E-books and e-publishing by Samuel Vaknin (summer reading list txt) 📖

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 institutions and 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 shallowed 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 creators and distributors.

 

Jamaican Overdrive - LDC’s and LCD’s

By: Sam Vaknin

 

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,