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New technologies tend to spawn new words and cause common words to take on new meanings.
Before space travel, no one had heard of an Aastronaut@. The mouse of my youth ate cheese, and I was loath to touch one. Now it resides in my hand, and I find myself clicking it unmercifully.
The word Aconvergence@ is now taking on new meanings. It represents how a variety of communications technologies are beginning to blend together. Convergence will change my life, and yours. That has already been decided by those who will profit from its sale.
Convergence takes many forms. One that is getting a good bit of media attention these days involves the technologies most familiar to us. Telephone companies have usually thumbed their noses at cable television companies. Both sides insisted on clear boundaries around their respective businesses. Courts of law often found themselves settling disputes. But no longer.
A year ago, telephone companies suddenly began buying cable television companies, and cable television and telephone companies are buying shares in companies that create television programs.
The assumption behind all the buying frenzy is that we are moving toward a world in which the divisions between telephone, television and computers will blur. These companies are betting that the resulting technology will allow them to increase the number of ways they can deliver entertainment and other digital services. More choices should mean more customers. More customers usually mean more profit. These companies not only want to deliver the programs, but they also want to profit from the creation of the programs.
For a number of years, the technology has existed to combine telephones, televisions and computers into machines that offer greater flexibility and more services in combination than each can offer alone. Although the resulting machine might cost more than the standard television or computer, we would need to buy only one piece of equipment. VCRs could become a thing of the past.
So, why hasn't it happened?
Simple. People don't want it.
Several years ago, US West did a study in the Omaha, Nebraska area exploring what services people wanted from their new digital cable company. Overwhelmingly, people wanted more of the same, and little new. They did not mind remote controls, but they opted against anything more complicated. When television is involved, it is clear that people want entertainment.
William Stephenson, in 1967, put forward a theory based on research he had done that he called the Aplay theory@ of communications. He noted that people divide their media experiences into two realms: play and work. People would rather not mix their media experiences.
Current research continues to confirm this theory. For US West, it meant scrapping, for the moment, any attempts to offer advanced digital information services by cable. Instead, it offered channel upon channel of movies.
Apparently, for the person using a keyboard at the office all day, there is little fascination in coming home at night to another keyboard on which she must make entertainment decisions. For many, the remote is complicated enough. Television, in people's minds, is easy to use, non-intimidating and ultimately entertaining. It is a passive device, demanding little in technological savvy to operate. Since computers demand decisions and quick mental responses, keyboards and computer add-ons to television and the telephone simply don't pass the test for ease of use or for entertainment.
Then why the frenzied move toward companies that combine the very things people say they don't want? Two reasons come to mind.
One, the current generation cutting their teeth on keyboards and computer screens will find these devices comforting rather than intimidating. Technology takes a generation to find acceptance. Each generation is defined by the technology it embraces.
Two, these companies are taking the long view. They are searching for ways to change our minds about keeping our computers and televisions separate. By introducing technology requiring us to rethink how we interact with machinery, they have to train us to accept the union of television, computer and telephone. APersonal digital assistants@ (PDAs) are becoming commonplace in electronic stores. These devices (essentially an electronic form of the appointment calendar) use voice commands rather than keyboards to keep appointments and search the Internet. Talking to your electronic machine smacks of an exotic game, not work. But keeping business appointments is clearly work. By combining these functions, the PDA becomes part play and part work. Once we are comfortable talking to our PDAs, it will be a small step for us to talk to the machine that combines computer, television and telephone.
Essentially, a few visionary companies have noted the public's dislike for computer keyboards, and are using it to create an alternate way of giving us what they wanted to give us all alongCuniversal, ubiquitous devices that increase the amount of information for which we are willing to pay. At the same time, we get what we wantCplay remains playful.
For now, work remains work. But with convergence on the way, we soon may have difficulty knowing where work stops and play begins!
Burton Buller is director of Mennonite Brethren Communications in Winnipeg, Man.
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