Ronco in Cyberspace

The year is 1999. You're sitting in your living room, bathed in the glow of the ComVid. Brilliant images flash across it's wide, flat screen, changing every half-second as the system executes a program search. In the mood for British humor, you entered the keywords PYTHON and JOHN.CLEESE via the keypad on the ComVid's remote. The busy display is momentarily frozen as a AdReq query window opens, prompting you to accept or reject the pending advertisement and its accompanying Conekt-Pointz. You toggle over to your account status display, note the current figures, then return and press the blue ACCEPT button. The flashing Credits Earned screen appears briefly, then is replaced by the advert itself. For the next sixty seconds you observe the ebullient antics of a pert, bare-breasted young woman who assures you that Dento-Fresh toothpaste will do wonders for your smile, and presumably your sex life as well. Although part of you finds it curious that the camera spends more time on her torso than her teeth, the rest of you doesn't seem to care. The advert concludes with a wink, a logo, and one final "Dentoooo-FRESH!!." The ComVid resumes its program search. Welcome to the Information Age...

Perhaps the most glaring fact overlooked by all of these new voices is that the information highway already exists. A high-speed data and communications network is in place right now, and boasts over two million connections worldwide, including universities, corporations, and commercial access providers. It has for years been the sole domain of an eclectic sub-culture unknown to most Americans, and is often referred to as the Internet. Known simply as "the Net" by its inhabitants, it is far more than just a concept; it's a virtual reality. Teeming with life, it is an exclusive club whose members share a love for technology and the ability to use it. And not only computer freaks and engineering-types, either. The very nature of the net (free, widely distributed, and substantial rather than flashy) has attracted writers, radicals and revolutionaries. No one owns the Net. Unrestricted and uncensored, it is a vast medium for free expression whose voices now number in the millions.

And there is more... Connected, you can logon to a computer in Hamburg, talk in "real-time" to a colleague in Tokyo, join a message forum wholly dedicated to loathing Barney the dinosaur, or send a letter to a friend in Australia that will get there... right about now.

The global population of the Net is small; about 15 million. It has attracted few in the past because it was both unwieldy and inaccessible. Accounts were not readily available to those without access to university or government computer systems, and the spartan UNIX interface was downright user-hostile to those unfamiliar with its arcane repertoire of commands. Proficiency in traversing the Net, "netsurfing", required considerable time and effort, and those who persevered have gone on to create the true "virtual" community that exists there today.

Today's ISH, however, is not recognized as such by either the government or the growing number of firms that see the considerable potential for profit therein. They envision a global network that is more accessible to everyday Americans; one that would spew cable television, home shopping, and other forms of "entertainment" into living rooms nationwide. They call it the National Information Infrastructure, yet another policy-wonk PR pitch designed to sound "official". Self-appointed Info-Czar Al Gore is busily courting the very corporations that can make this vision a reality: the cable television and telephone providers. It's no coincidence that these two industries share the distinctive advantage of owning the wires that already protrude into our living rooms.

It is here that the highway metaphor so commonly used meets its unfortunate end. Unlike our interstate highway system, the ISH is not going to be built, maintained or paid for by the federal government; they simply can't afford the trillions of dollars required to connect the existing network "backbone" to every home in America. This, of course, leaves the private sector.

In order to garner the appeal (and checkable deposits) of the new info-consumer, the Net will need to become "user-friendly" and otherwise non-threatening to the average American consumer, that marketplace denizen still struggling with setting its VCR clock. The Net's character-based command-line interface will be replaced by a graphical one a la Microsoft Windows, a comfortable, glossy veneer that conceals hobbled functionality. We'll be taught how to navigate the Net by neo-hacker wanna-be's like our pals at the Times who think that using words with "cyber-" in them a lot makes them sound hip, or that you can surf the Net by pointing-and-clicking.

All of this leaves me cringing, for I know that the privatization of the Net will proceed something like this: The FCC will give its blessing to huge joint ventures by cable, phone, and software corporations, necessary due to the capital-intensive nature of wiring America. These firms will spend gobs of money on fiber-optic cable and black boxes to connect us to the Net. In return, and quite predictably, they will expect us to actually use it. They won't care how, or why, or doing what, so long as every household is sending in that monthly check. This will require that the new media target the largest possible consumer base in order to maximize profits. This bottom line will require "mass appeal" for the product itself.

If the print, radio and television media have taught us anything, it's that the result will be a trillion dollar, high-tech, cutting-edge way to get more crap on your TV. For the purveyors of the ISH to require the consumer to solely foot the massive bill for its construction would result in prohibitive connection fees, and thereby sharply limit the market. A far better (read: more profitable) option for them is to provide access that most Americans can afford, and seek revenues via advertising. Although this is quite the norm in television (including in varying degrees cable, public, AND broadcast TV), it might be less well-received by those computer users who use their systems as more than pricey video games. Whatever else the ISH eventually carries to our doors, you can be sure that it will include the latest digitized Coca-Cola jingles and this weeks hot fashion tips from The Bon.

Additionally, the content of the new digital media will be profit-driven, thereby assuring that it will be rife with what we want most: tits and guns. Why offer a wealth of information and dialog if the public, weaned on Rosanne and Melrose Place, doesn't want it? Of course there will be interest in other, perhaps educational, options as well, but to what degree? Television networks such as PBS and The Discovery Channel are experiencing dwindling viewer ship, and have responded with increased ratings-oriented programming. Jacques Cousteau and Wild Kingdom are giving way to W.W.II docu-dramas, Bigfoot sightings, and slow-motion footage of dismayed herbivores, unceremoniously reassigned to the next slot on the food chain: Lunch.

Pessimistic but pragmatic, I can only hope that the real Net, still mostly devoid of crumpled McDonald's wrappers and other free-market debris, will remain the vibrant, thoughtful community that it is. For many, it just might. Let TCI offer 500 cable channels and interactive Mortal Kombat. I'll keep my modem and the command prompt, and hope they never find a way lock the back door. I wrote this in 1993 when the net was just starting to catch on. It's pretty dated by this point, but much of the changes I predicted have already taken place. As for the others, well, it's only a matter of time.