I came across this post about “Things No One Gives Microsoft Credit For (But Should)“, which I thought seemed a bit… uninformed. But I was surprised to realize that it was posted on Gizmodo, which I had expected to post more accurate and educated content. So, as there is nothing good on TV right now (or more specifically, nothing good on “my” TV right now, thanks to my wife) I thought I’d pick it apart;

1. Windows is on the vast majority of the world’s computers, creating a virtually ubiquitous platform that anyone can develop for. That actually breeds innovation and development. Yes, Microsoft fosters innovation. While it’s much easier for griefers to be mean if everyone’s on the same platform, that ubiquity gives us a common ground to drive forward on.

Well, as a starting point, this one is perfectly true. There is now an almost ubiquitous platform for software developers to work with. (Although you could question whether the array of Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows NT, Windows ME and Windows 98 which are all currently supported by Microsoft, is really a single ubiquitous platform.) But while this cycle of new versions can make life difficult, there is this common ground that we can all work on and drive forward from. That is, provided that you have the sort of computer that can run the latest versions of Windows (which rules out all those things like TVs and mobile phones that happen to have computers inside them), and that you’re not bothered about buying licence(s) from Microsoft to use it.

But what’s happened more recently? Well there’s the idea of a new ubiquitous platform that anyone can develop for; the World Wide Web. By following the open standards of how this works, instead of a ubiquitous desktop platform, we now have a ubiquitous global platform. One which Microsoft have repeatedly tried to dominate and turn into an extension of it’s ubiquitous desktop platform by closely tying it in with Windows-only technologies.

Stan Seiler, senior docent at the Computer History Museum, credits Microsoft for creating the common UI concept—”a common look and feel across multiple applications,” something that “couldn’t be pioneered until somebody had a whole suite of applications,” which Microsoft was among the first to do. They dragged third-party developers into following it as well, and voila, now most stuff works and looks the same across an OS.

But in saying this, he does a massive discredit to the operating systems that came before; firstly Xerox for creating the basic user interface that we now take for granted; WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get- the idea of what something looks like on the screen is the same as what it looks like if you print it out) and WIMP (Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointer.) Then there’s Apple’s work using WIMP in a commercial personal computer and popularising it. But, you know, it’s true that Microsoft built today’s homogenous PC platform. Whether they created all the parts that they built it from depends on what you think of ideas like intellectual property, but can you really say that they came up with the idea, or that it was necessarily a good thing for the world? More on that later…

But the idea of giving credit to Microsoft for creating the ubiquitous platform that “the world’s computers can use as a common ground to work forwards from” is something I find hard to agree with.

2. Microsoft is basically responsible for the two-button mouse. Will Smith from Maximum PC (but not quite Hancock) gives the Gates machine props for really bringing the mouse to business computing with “the one-two punch of Windows 3.0 and Office.” More than that, it created a simple standard for two-button mousing: left-click equals action, right-click equals choices. Love your scroll wheel? (I do.) Microsoft, baby. Apple’s mouse philosophy is just silly.

Well, when Douglas Engelbart invented the mouse in 1969, it had one button, but subsequent versions had three buttons (with the idea being “as many as can fit on”- 3 was as many as could fit at the time.) The idea at the time was that it would be used with one hand on the mouse and the other on what’s called a Chord Keyboard- where different combinations of buttons are used to enter letters with one hand. (Apparently when it was tested against the standard typewriter keyboard, typists found that they could type faster using a chord keyboard with minimal training.) Then that idea was taken by Xerox, who developed the idea of a mouse you would grab when you needed it, using a standard 2-handed keyboard for most of the time, creating the basic idea of the mouse that we have today. (At a time when light-pens, trackballs, joysticks, tablets and cursor keys were all being trialled as ways to operate a computer.)

Here’s a picture of the Xerox Star- the first commercial system that used the mouse, released in 1981 (4 years before Microsoft’s first version of Windows.) Count the buttons.

But this also overlooks what Apple did with bringing the mouse to the market and making the mouse a part of a more usable and commercially successful user interface; simplifying the mouse to a single-button concept, and successfully turning the focus of the user interface from a string of text to a 2-dimensional, graphical interface.

So I don’t think that you can really give Microsoft credit for the two buttoned mouse- either for creating it, or for making it popular.

3. Microsoft popularized the concept that software has value and is worth paying for it. Seiler says “it might sound obvious… but it was an important change in the mindset of people.” No one had done it on the scale Microsoft did. Today this leads to some weirdness: There’s a different price for each version of Windows. But this theoretically based on how much value Microsoft think is packed into each version of Windows (you can debate this, of course). But unless you’re a freetard, you probably don’t think the idea itself of paying for software is insane.

This is one that I wouldn’t disagree with. In a commercial market, putting a software suite together while any competitor would be free to re-use your work, making sales incredibly difficult, would of course slow down growth and development. Software has value, and the fact that it’s easily copied shouldn’t be allowed to detract from the value of the software, and the effort that goes into it’s creation.

Similarly, we’re in a position where the value of music and video needs to be recognised today; the same fight over how this value should be recognised is going on at the moment- is the answer in money from subscription services, advertising revenues, state funding… or something else? I don’t know.

But if someone buys a piece of software and then gives it away to other people for free (without the original developer getting some sort of payment that matches it’s value) then it would be incredibly detrimental for the original software developer, which would be bad for innovation.

I’ve blogged before about Bill Gates’ “Open letter to hobbyists”, in which he was asking people to stop copying software as it devalued the work that went into making it, at a time (way back in the 1970s) when the right to copy software was being seen in a similar light as the scientific community’s right to share information, understanding and knowledge.

So I’m utterly, 100% behind the idea that software has value. But there is also that argument about free software- not software that doesn’t cost money, but software that you’re free to modify, because you have access to the source code. If it doesn’t work, then anyone with access to the source code can make it work. Yes, it means that you can’t stop it from being redistributed once you’ve let it go. But it also means that if you want to learn how to program, then you can study existing programs and learn from them.

Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be a programmer?

No, the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system.”

According to ‘Programmers at work’ (Microsoft Press, Redmond, WA [1986]) – note- I found that quote online and haven’t read the book), that’s Bill Gates’ answer to the question.

If you’re the only ones who have access to the source code for your operating system- that ubiquitous platform that Point 1 talked about- it also makes it difficult for other people to compete when making applications that will run on that operating system. Especially when not only is the source code not available, but the full detailing of how it works is not even published (the subject of an ongoing fight between Microsoft and the EU.)

So- credit for establishing the concept of value of software- sure, I’ll give Microsoft credit for doing that. Shame they didn’t make sure that other people could benefit from the value of that work in the way that they benefited from the value of other people’s work. Maybe they didn’t recognise what they were doing themselves?

4. Microsoft’s intimidation leads to innovation. The flipside of Microsoft’s scale and success is that everyone hates them. (Duh.) While this sometimes results in unproductive pissing and moaning, it often drives companies to try to outdo the behemoth, after which Microsoft strives to catch up before getting leapfrogged again. This process benefits everyone.

Everyone except those who try to drive innovation which conflicts with Microsoft’s interests, that is. I mean, I agree that a consistent user interface is a good thing (but disagree that it was a Microsoft idea/creation), but Microsoft have attempted to block other companies from using elements of the same user interface. Not allowing anyone else to improve on Microsoft’s platform doesn’t exactly drive innovation.

But it’s the example of Internet Explorer that I found an odd choice to illustrate this idea. Sure- Internet Explorer drove Netscape to develop and improve their browser, but it also forced them to play Microsoft’s game when they did it. (The quotation “never argue with an idiot, because they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience” springs to mind.)

The most famous example is the Browser Wars. Netscape Navigator pushed Internet Exploder forward (not only feature-wise, but leading Microsoft to bundle it with the OS, a big step in and of itself) before IE killed it and achieved a virtual browser monopoly.

When Microsoft decided that they wanted a web browser, they bought Internet Explorer (from Spyglass- who are still credited in the “About” info), then promptly gave it away for free- making it impossible for Spyglass to carry on selling their browser and making any money. (See point 2…) They then threw all they could into it’s development, with more people working on Internet Explorer than Netscape had in their entire company.

Meanwhile, as Netscape gave their browser away for free, making their money from selling server software, Microsoft were incorporating server software into Windows (that ubiquitous platform that point 1 talked about), meaning that once you’d paid for that, you didn’t need to pay for server software. In devaluing Netscape’s work (as talked about in Point 3) by funding from other parts of the company, they drove them out of business.

Then, as the original point mentioned, they included Internet Explorer with Windows, putting the nail in Netscape’s coffin. If they had continued to develop and improve Internet Explorer, the kinds of advances that we have seen in web browsers in the last few years could have appeared much sooner. But while between 1995 and 2001, Microsoft released six versions of Internet Explorer, between 2001 and 2006, they didn’t release a single upgrade.

What else should we give credit to Msft under Bill’s watch?

How about the way that, back when the Personal Computer was killing the idea of timesharing business machines (where computer terminals allowed many users to use a single machine- meaning that the idle milliseconds when a computer wasn’t actually working, it could be working for someone else), Microsoft were promising that their users would be able to work collaboratively on documents on their systems too— just like their competitors’ timesharing systems were already doing— in just a couple of years. That was back in the 1980s. Microsoft delivered on this promise with Microsoft Office in 2007.

Then there’s the way that they lock in their market with their file formats- if someone sends you their work in Word, Excel or Powerpoint format and you haven’t bought a copy of Microsoft’s software (and often the operating system to run it on) then you can have some serious problems opening and editing it.

Going back to Internet Explorer, there’s what they did with the idea of the World Wide Web. When computers were first connected to one another on a network, you had to understand how both computers worked if you wanted to access information on one from the other. The idea of the World Wide Web was a common language that would let people access information between computers, no matter what sort of computer it was. Microsoft did their best to tie their web browser into the operating system, using functions that were only available to Windows- defeating the intention of the World Wide Web. (Not a problem you will have seen, unless you’ve found that a website that uses this for something like security checks won’t work outside Internet Explorer- something that happens pretty rarely these days, but for years was a huge problem for non-IE users.

As for the standards of the web, Microsoft have an interesting time ahead with Internet Explorer 8, which is apparently going to start showing pages according to standards that were set back in 1998 (for CSS 1). Which means that anyone who relies on a web page that they’ve only used with Internet Explorer 6 might want to make sure that it’s not going to be affected by the newer version. (If you thought upgrading to Internet Explorer 7 caused problems, then it looks like you might have a rough ride ahead.)

I’m sure there’s more, but that should do for starters…

The ultimate problem is that whatever market forces and dynamics do, it’s still difficult to move from a mediocre platform to a better one. People are confused by technology, and often scared of it, so moving someone from what they are familiar with and (relatively) comfortable to something new is a difficult job at the best of times.

This means that when something better than Windows (Outlook, Excel, Word etc.) is out there, the additional complications that Microsoft have put in place can make the effort of moving platforms greater than the benefits you get from the better platform.

It’s the kind of thing that you see in keyboards; the QWERTY layout (named after the first keys along the top row) was designed to stop typewriter keys from jamming. Typewriters were designed for blind people to be able to write with (it was about 100 years until someone had the idea of moving the mechanism so that you could actually see what was being typed.) Today, we use the same layout on virtually every computer keyboard- even though better keyboard layouts have been designed that allow people to type faster. But re-learning how to type is more effort for all but the most efficient secretaries that few people are going to bother trying, so the standardised layout we are all familiar with will probably be with us for as long as the idea of the alphabet under your fingers remains.

Hell- it’s hard enough adapting to a foreign keyboard, where one or two letters or punctuation marks are in a different place. Or using an unfamiliar keyboard when buttons like delete or page up/down are moved around. (Especially if you’re a touch-typist.)

So not just the idea of paying for software, but the idea of paying Microsoft every time you want a computer to work in the way you are familiar with is looking likely to be with us for a while yet.

So there’s something else they should probably be getting credit for…

When you want to look at a web page, the server that it’s on needs to know what information to send out, and where to send it. So, for example, for your visit to this site, there is some information that you have had to send, which can easily be recorded.

Your user agent (that is, the is type of operating system and web browser that you’re using to see the page) can be identified as CCBot/1.0 (+http://www.commoncrawl.org/bot.html)

The page you came here from was

Your IP address is 38.107.179.213

Many websites rely on the ability to “remember” certain information. For example, when you log into a website, it’s obviously important that when you go to a different page on the site, it somehow knows that you’re still logged in under your own account. If you add something to a shopping basket then leave the site, it’s helpful if it’s still there next time you visit the site. If you choose to personalise a website in a certain way- for example, to change the number of results per page that a Google search shows you- then you want it to stay that way when you come back again. Or if you see an advert that leads you to buy a product, then the advertiser wants to know, because that’s the only way they can judge whether they are getting value for money from their advertising. (Especially if they are the kind brand who cares about their image and doesn’t want to litter thousands of websites with flashy and obtrusive advertising…)

To make this “memory” work, most sites will use cookies.

Cookies are simply small text files that are saved on your computer. You can see what’s stored in them- you will have a “cookies” folder somewhere on your computer which you can look in to see what cookies are being stored on your machine, and you can look at what information is stored in them by opening them up in a simple text editor like Notepad. Usually, these will mostly be things like unique numbers which correspond to an entry in the web servers’ database, identifying your computer with your online identity.

As is usually the case with technical matters, the level of understanding about cookies amongst most consumers is probably best described as “confused.” One of the findings of a study by InsightExpress in 2005 were that 77% of people said that they knew what cookies were, but when asked to describe them only 25% could give a correct description. That means that there are more people who don’t have any idea what they are than who actually know what they are— and that most people think they know what they are, but don’t.

Many of the incorrect definitions said that cookies were executable files placed automatically on a computer, or “hidden attachments that allow unauthorized access and tracking abilities.” Others stated that while cookies make Web sign-ins easier, they can also let spyware in to infect a hard drive. Some wrong answers confused cookies with cached Web pages or temporary Internet files.

In a second survey, users were asked to pick the most accurate description of cookies from a set of possible choices. Almost 29% chose to say a cookie was “a small file enabling a server to identify a browser end/user”, a reasonably close definition of the term. But another 25% said a cookie was “a program that tracks all of the sites a browser/ end-user visits”, a notion that brings cookies into close relation with spyware. More than 13% said cookies can record users’ e-mail and Web activity”, while about 3% said they generate pop-up ads.

The indication that users are ascribing evil intent to cookies was made clearer in another portion of the InsightExpress survey. Asked to check off all the reasons that they delete cookies, two-thirds of respondents—66.5%– said they erase cookies to “protect my privacy/ prevent tracking.” That response was the second most widely given in the survey, following only “clean computer/ free up disk or memory”, something 77.4% of those polled said they agreed with.

Cookies carry a technical restriction, in that they can only be read and written from a single domain (ie. a cookie set by “domain.com” could be read and written by any page that falls under that domain- such as “domain.com/home.htm”— but not by “someoneelse.com.” However, pages can contain content that comes from other domains— such as advertising on other domains. So if you visit two completely unrelated websites that carry advertising from the same ad server, then your movements between those websites can be tracked using cookies.

The thing that makes it interesting is that people simply aren’t generally terribly interested in your personal information— that is, what you as an individual are doing on the internet. However, when your personal information is added to that of hundreds and thousands of others’, it becomes much more interesting, and valuable to online marketers. For example, if advertisers for a new car see that 20% of people who come their brand’s website leave, visit a financial website and then come back again, it suggests to them that people looking at financial websites to see what loans they can afford will be worth advertising their brand to, so that people who might be shopping for a different car might see it and want to investigate the competition. Alternatively, they might want to track how they got to a particular website and choose the adverts accordingly- so someone who came to a car website from a Google search for “cheap car” might be shown an advert that highlights the value, while one who came from a search for “eco friendly car” would be shown a different advert, highlighting it’s green credentials.

I talked about Facebook in pretty broad terms back in May;

There is always the possibility that a large corporation will buy them out, or advertising will increase to an unacceptable level, and users will start going on strike or boycotting the site in protest. The fact that Facebook has already turned down some very large offers from the likes of Yahoo makes me think that is very unlikely.

I believe that the future of the web lies in trust— who do you trust to give you the information you’re searching for, who do you trust with your credit card details, and who do you trust with your name and address?

Well, the recent launch of two new Facebook advertising programs have made the possibility of advertising “increasing to an unacceptable level” look somewhat more likely— not in terms of the volume of advertising, but in the way that advertising is targetted and delivered.

The first programme is Facebook Pages, where brands or companies can create their own profile page, and users can sign up as a “Fan”— much like becoming a “Friend” of another user, this lets the brand post items as notifications in the Fan’s news feed, and for Fan’s “interactions with the brand” to be posted in their friends’ news feeds.

The second, and much more controversial programme, is Facebook Beacon. This involves affiliated websites using cookies to share Facebook members’ activity on their own sites with Facebook, so that they can have their activity shared with their friends.

There are two key things that make Facebook’s Beacon different to the kind of tracking that we’ve seen before.

Firstly, they are showing a clear interest in you as an individual. Not just as “cookie number 46462156731242571″ who was one of 1000 people who visited sites x and y on their way to making an online purchase from site z (which might indicate that site y a good place for site z to advertise) but as Joe Websurfer, 23 years old from London with 120 friends, 40 of whom are interested in similar bands and hobbies etc. etc.

Secondly, they are pulling back the curtain and showing what’s happening behind the scenes. If you see your actions on one website being tracked on another, your first guess might be that they are sharing information— maybe you use the same email address for both websites, or if you clicked through from one site to the other, there might be something stored in the link address. But when people aren’t using the same usernames or email addresses, didn’t go from one to the other and simply don’t understand how Facebook knows what they were doing on eBay (or whatever affiliate they’ve been using), then it seems to be some sort of mysterious unexplainable voodoo. Because people don’t get any indication of what adverts other people might be seeing, they don’t know how, or even if, they are being tracked and targeted.

Of course, with the Internet being such a new and relatively unregulated medium, perhaps it’s up to the governments to ensure that individuals’ privacy is protected. The U.K. has something of a reputation for being a “Big Brother” state, due to the high numbers of CCTV cameras watching most of our towns and cities. But don’t expect the U.S. to be taking the lead either; a recent report by research agency Forrester said;

“We evaluated the sites of Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson. All of the sites failed our privacy and security criteria. Candidates should make trust a major element of their site design requirements.”

Meanwhile, the website for Harvard alumini, 02138 casts a critical eye over the ongoing dispute over Facebook’s origins. It’s not a new story— it’s been going on for a few years now, involving stolen ideas and code from the “ConnectU” social networking site which Zuckerberg was working on before launching Facebook, and his subsequent inconsistencies in his story about his involvement— but coming at a time when people might be questioning exactly what they are getting from Facebook for “free” and why they are being given it, it might be interesting to see how public awareness and perceptions of the issues surrounding Facebook and online privacy and security will change over the next few months.

One definition of New Media is ‘where technology meets communication.’

Another is ‘digital media.’

Yet another is ‘interactive media.’

All point towards the world of information technology and the ability for many-to-many communication; for the audience to be able to speak back to the producers or broadcasters, and enter into a dialogue or conversation.

My own generation may have memories of casting a critical eye over pictures sent into "The Gallery" in Tony Hart’s Hartbeat (now in an online form!), or remember the Saturday morning television TV jingles to encourage viewers to phone in to ask guests questions, play games and enter competitions (at a time when they were simply London numbers, rather than premium-rate lines.) So, is the new idea of "interactive media" fundamentally different to television show’s competitions, phone-ins and Points of View’s letters?

Well, yes.

The nature of TV, newspapers, magazines, cinema and "traditional media" in general is that it’s all built around the idea of sending a message out to the public/audience/consumers. Sure, amember of the audience can speak on the phone, or have their drawings shown to the country, but you can’t get a situation where every member of the TV audience can see their own content.

Digital television is finding ways to interact with a broadcast- a choice of commentators for a sports event, with playercam to take control of the coverage and chatrooms to talk about it yourself. No need to worry about phone rates (and fake callers)- just press a button on the remote control and have your own say.

The internet (which most digital media is in some way connected to) is the first many-to-many mass medium in the history of the human race, and the human race is still in the early stages of getting to grips with exactly what it is, how it works and how best to unlock it’s potential.

In other words, there’s no more need for fake audiences in a TV studio filled with mirrors to create the illusion that it’s more crowded than it actually is. There’s a whole new form of crowd noise to replace the prerecorded TV audiences.

Old "New Media"

In the past, whenever a new medium has been created it has always taken time for it to develop it’s potential. First, people use it in a way that they are already familiar with— the same way that they use existing media. Then they experiment with new things that can be done with it. Eventually, the new medium becomes established in it’s own right.

For example, when the printing press was created it’s immediate impact was in making it easier, cheaper and faster to copy information. A bible that had to be hand written could now be printed with a fraction of the time and energy. However, the consequences of this went far beyond it being easier to make a bible; all written texts easier to make and easier to get hold of, so literacy levels increased as more people had the opportunity to learn to read. Before the age of the printing press, news and other information had to be passed on through public assemblies and speeches; once literacy had been improved by the availability of texts, it was possible to take stories or information away, to be consumed at the individual’s place and time of choosing. The idea (if not the terminology) of "Timeshifting" and "Spaceshifting" was born.

As Marshall McLuhan has written about extensively, the relative importance of the senses had changed; news and stories were seen, rather than heard. The importance of voice, intonation and timing were diminished, and the importance of the actual words (now that’s all that were being passed on) increased. No longer did everyone have to go to church to hear the news, when they could take the news home with them.

Around 1450, Gutenberg’s printing press was most likely in operation. In 1517- Martin Luther’s 95 Theses was posted, and within months, printed copies were distributed across Europe- a major factor in the reformation. In 1660, the Royal Society was officially founded, with the motto "On the words of no one" ("Nullius in Verba"), signifying a commitment to establishing the truth of scientific matters through experiment rather than through citation of authority.

More recently, when television was invented, radio was already an established medium. So television was treated in the same way as radio- a presenter would sit down in a studio and read the news, only with a static camera pointing at them, sitting still in a chair, reading pretty much the same news that was read out on the radio. It took time for the medium to develop, and for producers to exploit the fact that the presenter didn’t need to be in the studio— they could go out and actually show the news from where it was happening; outside the Houses of Parliament or 10 Downing street. (Obviously, this also depended on the development of the technology; for cameras to get smaller, lighter, and batteries to improve.)

The Impact of New Media

So where are we with "New Media"; the internet, digital TV and radio, mobile phones and iPods, and whatever other devices that we can hardly imagine now, but won’t be able to imagine life without in ten years time?

So far, we’ve seen the initial stages, where it was seen as a new version of print. Online newspapers or magazines, catalogues and brochures; the early Web was much like a catalogue without the paper. Online advertising, as a result, mirrored print advertising; it’s easy to see the parallels between the standard advertising columns in a newspaper page and the clickable adverts around the sides of a web page, or the pop-up windows and the leaflets that fall from the pages of a magazine.

More recently, we’ve seen the explosion of broadband; with more bandwidth available, video has become a viable option. Suddenly, it seems that the internet isn’t the new Print any more; it’s the new TV. So, like they do with TV, advertisers have replaced static adverts with video clips and animations- even sound effects.

I mentioned in an earlier post about how the internet simply isn’t capable of delivering a real-time, national broadcast event like a world cup final or even a Christmas soap opera special in the way that existing media can. If it ever does catch up with TV and is able to broadcast high definition video to a nation, will it provide an alternative that will kill off television? Or will it just be a different way of delivering exactly the same content?

You could argue that we haven’t yet seen anything truly new in terms of advertising on the internet, and that the "real" innovation must still be around the corner. But perhaps it’s been there all along— instead of looking at how advertisers can buy a part of someone’s website to try to push a message across, simply look at their own brand’s websites.

So, once we’ve all figured out how best to use the internet- from customers and consumers through to advertisers, producers (hell, why not even governments?), what is going to be the longer lasting impact of the internet and digital media?

One possibility lies in the nature of the information which can now be transmitted cheaply and quickly. Perhaps the internet and increasingly advanced technologies will mark the end of the written word as the dominant method of communication and a return to the pre-Gutenberg art of storytelling, as video and audio become feasible alternatives to written texts, and letters and emails are replaced by podcasts or YouTube clips. I would imagine that it’s quicker for most people to record a short message on a webcam than to type an email saying the same thing, but whether it’s better probably depends on the nature of the message and it’s audience; what sort of effect being able to hear the tone of your voice would make to how it’s received.

Although an interesting idea, I think that it’s very unlikely to actually happen; just looking at the popularity of SMS messages and MSN messager, it seems that less is more when it comes to communication; people would still prefer to paint their own pictures; to tell people about where they are than just show them their surroundings. (Besides, if communication technologies became obsolete when
something "better" came along, then why would people listen to the
radio after TV was invented?)

Another possibility (and one which to me seems far more likely to happen) is in what’s currently labelled "Web 2.0"; blogs, social networking and user generated content, where the information uploaded is just as important as what’s downloaded. The reason I put so much importance on this is that the one feature of the internet that distinguishes it from television, radio, newspapers and all the other mass media that have come before is that it’s a two-way line of communication; "consumers" aren’t passive receivers of a stream of information, limited in their choice to a selection of television channels, radio stations or newspaper titles. Now they can be their own editors, choosing the sections of the news that they are interested in, selecting their preferred sources. They can even be their own journalists, writing their own editorials as blog posts or comments, or messages on social networking sites, or be their own directors, uploading their own videos to YouTube— even their own paparazzi, taking photos of celebrities they pass in the street with their mobile phone cameras and uploading them to the website of their choice.

Another more recent trend (one which isn’t necessarily related to "new media", but more with the increasing volume of media consumption) is the multitasking consumer, and the idea of "continuous partial attention". While someone may be primarily surfing the internet, playing a computer game or reading a newspaper, they might also have a TV on in the background which they are monitoring, ready to switch their attention to it if something interesting catches their eye. (Not necessarily a TV— it might be a radio, or an eye on an email inbox or MSN messager window, or watching out for a mobile phone alert.) Asking for a minute of someone’s time isn’t much— but asking for 60 seconds, continous and with their undiverted attention is becoming an increasingly large demand. If visitors to a website are then being presented with distracting adverts on the page to further add to the barrage of information they are trying to simultaneously process, then the actual attention that they are going to give to an advert is likely to be minimal— unless it’s something that they choose to give their attention to.

One interesting trend in online advertising that doesn’t really follow in the way it does with traditional media is that advertising is seen as directly supporting the website. Because users don’t usually pay to look at a website (in the way that we pay to read magazines or most newspapers), and running costs aren’t on the same scale, the connection between advertisers money and the work done by website owners is much more visible and apparent to the users. This might be a reason behind the fact that 18-34 year olds report being much more receptive to advertising on User Generated Content sites- because they see the advertisers as funding the service that the site provides them.

Same content + Different media => Different reactions

It’s not just the way we process media that’s changing. Technological advances mean that the media itself is also transforming. Is there a difference between watching a TV show in the living room, and watching the same show at a different time- or a different place? The obvious differences come from our surroundings— as anyone who has missed a bus or train stop while engrossed in a portable video or handheld game will know. But there’s also a difference in the media itself.

It’s clear that the same content will affect people differently when shown it in different ways. For example, there is a clear difference in the experiences of reading a novel, listening to a novel as an audiobook and watching a film or television adaptation of the novel. While it’s still (usually) the same story, apart from the more obvious aspects that while reading a novel allows the reader to create their own mental picture of the locations and characters while a film or TV adaptation creates the visual imagery on the audiences’ behalf, there are other more subtle factors that also change the way we process the different media.

Similarly, the experience of watching video on a mobile device or a computer at a desk is fundamentally different to watching it on a TV at home.

The printing press transformed the way we told each other news and stories- from something we were told by other people into something that we took in on our own, at our own pace and timing rather than those of whoever was passing on the information.

While authors and directors alike can play with the portrayal of time and general pacing of a story, a reader is more in control of the speed that a story proceeds; whether reading more quickly through an exciting or action packed passage, or the slower pacing of a more dialogue-intensive chapter. (Of course, saying that the reader is entirely in control of the speed and pacing of a novel would be to do a tremendous disservice to the skills of a writer; when Stephen Fry can criticise an author, saying that he is a "writer of absolutely zero interest, insight, wit, understanding or ability" based on no more than the first word of a novel, the importance of every single word becomes apparent.)

With the Fordham Experiment in 1970, Eric McCluhan set out to illustrate the more subtle differences between the perceptions of media more clearly, showing how similar audiences will respond differently to exactly the same content when presented it in different ways. Two groups, after watching the same piece of film when shown it as either a film-style projection from behind the audience or a projection from behind (to create a television-like appearance) give significantly differring reactions.

The researchers concluded that the ‘light on’ (film-style projection) subjects exhibited a sensory shift characterized by a drop in visual sense and an increase in tactile sense; the number of comments on specific scenes or cinematic techniques dropped, while comments on a sense of involvement and a loss of time increased with "light-through" (TV- style) projection.

Whether this is because of the way our senses process the information or due to the cultural differences to the way we perceive or preconceive television and cinema as different media is difficult to say, but the indication is that there is certainly a difference in the way that we process the same information when it’s presented in different formats. I think that’s something worth bearing in mind at a stage where the approach to the internet seems to have shifted from "digital print" to "digital television", and still on it’s way to being a genuinely new medium.

Handing control to the consumer

Charlie Brooker has been credited with the observation that when internet comedy hits television, it immediately stops being funny.

When a programme is broadcast on the television or radio, the vast majority of the audience will listen to it at the same time—the moment determined by the broadcaster. For internet use, on the other hand, the consumer is much more in control; the fact that content is being delivered rather than broadcast obviously lends itself more readily towards time-shifted or space-shifted consumer behaviour. When you’ve chosen your search engine, your search terms, which of the results to click on, and which page on the site you land at to look at (and at the time that you feel like looking at it), there’s a personal connection that goes beyond your choice of TV channels or shows, or which is your favourite national newspaper.

Perhaps there’s something in the nature of a medium so fragmented, yet so interacitve and immediate that makes it feel somehow personal when it’s exposed on television to the masses; in the way we would react differently to seeing the same story when it involves a complete stranger, compared to when it involves someone we know?

In an age where devices with 160Gb and a colour screen can fit into the front pocket of a shirt and be taken in people’s stride as regular a day to day device, wireless internet connections are (to me) the area of technology where magic still exits. The fact that on the latest iPods, I can watch videos on a screen which takes up more of my field of vision than my TV but is thin enough to fit into a suit pocket without spoiling the lines impresses me- but it’s when I’m near an internet hotspot and I can instantly watch one of hundreds of thousands of YouTube videos that I’m still amazed; especially when considering that just 5 years ago, broadband internet penetration in the UK was at just 7%, and the restricted bandwidth meant that the idea of just streaming audio was difficult to take seriously- let alone streaming video.

What’s happening in the industry with WiFi in the UK is quite interesting— particularly when compared to the 3G mobile networks, the other wireless high speed data channel. Unlike 3G, as WiFi operates in an unlicenced frequency band, there haven’t been any licences for billions of pounds to be paid to use the frequencies. You just need a wireless router (about £40 in the shops, but usually freely provided by broadband suppliers) and you can set up your own hot spot, allowing access to whoever you want. If you like, you can set up a landing page, so that anyone who connects is directed to a page of your choosing before going on with their internet browsing- a whole new space, which could be a branding or advertising opportunity, or a payment area if further access is something to be charged for.

However, there are still problems with the technology; security on wireless networks has come under fire- WEP (the simplest but most widespread form of protection) is generally seen as being insecure; WPA and WPA2 are more secure but devices which support them are less widespread, with WPA2 only being mandatory on new devices since September 2006.

Last week, McDonalds announced the roll-out of free high speed wireless internet in almost 1200 UK restaurants by the end of the year, which will make it the biggest provider of free wireless internet access on the UK. Network provider The Cloud will be delivering the service- other services on the Cloud network are free access for Nintendo DS owners, free access for iPhone users through the O2 network, and exclusively for iPod Touch owners is the £3.99 a month unlimited WiFi service. (The iPod Touch is essentially the iPod element of the iPhone- with no phone or bluetooth functionality, but with WiFi connectivity so that you can connect to the internet at a hotspot and buy new music from the iTunes store, browse the web or watch YouTube videos.) Also last week, the BBC announced that it’s online services will be free to all over the Cloud’s network.

National Express are also introducing a WiFi service on their Milton Keynes to London services, and in December they plan to introduce free WiFi to trains, when they take over GNER’s licence.

Meanwhile, also in the world of the wireless internet, BT have announced a partnership with the FON wireless network community. FON members allow one another to use their wireless access points, effectively creating a network of semi-public WiFi hotspots at their own homes. This requires either a special wireless router or modifications to an existing router, which the terms and conditions of most Broadband suppliers (including BT, until recently) forbid.

In the US, Starbucks have partnered with Apple to provide a special service in Starbucks cafes; when a customer with an iPhone or iPod Touch comes in range of a WiFi hotspot in the cafe, it connects to the in-house iTunes player and a special Starbucks button appears on the menu, listing the last 10 tracks played and linking to an easy download through the iTunes Music Store, which is also available through the service.

As well as the opportunities for online services such as the iTunes Music Store, or local services (ie. wifi hotspots for the public), there is also an opportunity to provide services in between. Taking a visitor directly to detailed menus for a restaurant, perhaps, or show listings at a cinema, or a stock catalogue for a shop. When online information is a key part of the shopping process and users can check Amazon prices from their mobile phone- perhaps while contemplating a purchase of the same item instore, there’s an opportunity for in house services that can be provided on hand to provide a competitive advantage.

Ultimately, the internet is built on a "many-to-many" principle; instead of one pathway between any two points on the network, there are many alternatives. Where many pathways converge at a single point, there can be problems.

Server Strain

A site like YouTube can certainly provide television-like content, and the distinction between online video like YouTube and television broadcasts are being blurred; devices such as the Apple TV, which send YouTube videos directly to a television set, while IPTV provides television broadcasts over the internet.

However, even YouTube would probably struggle to provide a single live, nationwide or global event in the way that television can.

The most watched YouTube videos have yet (at the time of writing) to break the 60 million views mark- that’s the total number of people across the world who have watched it over the course of 18 months. Compare that to record breaking TV broadcasts, such as the Eastenders Christmas 1986 episode when 30.15 million viewers simultaneously watched Den Watts divorce Angie in the highest rated soap in British TV history, or when 32 million households watched the 1966 world cup final. (Although even these figures pale in comparison with the most watched film, with an estimated 2 billion views worldwide.)

Nobody (outside some serious NDAs) knows how many servers YouTube or Google have or how their server software has been designed, so it’s hard to guess how they would handle large numbers of simultaneous hits to the same content. However, the bandwidth that every one of the UKs Internet households would require would probably cripple exchanges before Googles servers had a chance to deal with the challenge. A typical household might have signed up to a 4-8Mb connection, but tests reveal that broadband speeds are significantly less than advertised in the UK, especially when the networks are busy.

Even without the high load from streaming video, large websites can still be crippled when many people try to access them at once; such as in September this year when 25 million tried to register to buy tickets for a one-off Led Zepplin reunion concert. Even though the tickets were being sold on a lottery basis rather than "first come, first served", there were still as many as 100,000 hits per minute on the servers— enough to put them out of action. (In fact, such events are very similar to a typical Denial of Service attack; where a website or server is deliberately flooded with connection attempts, making "genuine" connections impossible.)

Packet Filtering and Net Neutrality

Net Neutrality has been a hot topic in the U.S. for a while now, probably made most famous by Senator Ted Steven’s “series of tubes” metaphor (probably better known as a running joke on The Daily Show than an accurate summary of a technological problem.)

The debate is over whether “Net Neutrality” regulation should be passed, forbidding ISPs from filtering network traffic. At the moment, there is no legal or technical reason why ISPs cannot prioritise or block particular types of internet traffic so that, for example, one ISP might provide online video that they provide themselves (or provided from their affiliates) at faster download speeds than a competitor’s content, or particular applications or technologies could be blocked completely (for example, if an ISP decided to slow down internet traffic for the iTunes Music Store that travelled through it’s networks, in favour of it’s own music sales platform), creating what’s referred to as a ‘tiered internet’.

Much of the argument mainly revolves around whether or not the internet (much of which has been publically funded) is a public service, and should be regulated in the same way as services such as television or telephone.

It’s not just Senator Stevens who comes across looking slightly ridiculous, talking around a technological subject that they don’t appear to fully understand. For example, apparently, NBC have spotted an unusual angle in the debate, and have argued that peer to peer filesharing costs corn farmers money; the logic behind the argument being that if people don’t go to the cinema, choosing instead to stay at home to watch downloaded video, then they aren’t buying overpriced popcorn to eat while they watch the films, which of course is bad for the farmers who grow the corn (presumably even more so than the theatres selling stale popcorn at a hugely inflated price.)

The issue is further muddied by the changing business interests of some service providers; while just a few years ago, broadband providers who were offering high speed internet access were obviously popular with users who downloaded large amounts of data. While this data may or may not have included illegal music or video downloads, it didn’t conflict with the interests of the telecommunications companies who were providing the internet service, so they were more than happy to remain tight-lipped about how their customers were using their services, citing privacy issues when asked.

More recently though, as bandwidths have increased enough for streaming media and VOIP technology to become more widely usable, this has created a conflict of interest for telecommunications companies who are effectively providing a cheaper alternative to their own telephone services.

The issue of bandwidth seems to be on the verge of becoming a significant issue in the UK. Bandwidth-intensive online video is becoming increasingly popular, with YouTube now a household name, BBC’s iPlayer in it’s public beta and Channel 4′s 4OD having been released, the line between television and online video is becoming increasingly blurred, with the apparent goal of online delivery channels replacing home video recorders. Both these new players involve a networking tool, where videos (or parts of videos) are downloaded from other users, rather than a central server.

However, this means that instead of the main strain being on the content provider, it is spread across the network; instead of users simply downloading data, they are also uploading data to other users. While this is unlikely to have a noticable effect on the individual users, it will have a more noticable impact on ISPs.

Public Enemy Number One: The Public.

The main target of network filtering seems to be peer-to-peer traffic. Peer-to-peer systems are based on the idea of spreading the load over a network; for example, instead of 50 people downloading the same file from a single server (resulting in a high load both on the server and on it’s available bandwidth), users can download either parts of the file or the entire file from other users who have already downloaded it from the server, easing the load. It came to prominence with the attention that the Napster network and related legal cases brought, as well as a number of similar networks (such as Kazaa, bittorrent networks etc.); because there often wasn’t any centralised server in such peer-to-peer networks, it was difficult for copyright holders to attack the networks, and instead had to deal with individual users. This has given peer-to-peer technologies a reputation of being used for illegal downloads of music, films and software, as well as giving organisations like the RIAA an (in some cases, justified) reputation for harshly cracking down on individuals.

However, there are a number of perfectly legal applications for peer to peer technologies; the Skype VOIP service uses peer to peer technologies, as do the BBC and 4OD’s online video distribution channels. Bittorrents are very popular for the distribution of free software, as they don’t require costly servers to deliver the software, relying instead on the cooperation of users.

At it’s most straightforward level, filtering involves checking each packet of data to see what sort of data it is, and then processing some sorts differently from others. For example, much like a firewall might be set up to block data which isn’t either from the web or part of a recognised email system, an ISP might set up a filter to block (or throttle) traffic on a similar set of rules. Not a problem for a user who only uses the web and email, but a significant problem if they decide to legally download some music from somewhere like iTunes, or play a game of Counter Strike (a game which at one point was said to generate more internet traffic than the whole of Italy.)

Because of the way the internet works, the throttled traffic might instead find an alternative, faster path across the network, increasing the load on other parts of the network which aren’t applying such rules. As a result, the internet could fall victim to the tragedy of the commons (a social trap where a finite resource is diminished because of how individuals treat it; best illustrated by the example of farmers keeping cattle on a piece of shared land; if one farmer increases the number of cattle they keep on the land, the quality of the land is diminished as more animals are grazing; although the negative effect is felt equally by all the farmers, the gain is only experienced by the farmer who is keeping more cattle.)

The decentralised nature of the internet means that it’s difficult to get an accurate picture of what the traffic on the internet is made up of; (because there’s no central server or exchange point that all traffic goes through, where traffic can then be monitored from— the subject of a future post), but there are estimates that peer-to-peer filesharing traffic is responsible for at least 50%, and possibly as much as 90% of all internet traffic. Others argue that HTTP is the majority of traffic- especially since the advent of YouTube.