PCs Aren't TVs: We Use Them To Connect, Not Consume

from the the-changing-face-of-the-internet dept

This is nothing new to regular readers around here, but the increasing push towards making the internet into a "broadcast" medium is finally starting to raise some eyebrows. I'm actually a bit surprise to see a smart editorial on the subject pointing out that PCs aren't TVs on the website of a mainstream newspaper. The entertainment industry, with their locked up content, has done a good job convincing some politicians that we're all just here to consume information rather than to connect and create. However, most people intuitively realize the true benefit in the internet isn't that it's the second coming of television. We're not concerned about getting more slickly produced broadcast content delivered to our screens. We want to use the interactive nature of the medium to create something new - which is exactly what people have been doing online for years. Yet, the continued push for better "control" to make it easier to push their repurposed broadcast content has the effect of killing off that ability, while giving us all something we don't want. We've already got a TV. Let us create our own content and services online.
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  1. identicon
    Inner Critic, 4 Feb 2004 @ 7:30am

    One of the many who have been saying...

    ...this for the past seven years! It looks like a TV set, but it ain't!

    And yet they're making deals to run 30 sec. commercials on MSN, and so on.

    Sad how clueless some marketers can be.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Inner Critic, 4 Feb 2004 @ 7:35am

    And as you've pointed out many times

    Mike, you've said it over and over. The RIAA isn't shutting down file trading so much as driving people to use ever more stealth oriented products.

    But of course the article is stronger, and not entirely inaccurate, to play up the fear.

    Regardless, any use of the computer as media-player will always just be one small aspect of the power of the internet.

    There's also a lot of new content collabration that's happening now, with camera phones and people posting their own music mixes, etc. In fact, in some ways that's also a threat to the "established" media.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Kelly Hulme, 4 Feb 2004 @ 8:45am

    From the Cluetrain Manifesto department...

    In a NYT article about the running of full-motion video ads online, this actual quote was included:
    "It's TV, without the television," said John Vail, director for digital media and marketing for Pepsi-Cola North America.
    Sadly, and perhaps shockingly, this is from the director for digital media and marketing for Pepsi, king of all advertisers. They've got a long way to go. A really long way. Totally, totally clueless.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 4 Feb 2004 @ 8:53am

    No Subject Given


    I've had a TV tuner card installed in the PC's I've owed over the past 8 years.

    I don't own a stand alone TV and see little difference between a monitor & a TV.

    They are both just there to serve me the streams of media I want.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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