especially of digital textbooks) have adopted this model (Questia, Fathom).
The adherents of the first school point to 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. The actual figure was double the prediction but still woefully small and inadequate to support the internet's 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 alone!).
Even if online advertising were to be restored to its erstwhile glory days, other bottlenecks remain. Advertising encourages the consumer to interact and to initiate the delivery of a product to him. This - the delivery phase - is a slow and enervating epilogue to the exciting affair of ordering online. Too many consumers still complain of late delivery of the wrong or defective products.
The solution may lie in the integration of advertising and content. The late Pointcast, for instance, integrated advertising into its news broadcasts, continuously streamed to the user's screen, even when inactive (it had an active screen saver and ticker in a "push technology"). Downloading of digital music, video and text (e-books) leads to the immediate gratification of consumers and increases the efficacy of advertising.
Whatever the case may be, a uniform, agreed upon system of rating as a basis for charging advertisers, is sorely needed. There is also the question of what does the advertiser pay for? The rates of many advertisers (Procter and Gamble, for instance) are based not on the number of hits or impressions (=entries, visits to a site). - but on the number of the times that their advertisement was hit (page views), or clicked through.
Finally, there is the paid subscription model - a flop to judge by the experience of the meagre number of sites of venerable and leading newspapers that are on a subscription basis. Dow Jones (Wall Street Journal) and The Economist. Only two.
All this is not very promising. But one should never forget that the Internet is probably the closest thing we have to an efficient market. As consumers refuse to pay for content, investment will dry up and content will become scarce (through closures of web sites). As scarcity sets in, consumer may reconsider.
Your article deals with the future of the Internet as a medium. Will it be able to support its content creation and distribution operations economically?
If the Internet is a budding medium - then we should derive great benefit from a study of the history of its predecessors.
The Future History of the Internet as a Medium
The internet is simply the latest in a series of networks which revolutionized our lives. A century before the internet, the telegraph, the railways, the radio 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 institutions, religious institutions, government, not for profit organizations, non governmental organizations (NGOs), trade unions, etc. Be deviled 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 years 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 semi-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 institution sand 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 case 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 are intuitively associated with the public sector ("Other People's Money" - OPM). This, together with 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 and the automatic equation of private enterprise with democracy lead to a privatization of the young medium.
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 are compromised and sacrificed on the altar of commercialization and rating. Fears of monopolization and cartelization of the medium are evoked - and proven correct in due course. 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 enacted in the USA in 1934. It was meant to transform radio frequencies into a national resource to be sold to the private sector which was supposed to 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 other's territories. Phone companies were allowed to transmit video and cable companies were allowed to transmit telephony, for instance. This was all phased over a long period of time - still, it was 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 Internet's history, though, it seems, few realize 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 that 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 refuse to succumb to these requirements - will be deleted or neutralized. Content guidelines (euphemism for censorship) exist, even as we write, in all major content providers (CompuServe, AOL, Yahoo!-Geocities, Tripod, Prodigy).
The Bloodbath
This is the phase of consolidation. The number of players is severely reduced. The number of browser types will settle on 2-3 (Netscape, Microsoft and Opera?). Networks will merge to form privately owned mega-networks. Servers will merge to form hyper-servers run on supercomputers in "server farms". The number of ISPs will be considerably cut. 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 shall owed 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 Prices
This happens in every medium but it doubly applies to a computer-dependent medium, such as the Internet.
Computer technology seems to abide by "Moore's Law" which says that the number of transistors which can be put on a chip doubles every 18 months. As a result of this miniaturization, computing power quadruples every 18 months and an exponential series ensues. Organic-biological-DNA computers, quantum computers, chaos computers - prompted by vast profits and spawned by inventive genius will ensure the continued applicability of Moore's Law.
The Internet is also subject to "Metcalf's Law".
It says that when we connect N computers to a network - we get an increase of N to the second power in its computing processing power. And these N computers are more powerful every year, according to Moore's Law. The growth of computing powers in networks is a multiple of the effects of the two laws. More and more computers with ever increasing computing power get connected and create an exponential 16 times growth in the network's computing power every 18 months.
2. Content Related Fees
This was prevalent in the Net until recently. Even potentially commercial software can still be downloaded for free. In many countries television viewers still pay for television broadcasts - but in the USA and many other countries in the West, the basic package of television channels comes free of charge.
As users / consumers form a habit of using (or consuming) the software - it is commercialized and begins to carry a price tag. This is what happened with the advent of cable television: contents are sold for subscription or per usage (Pay Per View - PPV) fees.
Gradually, this is what will happen to most of the sites and software on the Net. Those which survive will begin to collect usage fees, access fees, subscription fees, downloading fees and other, appropriately named, fees. These fees are bound to be low - but it is the principle that counts. Even a few cents per transaction may accumulate to hefty sums with the traffic which characterizes some web sites on the Net (or, at least its more popular locales).
3. Increased User Friendliness
As long as the computer is less user friendly and less reliable (predictable) than television - less of a black box - its potential (and its future) is limited. Television attracts 3.5 billion users daily. The Internet stands to attract - under the most exuberant scenario - less than one tenth of this number of people. The only reasons for this disparity are (the lack of) user friendliness and reliability. Even browsers, among the most user friendly applications ever -are not sufficiently so. The user still needs to know how to use a keyboard and must possess some basic acquaintance with the operating system. The more mature the medium, the more friendly it becomes. Finally, it will be operated using speech or common language. There will be room left for user "hunches" and built in flexible responses.
4. Social Taxes
Sooner or later, the business sector has to mollify the God of public opinion with offerings of political and social nature. The Internet is an affluent, educated, yuppie medium. It requires literacy and numeracy, live interest in information and its various uses (scientific, commercial, other), a lot of resources (free time, money to invest in hardware, software and connect time). It empowers - and thus deepens the divide between the haves and have-nots, the developed and the developing world, the knowing and the ignorant, the computer illiterate.
In short: the Internet is an elitist medium. Publicly, this is an unhealthy posture. "Internetophobia" is already discernible. People (and politicians) talk about how unsafe the Internet is and about its possible uses for racial, sexist and pornographic purposes. The wider public is in a state of awe.
So, site builders and owners will do well to begin to improve their image: provide free access to schools and community centres, bankroll internet literacy classes, freely distribute contents and software to educational institutions, collaborate with researchers and social scientists and engineers. In short: encourage the view that the Internet is a medium catering to the needs of the community and the underprivileged, a mostly altruist endeavour. This also happens to make good business sense by educating and conditioning a future generation of users. He who visited a site when a student, free of charge - will pay to do so when made an executive. Such a user will also pass on the information within and without his organization. This is called media exposure. The future will, no doubt, will be witness to public Internet terminals, subsidized ISP accounts, free Internet classes and an alternative "non-commercial, public" approach to the Net. This may prove to be one more source of revenue to content creator sand distributors.
An Embarrassment of Riches - Part II
The DOI Foundation has unveiled the DOI-EB (EB stands for e-books) Initiative in the Book Expo America Show 2001, to, in their words:
"Determine requirements with respect to the application of unique identifiers to eBooks
Develop proofs-of-concept for the use of DOIs with eBooks
Develop technical demonstrations, possibly including a prototype eBook Registration Agency."
It is backed by a few major publishers, such as McGraw-Hill, Random House, Pearson, and Wiley.
This ostensibly modest agenda conceals a revolutionary and ambitious attempt to unambiguously identify the origin of digital content (in this case, e-books) and link a universe of information to each and every ID number. Aware of competing efforts underway, the DOI Foundation is actively courting the likes of "indecs" (Interoperability of Data in E-Commerce System) and OeBF (Open e-Book). Companies ,like Enpia Systems of South Korea (a DOI Registration Agency), have already implemented a DOI-cum-indecs system. On November 2000, the APA's (American Publishers' Association) Open E-book Publishing Standards Initiative has recommended to use DOI as the primary identification system for e-books' metadata. The MPEG (Motion Pictures Experts Group) is said to be considering DOI seriously in its efforts to come up with numbering and metadata standards for digital videos. A DOI can be expressed as a URN (Universal Resource Name - IETF's syntax for generic resources) and is compatible with OpenURL (a syntax for embedding parameters such as identifiers and metadata in links). Shortly, a "Namespace Dictionary" is to be published. It will encompass 800 metadata elements and will tackle e-books, journals, audio, and video. A working group was started to develop a "services definition" interface (i.e., to allow web-enabled systems, especially e-commerce and m-commerce systems, to deploy DOI).
The DOI, in other words, is designed to be all-inclusive and all-pervasive. Each DOI number is made of a prefix, specific to a publisher, and a suffix, which could end up painlessly assimilating the ISBN and ISSN (or any other numbering and database) system.
Thus, a DOI can be assigned to every e-book based on its ISBN and to every part (chapter, section, or page) of every e-book. This flexibility could support Pay Per View models (such as Questia's or Fathom's), POD (Print On Demand), and academic "course packs", which comprise material from many textbooks, whether on digital media or downloadable. The DOI, in other words, can underlie D-CMS (Digital Content Management Systems) and Electronic Catalogue ID Management Systems.
Moreover, the DOI is a paradigm shift (though, conceptually, it was preceded by the likes of the UPC code and the ISO's HyTime multimedia standard). It blurs the borders between types of digital content. Imagine an e-novel with the video version of the novel, the sound track, still photographs, a tourist guide, an audio book, and other digital content embedded in it. Each content type and each segment of each content type can be identified and tagged separately and, thus, sold separately - yet all under the umbrella of the same DOI! The nightmare of DRM (digital rights management) may be finally over.
But the DOI is much more than a sophisticated tagging technology. It comes with multiple resolution (see "Embarrassment of Riches - Part I"). In other words, as opposed to the URL (Universal Resource Locator) - it is generated dynamically, "on the fly", by the user, and is not "hard coded" into the web page. This is because the DOI identifies content - not its location. And while the URL resolves to a single web page - the DOI resolves to a lot more in the form of publisher-controlled (ONIX-XML) "metadata" in a pop-up (Javascript or other) screen. The metadata include everything from the author's name through the book's title, edition, blurbs, sample chapters, other promotional material, links to related products, a rights and permissions profile, e-mail contacts, and active links to retailers' web pages. Thus, every book-related web page becomes a full fledged book retailing gateway. The "anchor document" (in which the DOI is embedded) remains uncluttered. ONIX 2.0 may contain standard metadata fields and extensions specific to e-publishing and e-books.
This latter feature - the ability to link to the systems of retailers, distributors, and other types of vendors - is the "barcode" function of the DOI. Like barcode technology, it helps to automate the supply chain, and update the inventory, ordering, billing and invoicing, accounting, and re-ordering databases and functions. Besides tracking content use and distribution, the DOI allows to seamlessly integrate hitherto disparate e-commerce technologies and facilitate interoperability among DRM systems.
The resolution itself can take place in the client's browser (using a software plug-in), in a proxy server, or in a central, dynamic server. Resolving from the client's PC, e-book reader, or PDA has the advantage of being able to respond to the user's specific condition (location, time of day, etc.). No plug-in is required when a proxy server HTTP is used - but then the DOI becomes just another URL, embedded in the page when it is created and not resolved when the user clicks on it. The most user-friendly solution is, probably, for a central server to look up values in response to a user's prompt and serve her with cascading menus or links. Admittedly, in this option, the resolution tables (what DOI links to what URL's and to what content) is not really dynamic. It changes only with every server update and is static between updates. But this is a minor inconvenience. As it is, users are likely to respond with some trepidation to the need to install plug-ins and to the avalanche of information their single, innocuous, mouse click generates.
The DOI Foundation has compiled this impressive list of benefits - and beneficiaries:
"Publishers to enable cross referencing to related information, control over metadata, viral distribution and sales, easy access to content, sale of granular content
Consumers to increase value for time and money, and purchase options
Distributors to facilitate sale and distribution of materials as well as user needs
Retailers to build related materials on their sites, heighten consumer usability and copyright protection
Conversion Houses/Wholesaler Repositories to increase access to and use of metadata
DRM Vendors/Rights Clearing Houses to enable interoperability and use of standards
Data Aggregators to enable compilation of primary and secondary content and print on demand
Trade Associations facilitate dialog on social level and attend to legal and technical perspectives pertaining to multiple versions of electronic content
eBbook software Developers to enable management of personal collections of eBooks including purchase receipt information as reference for quick return to retailer
Content Management System Vendors to enable internal synching with external usage
Syndicators to drive sales to retailers, add value to retail online store/sales, and increase sales for publishers"
The DOI is assigned to publishers by Registration Agencies (of which there are currently three - CrossRef and Content Directions in the States and the aforementioned Enpia Systems in Asia). It is already widely used to cross reference almost 5,000 periodicals with a database of 3,000,000 citations. The price is steep - it costs a publisher $200 to get a prefix and submit DOI's to the registry. But as Registration Agencies proliferate, competition is bound to slash these prices precipitously.
"Determine requirements with respect to the application of unique identifiers to eBooks
Develop proofs-of-concept for the use of DOIs with eBooks
Develop technical demonstrations, possibly including a prototype eBook Registration Agency."
It is backed by a few major publishers, such as McGraw-Hill, Random House, Pearson, and Wiley.
This ostensibly modest agenda conceals a revolutionary and ambitious attempt to unambiguously identify the origin of digital content (in this case, e-books) and link a universe of information to each and every ID number. Aware of competing efforts underway, the DOI Foundation is actively courting the likes of "indecs" (Interoperability of Data in E-Commerce System) and OeBF (Open e-Book). Companies ,like Enpia Systems of South Korea (a DOI Registration Agency), have already implemented a DOI-cum-indecs system. On November 2000, the APA's (American Publishers' Association) Open E-book Publishing Standards Initiative has recommended to use DOI as the primary identification system for e-books' metadata. The MPEG (Motion Pictures Experts Group) is said to be considering DOI seriously in its efforts to come up with numbering and metadata standards for digital videos. A DOI can be expressed as a URN (Universal Resource Name - IETF's syntax for generic resources) and is compatible with OpenURL (a syntax for embedding parameters such as identifiers and metadata in links). Shortly, a "Namespace Dictionary" is to be published. It will encompass 800 metadata elements and will tackle e-books, journals, audio, and video. A working group was started to develop a "services definition" interface (i.e., to allow web-enabled systems, especially e-commerce and m-commerce systems, to deploy DOI).
The DOI, in other words, is designed to be all-inclusive and all-pervasive. Each DOI number is made of a prefix, specific to a publisher, and a suffix, which could end up painlessly assimilating the ISBN and ISSN (or any other numbering and database) system.
Thus, a DOI can be assigned to every e-book based on its ISBN and to every part (chapter, section, or page) of every e-book. This flexibility could support Pay Per View models (such as Questia's or Fathom's), POD (Print On Demand), and academic "course packs", which comprise material from many textbooks, whether on digital media or downloadable. The DOI, in other words, can underlie D-CMS (Digital Content Management Systems) and Electronic Catalogue ID Management Systems.
Moreover, the DOI is a paradigm shift (though, conceptually, it was preceded by the likes of the UPC code and the ISO's HyTime multimedia standard). It blurs the borders between types of digital content. Imagine an e-novel with the video version of the novel, the sound track, still photographs, a tourist guide, an audio book, and other digital content embedded in it. Each content type and each segment of each content type can be identified and tagged separately and, thus, sold separately - yet all under the umbrella of the same DOI! The nightmare of DRM (digital rights management) may be finally over.
But the DOI is much more than a sophisticated tagging technology. It comes with multiple resolution (see "Embarrassment of Riches - Part I"). In other words, as opposed to the URL (Universal Resource Locator) - it is generated dynamically, "on the fly", by the user, and is not "hard coded" into the web page. This is because the DOI identifies content - not its location. And while the URL resolves to a single web page - the DOI resolves to a lot more in the form of publisher-controlled (ONIX-XML) "metadata" in a pop-up (Javascript or other) screen. The metadata include everything from the author's name through the book's title, edition, blurbs, sample chapters, other promotional material, links to related products, a rights and permissions profile, e-mail contacts, and active links to retailers' web pages. Thus, every book-related web page becomes a full fledged book retailing gateway. The "anchor document" (in which the DOI is embedded) remains uncluttered. ONIX 2.0 may contain standard metadata fields and extensions specific to e-publishing and e-books.
This latter feature - the ability to link to the systems of retailers, distributors, and other types of vendors - is the "barcode" function of the DOI. Like barcode technology, it helps to automate the supply chain, and update the inventory, ordering, billing and invoicing, accounting, and re-ordering databases and functions. Besides tracking content use and distribution, the DOI allows to seamlessly integrate hitherto disparate e-commerce technologies and facilitate interoperability among DRM systems.
The resolution itself can take place in the client's browser (using a software plug-in), in a proxy server, or in a central, dynamic server. Resolving from the client's PC, e-book reader, or PDA has the advantage of being able to respond to the user's specific condition (location, time of day, etc.). No plug-in is required when a proxy server HTTP is used - but then the DOI becomes just another URL, embedded in the page when it is created and not resolved when the user clicks on it. The most user-friendly solution is, probably, for a central server to look up values in response to a user's prompt and serve her with cascading menus or links. Admittedly, in this option, the resolution tables (what DOI links to what URL's and to what content) is not really dynamic. It changes only with every server update and is static between updates. But this is a minor inconvenience. As it is, users are likely to respond with some trepidation to the need to install plug-ins and to the avalanche of information their single, innocuous, mouse click generates.
The DOI Foundation has compiled this impressive list of benefits - and beneficiaries:
"Publishers to enable cross referencing to related information, control over metadata, viral distribution and sales, easy access to content, sale of granular content
Consumers to increase value for time and money, and purchase options
Distributors to facilitate sale and distribution of materials as well as user needs
Retailers to build related materials on their sites, heighten consumer usability and copyright protection
Conversion Houses/Wholesaler Repositories to increase access to and use of metadata
DRM Vendors/Rights Clearing Houses to enable interoperability and use of standards
Data Aggregators to enable compilation of primary and secondary content and print on demand
Trade Associations facilitate dialog on social level and attend to legal and technical perspectives pertaining to multiple versions of electronic content
eBbook software Developers to enable management of personal collections of eBooks including purchase receipt information as reference for quick return to retailer
Content Management System Vendors to enable internal synching with external usage
Syndicators to drive sales to retailers, add value to retail online store/sales, and increase sales for publishers"
The DOI is assigned to publishers by Registration Agencies (of which there are currently three - CrossRef and Content Directions in the States and the aforementioned Enpia Systems in Asia). It is already widely used to cross reference almost 5,000 periodicals with a database of 3,000,000 citations. The price is steep - it costs a publisher $200 to get a prefix and submit DOI's to the registry. But as Registration Agencies proliferate, competition is bound to slash these prices precipitously.
Friday, February 10, 2006
The Future of Electronic Publishing
UNESCO's somewhat arbitrary definition of "book" is:
""Non-periodical printed publication of at least 49 pages excluding covers".
The emergence of electronic publishing was supposed to change all that. Yet a bloodbath of unusual proportions has taken place in the last few months. Time Warner's iPublish and MightyWords (partly owned by Barnes and Noble) were the last in a string of resounding failures which cast in doubt the business model underlying digital content. Everything seemed to have gone wrong: the dot.coms dot bombed, venture capital dried up, competing standards fractured an already fragile marketplace, the hardware (e-book readers) was clunky and awkward, the software unwieldy, the e-books badly written or already in the public domain.
Terrified by the inexorable process of disintermediation (the establishment of direct contact between author and readers, excluding publishers and bookstores) and by the ease with which digital content can be replicated - publishers resorted to draconian copyright protection measures (euphemistically known as "digital rights management"). This further alienated the few potential readers left. The opposite model of "viral" or "buzz" marketing (by encouraging the dissemination of free copies of the promoted book) was only marginally more successful.
Moreover, e-publishing's delivery platform, the Internet, has been transformed beyond recognition since March 2000.
From an open, somewhat anarchic, web of networked computers - it has evolved into a territorial, commercial, corporate extension of "brick and mortar" giants, subject to government regulation. It is less friendly towards independent (small) publishers, the backbone of e-publishing. Increasingly, it is expropriated by publishing and media behemoths. It is treated as a medium for cross promotion, supply chain management, and customer relations management. It offers only some minor synergies with non-cyberspace, real world, franchises and media properties. The likes of Disney and Bertelsmann have swung a full circle from considering the Internet to be the next big thing in New Media delivery - to frantic efforts to contain the red ink it oozed all over their otherwise impeccable balance sheets.
But were the now silent pundits right all the same? Is the future of publishing (and other media industries) inextricably intertwined with the Internet?
The answer depends on whether an old habit dies hard. Internet surfers are used to free content. They are very reluctant to pay for information (with precious few exceptions, like the "Wall Street Journal"'s electronic edition). Moreover, the Internet, with 3 billion pages listed in the Google search engine (and another 15 billion in "invisible" databases), provides many free substitutes to every information product, no matter how superior. Web based media companies (such as Salon and Britannica.com) have been experimenting with payment and pricing models. But this is besides the point. Whether in the form of subscription (Britannica), pay per view (Questia), pay to print (Fathom), sample and pay to buy the physical product (RealRead), or micropayments (Amazon) - the public refuses to cough up.
Moreover, the advertising-subsidized free content Web site has died together with Web advertising. Geocities - a community of free hosted, ad-supported, Web sites purchased by Yahoo! - is now selectively shutting down Web sites (when they exceed a certain level of traffic) to convince their owners to revert to a monthly hosting fee model. With Lycos in trouble in Europe, Tripod may well follow suit shortly. Earlier this year, Microsoft has shut down ListBot (a host of discussion lists). Suite101 has stopped paying its editors (content authors) effective January 15th. About.com fired hundreds of category editors. With the ugly demise of Themestream, WebSeed is the only content aggregator which tries to buck the trend by relying (partly) on advertising revenue.
Paradoxically, e-publishing's main hope may lie with its ostensible adversary: the library. Unbelievably, e-publishers actually tried to limit the access of library patrons to e-books (i.e., the lending of e-books to multiple patrons). But, libraries are not only repositories of knowledge and community centres. They are also dominant promoters of new knowledge technologies. They are already the largest buyers of e-books. Together with schools and other educational institutions, libraries can serve as decisive socialization agents and introduce generations of pupils, students, and readers to the possibilities and riches of e-publishing. Government use of e-books (e.g., by the military) may have the same beneficial effect.
As standards converge (Adobe's Portable Document Format and Microsoft's MS Reader LIT format are likely to be the winners), as hardware improves and becomes ubiquitous (within multi-purpose devices or as standalone higher quality units), as content becomes more attractive (already many new titles are published in both print and electronic formats), as more versatile information taxonomies (like the Digital Object Identifier) are introduced, as the Internet becomes more gender-neutral, polyglot, and cosmopolitan - e-publishing is likely to recover and flourish.
This renaissance will probably be aided by the gradual decline of print magazines and by a strengthening movement for free open source scholarly publishing. The publishing of periodical content and academic research (including, gradually, peer reviewed research) may be already shifting to the Web. Non-fiction and textbooks will follow. Alternative models of pricing are already in evidence (author pays to publish, author pays to obtain peer review, publisher pays to publish, buy a physical product and gain access to enhanced online content, and so on). Web site rating agencies will help to discriminate between the credible and the in-credible. Publishing is moving - albeit kicking and screaming - online.
""Non-periodical printed publication of at least 49 pages excluding covers".
The emergence of electronic publishing was supposed to change all that. Yet a bloodbath of unusual proportions has taken place in the last few months. Time Warner's iPublish and MightyWords (partly owned by Barnes and Noble) were the last in a string of resounding failures which cast in doubt the business model underlying digital content. Everything seemed to have gone wrong: the dot.coms dot bombed, venture capital dried up, competing standards fractured an already fragile marketplace, the hardware (e-book readers) was clunky and awkward, the software unwieldy, the e-books badly written or already in the public domain.
Terrified by the inexorable process of disintermediation (the establishment of direct contact between author and readers, excluding publishers and bookstores) and by the ease with which digital content can be replicated - publishers resorted to draconian copyright protection measures (euphemistically known as "digital rights management"). This further alienated the few potential readers left. The opposite model of "viral" or "buzz" marketing (by encouraging the dissemination of free copies of the promoted book) was only marginally more successful.
Moreover, e-publishing's delivery platform, the Internet, has been transformed beyond recognition since March 2000.
From an open, somewhat anarchic, web of networked computers - it has evolved into a territorial, commercial, corporate extension of "brick and mortar" giants, subject to government regulation. It is less friendly towards independent (small) publishers, the backbone of e-publishing. Increasingly, it is expropriated by publishing and media behemoths. It is treated as a medium for cross promotion, supply chain management, and customer relations management. It offers only some minor synergies with non-cyberspace, real world, franchises and media properties. The likes of Disney and Bertelsmann have swung a full circle from considering the Internet to be the next big thing in New Media delivery - to frantic efforts to contain the red ink it oozed all over their otherwise impeccable balance sheets.
But were the now silent pundits right all the same? Is the future of publishing (and other media industries) inextricably intertwined with the Internet?
The answer depends on whether an old habit dies hard. Internet surfers are used to free content. They are very reluctant to pay for information (with precious few exceptions, like the "Wall Street Journal"'s electronic edition). Moreover, the Internet, with 3 billion pages listed in the Google search engine (and another 15 billion in "invisible" databases), provides many free substitutes to every information product, no matter how superior. Web based media companies (such as Salon and Britannica.com) have been experimenting with payment and pricing models. But this is besides the point. Whether in the form of subscription (Britannica), pay per view (Questia), pay to print (Fathom), sample and pay to buy the physical product (RealRead), or micropayments (Amazon) - the public refuses to cough up.
Moreover, the advertising-subsidized free content Web site has died together with Web advertising. Geocities - a community of free hosted, ad-supported, Web sites purchased by Yahoo! - is now selectively shutting down Web sites (when they exceed a certain level of traffic) to convince their owners to revert to a monthly hosting fee model. With Lycos in trouble in Europe, Tripod may well follow suit shortly. Earlier this year, Microsoft has shut down ListBot (a host of discussion lists). Suite101 has stopped paying its editors (content authors) effective January 15th. About.com fired hundreds of category editors. With the ugly demise of Themestream, WebSeed is the only content aggregator which tries to buck the trend by relying (partly) on advertising revenue.
Paradoxically, e-publishing's main hope may lie with its ostensible adversary: the library. Unbelievably, e-publishers actually tried to limit the access of library patrons to e-books (i.e., the lending of e-books to multiple patrons). But, libraries are not only repositories of knowledge and community centres. They are also dominant promoters of new knowledge technologies. They are already the largest buyers of e-books. Together with schools and other educational institutions, libraries can serve as decisive socialization agents and introduce generations of pupils, students, and readers to the possibilities and riches of e-publishing. Government use of e-books (e.g., by the military) may have the same beneficial effect.
As standards converge (Adobe's Portable Document Format and Microsoft's MS Reader LIT format are likely to be the winners), as hardware improves and becomes ubiquitous (within multi-purpose devices or as standalone higher quality units), as content becomes more attractive (already many new titles are published in both print and electronic formats), as more versatile information taxonomies (like the Digital Object Identifier) are introduced, as the Internet becomes more gender-neutral, polyglot, and cosmopolitan - e-publishing is likely to recover and flourish.
This renaissance will probably be aided by the gradual decline of print magazines and by a strengthening movement for free open source scholarly publishing. The publishing of periodical content and academic research (including, gradually, peer reviewed research) may be already shifting to the Web. Non-fiction and textbooks will follow. Alternative models of pricing are already in evidence (author pays to publish, author pays to obtain peer review, publisher pays to publish, buy a physical product and gain access to enhanced online content, and so on). Web site rating agencies will help to discriminate between the credible and the in-credible. Publishing is moving - albeit kicking and screaming - online.
Thursday, February 9, 2006
An Embarrassment of Riches - Part I
The Internet is too rich. Even powerful and sophisticated search engines, such as Google, return a lot of trash, dead ends, and Error 404's in response to the most well-defined query, Boolean operators and all. Directories created by human editors - such as Yahoo! or the Open Directory Project - are often overwhelmed by the amount of material out there. Like the legendary blob, the Internet is clearly out of classificatory control. Some web sites - like Suite101 - have introduced the old and tried Dewey subject classification system successfully used in non-virtual libraries for more than a century. Books - both print and electronic - (actually, their publishers) get assigned an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) by national agencies. Periodical publications (magazines, newsletters, bulletins) sport an ISSN (International Serial Standard Number). National libraries dole out CIP's (Cataloguing in Publication numbers), which help lesser outfits to catalogue the book upon arrival. But the emergence of new book formats, independent publishing, and self publishing has strained this already creaking system to its limits. In short: the whole thing is fast developing into an awful mess.
Resolution is one solution.
Resolution is the linking of identifiers to content. An identifier can be a word, or a phrase. RealNames implemented this approach and its proprietary software is now incorporated in most browsers. The user types a word, brand name, phrase, or code, and gets re-directed to a web site with the appropriate content. The only snag: RealNames identifiers are for sale. Thus, its identifiers are not guaranteed to lead to the best, only, or relevant resource. Similar systems are available in many languages. Nexet, for example, provides such a resolution service in Hebrew.
The Association of American Publishers (APA) has an Enabling Technologies Committee. Fittingly, at the Frankfurt Book Fair of 1997, it announced the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) initiative. An International DOI Foundation (IDF) was set up and invited all publishers - American and non-American alike - to apply for a unique DOI prefix. DOI is actually a private case of a larger system of "handles" developed by the CNRI (Corporation for National Research Initiatives). Their "Handle Resolver" is a browser plug-in software, which re-directs their handles to URL's or other pieces of data, or content. Without the Resolver, typing in the handle simply directs the user to a few proxy servers, which "understand" the handle protocols.
The interesting (and new) feature of the system is its ability to resolve to MULTIPLE locations (URL's, or data, or content). The same identifier can resolve to a Universe of inter-related information (effectively, to a mini-library). The content thus resolved need not be limited to text. Multiple resolution works with audio, images, and even video.
The IDF's press release is worth some extensive quoting:
"Imagine you're the manager of an Internet company reading a story online in the "Wall Street Journal" written by Stacey E. Bressler, a co-author of Communities of Commerce, and at the end of the story there is a link to purchase options for the book.
Now imagine you are an online retailer, a syndicator or a reporter for an online news service and you are reading a review in "Publishers Weekly" about Communities of Commerce and you run across a link to related resources.
And imagine you are in Buenos Aires, and in an online publication you encounter a link to "D-Lib Magazine", an electronic journal produced in Washington, D.C. which offers you locale-specific choices for downloading an article.
The above examples demonstrate how multiple resolution can present you with a list of links from within an electronic document or page. The links beneath the labels - URLs and email addresses - would all be stored in the DOI System, and multiple resolution means any or all of those links can be displayed for you to select from in one menu. Any combination of links to related resources can be included in these menus.
Capable of providing much richer experiences then single resolution to a URL, Multiple Resolution operates on the premise that content, not its location, is identified. In other words, where content and related resources reside is secondary information. Multiple Resolution enables content owners and distributors to identify their intellectual property with bound collections of related resources at a hyperlink's point of departure, instead of requiring a user to leave the page to go to a new location for further information.
A content owner controls and manages all the related resources in each of these menus and can determine which information is accessible to each business partner within the supply chain. When an administrator changes any facet of this information, the change is simultaneous on all internal networks and the Internet. A DOI is a permanent identifier, analogous to a telephone number for life, so tomorrow and years from now a user can locate the product and related resources wherever they may have been moved or archived to."
The IDF provides a limited, text-only, online demonstration. When sweeping with the cursor over a linked item, a pop-down menu of options is presented. These options are pre-defined and customized by the content creators and owners. In the first example above (book purchase options) the DOI resolves to retail outlets (categorized by book formats), information about the title and the author, digital rights management information (permissions), and more. The DOI server generates this information in "real time", "on the fly". But it is the author, or (more often) the publisher that choose the information, its modes of presentation, selections, and marketing and sales data. The ingenuity is in the fact that the DOI server's files and records can be updated, replaced, or deleted. It does not affect the resolution path - only the content resolved to.
Which brings us to e-publishing.
Resolution is one solution.
Resolution is the linking of identifiers to content. An identifier can be a word, or a phrase. RealNames implemented this approach and its proprietary software is now incorporated in most browsers. The user types a word, brand name, phrase, or code, and gets re-directed to a web site with the appropriate content. The only snag: RealNames identifiers are for sale. Thus, its identifiers are not guaranteed to lead to the best, only, or relevant resource. Similar systems are available in many languages. Nexet, for example, provides such a resolution service in Hebrew.
The Association of American Publishers (APA) has an Enabling Technologies Committee. Fittingly, at the Frankfurt Book Fair of 1997, it announced the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) initiative. An International DOI Foundation (IDF) was set up and invited all publishers - American and non-American alike - to apply for a unique DOI prefix. DOI is actually a private case of a larger system of "handles" developed by the CNRI (Corporation for National Research Initiatives). Their "Handle Resolver" is a browser plug-in software, which re-directs their handles to URL's or other pieces of data, or content. Without the Resolver, typing in the handle simply directs the user to a few proxy servers, which "understand" the handle protocols.
The interesting (and new) feature of the system is its ability to resolve to MULTIPLE locations (URL's, or data, or content). The same identifier can resolve to a Universe of inter-related information (effectively, to a mini-library). The content thus resolved need not be limited to text. Multiple resolution works with audio, images, and even video.
The IDF's press release is worth some extensive quoting:
"Imagine you're the manager of an Internet company reading a story online in the "Wall Street Journal" written by Stacey E. Bressler, a co-author of Communities of Commerce, and at the end of the story there is a link to purchase options for the book.
Now imagine you are an online retailer, a syndicator or a reporter for an online news service and you are reading a review in "Publishers Weekly" about Communities of Commerce and you run across a link to related resources.
And imagine you are in Buenos Aires, and in an online publication you encounter a link to "D-Lib Magazine", an electronic journal produced in Washington, D.C. which offers you locale-specific choices for downloading an article.
The above examples demonstrate how multiple resolution can present you with a list of links from within an electronic document or page. The links beneath the labels - URLs and email addresses - would all be stored in the DOI System, and multiple resolution means any or all of those links can be displayed for you to select from in one menu. Any combination of links to related resources can be included in these menus.
Capable of providing much richer experiences then single resolution to a URL, Multiple Resolution operates on the premise that content, not its location, is identified. In other words, where content and related resources reside is secondary information. Multiple Resolution enables content owners and distributors to identify their intellectual property with bound collections of related resources at a hyperlink's point of departure, instead of requiring a user to leave the page to go to a new location for further information.
A content owner controls and manages all the related resources in each of these menus and can determine which information is accessible to each business partner within the supply chain. When an administrator changes any facet of this information, the change is simultaneous on all internal networks and the Internet. A DOI is a permanent identifier, analogous to a telephone number for life, so tomorrow and years from now a user can locate the product and related resources wherever they may have been moved or archived to."
The IDF provides a limited, text-only, online demonstration. When sweeping with the cursor over a linked item, a pop-down menu of options is presented. These options are pre-defined and customized by the content creators and owners. In the first example above (book purchase options) the DOI resolves to retail outlets (categorized by book formats), information about the title and the author, digital rights management information (permissions), and more. The DOI server generates this information in "real time", "on the fly". But it is the author, or (more often) the publisher that choose the information, its modes of presentation, selections, and marketing and sales data. The ingenuity is in the fact that the DOI server's files and records can be updated, replaced, or deleted. It does not affect the resolution path - only the content resolved to.
Which brings us to e-publishing.
Tuesday, February 7, 2006
The In-credible Web
People are conditioned to trust written words, not to mention images. "I read it in the paper" or "As seen on TV" are worn out but still effective clichés. The Internet combines both the written and the seen. It is both a textual and a visual (and audio) medium. Do people trust Internet content? Is the incredible Internet - credible?
In the "brick and mortar" world, credibility is associated with brands. A brand, in effect, guarantees the quality and specifications of a product (think McDonald's hamburgers), its performance (think Palm), level of service and commitment to customer care (Amazon), variety, or price (Wal-Mart). Brands are sustained and enhanced by advertising campaigns. The content or sales pitch of specific ads are often less important than the message conveyed by the very existence of a campaign: "This company is rich enough (read: stable, reliable, trustworthy, here to stay) to spend millions on advertising".
The Internet has very few brands (Yahoo!, Amazon) - and some of them are tarnished. Some "old media" brands have entered the fray (Barnes and Noble, The Wall Street Journal, the Britannica) - hitherto without much success. The overwhelming bulk of Web content is created or disseminated by small time entrepreneurs and monomaniacs.
So, how does one establish or acquire credibility in such a diffuse and anarchic medium?
Enter Stanford University's "Web Credibility Project".
They define themselves thus:
"Our goal is to understand what leads people to believe what they find on the Web. We hope this knowledge will enhance Web site design and promote future research on Web credibility. As part of this ongoing project we are:
* Performing quantitative research on Web credibility.
* Collecting all public information on Web credibility.
* Acting as a clearinghouse for this information.
* Facilitating research and discussion about Web credibility.
* Helping designers create credible Web sites."
Examples of current projects: Timeliness: How does having out-of-date content affect the credibility of a Web site? Interaction: How does having a personalized interaction with a Web site affect its credibility? Negative Content: How does displaying negative content associated with a branded web site affect the credibility of the brand?
It is useful to confine ourselves to this definition of trust:
"The subjective belief, perception, or conviction that information provided is true, factual, and objective, and that commitments undertaken, explicitly, or implicitly, will be honored fully and in a timely manner".
Such perception, belief, or conviction are based on:
* Past experience in general (with spam, with merchants, or providers, with a similar product category, with the same type of content, etc.) and personal proclivity to trust or to distrust
* Experience with the specific merchant or provider (whether personal or gleaned from other people's feedback - reviews, complaints, and opinions)
There is little that a merchant can do about the former. The latter is, expectedly, influenced
* Professionalism (as evident in Web site design, e-commerce facilities, user-friendliness, navigability, links to other relevant Web pages, links from other Web sites, ease and speed of download, updated content, proofreading, domain name which matches the company's name, availability, multilingualism, etc.)
* Trustworthiness (lack of bias, good intentions, truthfulness, thoroughness, objectivity, expertise and author credentials, knowledgeable sources and treatment, citations and bibliography), and what the authors of the research call "Real World Feel" (physical address, phone/fax numbers, non-Web e-mail address, photos of facilities and staff, audio recording, ownership by a not for profit organization, URL ending with ORG).
* Commercial Web sites are less trusted. Cluttered ads, paid subscriptions, e-commerce enabled forms - all reduce the site's credibility! This is especially true if the entire site is a one, big ad and when it is hard to distinguish ads from content.
* Track record (how veteran is the merchant, past financial performance, credit history, brand name recognition, lists of customers, etc.)
* Selection (how many products are carried, how often is inventory refreshed, etc.)
* Advertising (is the company's business sufficiently lucrative to support a campaign?)
* Service (good service indicates a reassuring readiness to sacrifice the bottom line to cater to the customer's legitimate concerns, feedback forms, live support, etc.)
* Full disclosure of rates, prices, privacy policy, security issues, etc.
* Feedback from other users (opinions, reviews, comments, FAQs, support groups, etc.)
* Site rating and certification by trustworthy agencies (like the Better Business Bureau - BBB, VeriSign, TRUSTe) - or awards won (from credible and reputable organizations). Links from other, well-known and believable Web sites.
The Credibility Web discovered that trust in e-commerce is also influenced by idiosyncratic factors. Certain domain names (org) are more trusted than others (com). Too many ads, broken links, typos, outdated or old content - all diminish trust. In the absence of proven markers and behavioral guidelines, people seem to resort to extrapolation ("if they can't maintain their own Web site ...") and stereotypes (e.g., NGO's are more trustworthy than corporations).
As Web sites proliferate (Google indexes well over 3 billion now) and Web authoring becomes a routine task - the noise to signal ratio of garbage to useful information is bound to deteriorate. Search engines already incorporate crude measures of credibility in their rankings (e.g., the number of links from external Web sites). But, to remain useful, search engines (and Web directories) would do well to rate Web content more comprehensively and thoroughly. They should rank Web sites by authoritativeness, reliability, and objectivity, for instance.
Research shows that 75% of all respondents resort to the Internet as a primary information provider. The inundation of irrelevant material caused most surfers to confine their surfing to 10 Web sites (the equivalent of "anchors" in shopping malls) which they deem reliable, timely, accurate, objective, authoritative, and credible. The rest of the Internet gets the leftovers. This worrying trend can be reversed only through the emergence of independent and commercially-viable rating agencies. Web sites (at least the business ones) should be willing to pay for credible rating to enhance their stickiness and attract monetizable "eyeballs". In the absence of such third party accreditation, the Internet risks both irrelevance and disrepute.
In the "brick and mortar" world, credibility is associated with brands. A brand, in effect, guarantees the quality and specifications of a product (think McDonald's hamburgers), its performance (think Palm), level of service and commitment to customer care (Amazon), variety, or price (Wal-Mart). Brands are sustained and enhanced by advertising campaigns. The content or sales pitch of specific ads are often less important than the message conveyed by the very existence of a campaign: "This company is rich enough (read: stable, reliable, trustworthy, here to stay) to spend millions on advertising".
The Internet has very few brands (Yahoo!, Amazon) - and some of them are tarnished. Some "old media" brands have entered the fray (Barnes and Noble, The Wall Street Journal, the Britannica) - hitherto without much success. The overwhelming bulk of Web content is created or disseminated by small time entrepreneurs and monomaniacs.
So, how does one establish or acquire credibility in such a diffuse and anarchic medium?
Enter Stanford University's "Web Credibility Project".
They define themselves thus:
"Our goal is to understand what leads people to believe what they find on the Web. We hope this knowledge will enhance Web site design and promote future research on Web credibility. As part of this ongoing project we are:
* Performing quantitative research on Web credibility.
* Collecting all public information on Web credibility.
* Acting as a clearinghouse for this information.
* Facilitating research and discussion about Web credibility.
* Helping designers create credible Web sites."
Examples of current projects: Timeliness: How does having out-of-date content affect the credibility of a Web site? Interaction: How does having a personalized interaction with a Web site affect its credibility? Negative Content: How does displaying negative content associated with a branded web site affect the credibility of the brand?
It is useful to confine ourselves to this definition of trust:
"The subjective belief, perception, or conviction that information provided is true, factual, and objective, and that commitments undertaken, explicitly, or implicitly, will be honored fully and in a timely manner".
Such perception, belief, or conviction are based on:
* Past experience in general (with spam, with merchants, or providers, with a similar product category, with the same type of content, etc.) and personal proclivity to trust or to distrust
* Experience with the specific merchant or provider (whether personal or gleaned from other people's feedback - reviews, complaints, and opinions)
There is little that a merchant can do about the former. The latter is, expectedly, influenced
* Professionalism (as evident in Web site design, e-commerce facilities, user-friendliness, navigability, links to other relevant Web pages, links from other Web sites, ease and speed of download, updated content, proofreading, domain name which matches the company's name, availability, multilingualism, etc.)
* Trustworthiness (lack of bias, good intentions, truthfulness, thoroughness, objectivity, expertise and author credentials, knowledgeable sources and treatment, citations and bibliography), and what the authors of the research call "Real World Feel" (physical address, phone/fax numbers, non-Web e-mail address, photos of facilities and staff, audio recording, ownership by a not for profit organization, URL ending with ORG).
* Commercial Web sites are less trusted. Cluttered ads, paid subscriptions, e-commerce enabled forms - all reduce the site's credibility! This is especially true if the entire site is a one, big ad and when it is hard to distinguish ads from content.
* Track record (how veteran is the merchant, past financial performance, credit history, brand name recognition, lists of customers, etc.)
* Selection (how many products are carried, how often is inventory refreshed, etc.)
* Advertising (is the company's business sufficiently lucrative to support a campaign?)
* Service (good service indicates a reassuring readiness to sacrifice the bottom line to cater to the customer's legitimate concerns, feedback forms, live support, etc.)
* Full disclosure of rates, prices, privacy policy, security issues, etc.
* Feedback from other users (opinions, reviews, comments, FAQs, support groups, etc.)
* Site rating and certification by trustworthy agencies (like the Better Business Bureau - BBB, VeriSign, TRUSTe) - or awards won (from credible and reputable organizations). Links from other, well-known and believable Web sites.
The Credibility Web discovered that trust in e-commerce is also influenced by idiosyncratic factors. Certain domain names (org) are more trusted than others (com). Too many ads, broken links, typos, outdated or old content - all diminish trust. In the absence of proven markers and behavioral guidelines, people seem to resort to extrapolation ("if they can't maintain their own Web site ...") and stereotypes (e.g., NGO's are more trustworthy than corporations).
As Web sites proliferate (Google indexes well over 3 billion now) and Web authoring becomes a routine task - the noise to signal ratio of garbage to useful information is bound to deteriorate. Search engines already incorporate crude measures of credibility in their rankings (e.g., the number of links from external Web sites). But, to remain useful, search engines (and Web directories) would do well to rate Web content more comprehensively and thoroughly. They should rank Web sites by authoritativeness, reliability, and objectivity, for instance.
Research shows that 75% of all respondents resort to the Internet as a primary information provider. The inundation of irrelevant material caused most surfers to confine their surfing to 10 Web sites (the equivalent of "anchors" in shopping malls) which they deem reliable, timely, accurate, objective, authoritative, and credible. The rest of the Internet gets the leftovers. This worrying trend can be reversed only through the emergence of independent and commercially-viable rating agencies. Web sites (at least the business ones) should be willing to pay for credible rating to enhance their stickiness and attract monetizable "eyeballs". In the absence of such third party accreditation, the Internet risks both irrelevance and disrepute.
Jamaican OverDrive - LCD's in LDC's
OverDrive - an e-commerce, software conversion and e-publishing applications leader - has just expanded an e-book technology centre by adding 200 e-book editors. This happened in Montego Bay, Jamaica - one of the less privileged spots on earth. The centre now provides a vertical e-publishing service - from manuscript editing to conversion to Quark (for POD), Adobe, and MS Reader ebook formats. Thus, it is not confined to the classic sweatshop cum production centre so common in Less Developed Countries (LDC's). It is a full fledged operation with access to cutting edge technology.
The Jamaican OverDrive is the harbinger of things to come and the outcome of a confluence of a few trends.
First, there is the insatiable appetite big publishers (such as McGraw-Hill, Random House, and Harper Collins) have developed to converting their hitherto inertial backlists into e-books. Gone are the days when e-books were perceived as merely a novel form of packaging. Publishers understood the cash potential this new distribution channel offers and the value added to stale print tomes in the conversion process. This epiphany is especially manifest in education and textbook publishing.
Then there is the maturation of industry standards, readers and audiences. Both the supply side (title lists) and the demand side (readership) have increased. Giants like Microsoft have successfully entered the fray with new e-book reader applications, clearer fonts, and massive marketing. Retailers - such as Barnes and Noble - opened their gates to e-books. A host of independent publishers make good use of the negligible-cost distribution channel that the Internet is. Competition and positioning are already fierce - a good sign.
The Internet used to be an English, affluent middle-class, white collar, male phenomenon. It has long lost these attributes. The digital divides that opened up with the early adoption of the Net by academe and business - are narrowing. Already there are more women than men users and English is the language of less than half of all web sites. The wireless Net will grant developing countries the chance to catch up.
Astute entrepreneurs are bound to take advantage of the business-friendly profile of the manpower and investment-hungry governments of some developing countries. It is not uncommon to find a mastery of English, a college degree in the sciences, readiness to work outlandish hours at a fraction of wages in Germany or the USA - all combined in one employee in these deprived countries. India has sprouted a whole industry based on these competitive endowments.
Here is how Steve Potash, OverDrive's CEO, explains his daring move in OverDrive's press release dated May 22, 2001:
"Everyone we are partnering with in the US and worldwide has been very excited and delighted by the tremendous success and quality of eBook production from OverDrive Jamaica. Jamaica has tremendous untapped talent in its young people. Jamaica is the largest English-speaking nation in the Caribbean and their educational and technical programs provide us with a wealth of quality candidates for careers in electronic publishing. We could not have had this success without the support and responsiveness of the Jamaican government and its agencies. At every stage the agencies assisted us in opening our technology centre and staffing it with trained and competent eBook professionals. OverDrive Jamaica will be pioneering many of the advances for extending books, reference materials, textbooks, literature and journals into new digital channels - and will shortly become the foremost centre for eBook automation serving both US and international markets".
Druanne Martin, OverDrive's Director of publishing services elaborates:
"With Jamaica and Cleveland, Ohio sharing the same time zone (EST), we have our US and Jamaican production teams in sync. Jamaica provides a beautiful and warm climate, literally, for us to build long-term partnerships and to invite our publishing and content clients to come and visit their books in production".
The Jamaican Minister of Industry, Commerce and Technology, the Hon. Phillip Paulwell reciprocates:
"We are proud that OverDrive has selected Jamaica to extend its leadership in eBook technology. OverDrive is benefiting from the investments Jamaica has made in developing the needed infrastructure for IT companies to locate and build skilled workforces here."
There is nothing new in outsourcing back office work (insurance claims processing, air ticket reservations, medical records maintenance) to third world countries, such as (the notable example) India. Research and Development is routinely farmed out to aspiring first world countries such as Israel and Ireland. But OverDrive's Jamaican facility is an example of something more sophisticated and more durable. Western firms are discovering the immense pools of skills, talent, innovation, and top notch scientific and other education often offered even by the poorest of nations. These multinationals entrust the locals now with more than keyboarding and responding to customer queries using fake names. The Jamaican venture is a business partnership. In a way, it is a topsy-turvy world. Digital animation is produced in India and consumed in the States. The low compensation of scientists attracts the technology and R&D arms of the likes of General Electric to Asia and Intel to Israel. In other words, there are budding signs of a reversing brain drain - from West to East.
E-publishing is at the forefront of software engineering, e-consumerism, intellectual property technologies, payment systems, conversion applications, the mobile Internet, and, basically, every important trend in network and computing and digital content. Its migration to warmer and cheaper climates may be inevitable. OverDrive sounds happy enough.
The Jamaican OverDrive is the harbinger of things to come and the outcome of a confluence of a few trends.
First, there is the insatiable appetite big publishers (such as McGraw-Hill, Random House, and Harper Collins) have developed to converting their hitherto inertial backlists into e-books. Gone are the days when e-books were perceived as merely a novel form of packaging. Publishers understood the cash potential this new distribution channel offers and the value added to stale print tomes in the conversion process. This epiphany is especially manifest in education and textbook publishing.
Then there is the maturation of industry standards, readers and audiences. Both the supply side (title lists) and the demand side (readership) have increased. Giants like Microsoft have successfully entered the fray with new e-book reader applications, clearer fonts, and massive marketing. Retailers - such as Barnes and Noble - opened their gates to e-books. A host of independent publishers make good use of the negligible-cost distribution channel that the Internet is. Competition and positioning are already fierce - a good sign.
The Internet used to be an English, affluent middle-class, white collar, male phenomenon. It has long lost these attributes. The digital divides that opened up with the early adoption of the Net by academe and business - are narrowing. Already there are more women than men users and English is the language of less than half of all web sites. The wireless Net will grant developing countries the chance to catch up.
Astute entrepreneurs are bound to take advantage of the business-friendly profile of the manpower and investment-hungry governments of some developing countries. It is not uncommon to find a mastery of English, a college degree in the sciences, readiness to work outlandish hours at a fraction of wages in Germany or the USA - all combined in one employee in these deprived countries. India has sprouted a whole industry based on these competitive endowments.
Here is how Steve Potash, OverDrive's CEO, explains his daring move in OverDrive's press release dated May 22, 2001:
"Everyone we are partnering with in the US and worldwide has been very excited and delighted by the tremendous success and quality of eBook production from OverDrive Jamaica. Jamaica has tremendous untapped talent in its young people. Jamaica is the largest English-speaking nation in the Caribbean and their educational and technical programs provide us with a wealth of quality candidates for careers in electronic publishing. We could not have had this success without the support and responsiveness of the Jamaican government and its agencies. At every stage the agencies assisted us in opening our technology centre and staffing it with trained and competent eBook professionals. OverDrive Jamaica will be pioneering many of the advances for extending books, reference materials, textbooks, literature and journals into new digital channels - and will shortly become the foremost centre for eBook automation serving both US and international markets".
Druanne Martin, OverDrive's Director of publishing services elaborates:
"With Jamaica and Cleveland, Ohio sharing the same time zone (EST), we have our US and Jamaican production teams in sync. Jamaica provides a beautiful and warm climate, literally, for us to build long-term partnerships and to invite our publishing and content clients to come and visit their books in production".
The Jamaican Minister of Industry, Commerce and Technology, the Hon. Phillip Paulwell reciprocates:
"We are proud that OverDrive has selected Jamaica to extend its leadership in eBook technology. OverDrive is benefiting from the investments Jamaica has made in developing the needed infrastructure for IT companies to locate and build skilled workforces here."
There is nothing new in outsourcing back office work (insurance claims processing, air ticket reservations, medical records maintenance) to third world countries, such as (the notable example) India. Research and Development is routinely farmed out to aspiring first world countries such as Israel and Ireland. But OverDrive's Jamaican facility is an example of something more sophisticated and more durable. Western firms are discovering the immense pools of skills, talent, innovation, and top notch scientific and other education often offered even by the poorest of nations. These multinationals entrust the locals now with more than keyboarding and responding to customer queries using fake names. The Jamaican venture is a business partnership. In a way, it is a topsy-turvy world. Digital animation is produced in India and consumed in the States. The low compensation of scientists attracts the technology and R&D arms of the likes of General Electric to Asia and Intel to Israel. In other words, there are budding signs of a reversing brain drain - from West to East.
E-publishing is at the forefront of software engineering, e-consumerism, intellectual property technologies, payment systems, conversion applications, the mobile Internet, and, basically, every important trend in network and computing and digital content. Its migration to warmer and cheaper climates may be inevitable. OverDrive sounds happy enough.
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