MediaChannel.org - ROUNDTABLES

Hitching To The Broadband Wagon

As the analogy goes, this is the part of the trip when the LSD begins taking hold. Broadband. It is, like the Cherokee nation, both intangible and omnipresent. Talk to some of the major players, as MediaChannel did, and some will tell you the meaningful presence of broadband is a long way off, while others insist it's already here.

_{VIDEO: Slow Connection | Fast Connection}: April Hodgson:
Different people call broadband different things. Where I say its 300 kilobits, someone else, based on their network and their application, may see it as 100 kilobits.
David McClain:
We all know the definition of when something comes changes every three, six months. When you look at something now, its something that was incredible six months ago and innovative. It's kind of old hat know.
Jonathan Klein:
It's here. 30 million people have broadband today, 30 million. No, Gerry Laybourne just launched Oxygen with 8 million subscribers and you saw her picture everywhere, right? 30 million people, 14 million people in the office, 10 million of them at college, 7 million of them have it at home get broadband today. And that's just for starters. Two years from now, you'll have 60 million people that have broadband.

Still, as difficult as it is to obtain a present-tense definition of broadband, nailing down the meaning of customized content is just as amorphous a prospect.

VIDEO: Slow Connection | Fast Connection: Jonathan Klein:
It means whether you've actively chosen certain features or certain shows, or passively the software has tracked your behavior and knows what it is you want to see most, either way you're going to come away with a much better, a more satisfying, relevant viewing experience.

Knowing such things is paramount in understanding that new media's direction in the remainder of 2000 will affect a whole lot more than the various ways entertainment will grow more compelling. The present arrival of a motherlode of new technologies heightens concerns over who controls this medium and, by extension, who stands to profit from those who use it.

VIDEO: Slow Connection | Fast Connection: Dave Kansas:
I think a mistake that a lot of people make is letting technology developments drive their thinking. People drive what's gonna happen. And I think people crave convenience and they crave, to some extent, gizmos and things that will help make their life more interesting and simple. And technology that goes down those roads or those lanes is going to be more popular.
Roland Schatz:
Well, the problem is the technology never comes alone and with technologies comes business interests and you have to ask who is behind the new technology and who has the special interest to push this kind of new technology instead of another one.
Loretta Staples:
I'm keeping my eye on the balance that ends being struck between the commercial forces on the one hand, and the regulatory forces on the other. And seeing what shape, what contour that actually makes in Web space.

The debate over whether technologies or those who deploy them are the arbiters of change rages among people who think professionally about media.

_{VIDEO: Slow Connection | Fast Connection}: Dave Kansas:
The big media companies have an enormous advantage. [Gone is] the heyday of the little company sprouting up from nowhere, when you think about the sites that appeared a few years ago: Suck, Feed, these were sites that had a great buzz about them. Great attention on a national level. But they never evolved into great businesses and you hear less and less about them. As the mass market has moved on-line a lot of the old media players have started to dominate in respective spaces.
Loretta Staples:
I'm a humanist, so I always like to think, "it's about people; it's about culture; it's about empowerment." But the fact of the matter is I think technology, the very intimate relationship between technology and economic power, and the flow of capital into technology deployment and development, is so, so powerful that it's hard for me not to perceive of technology as a driver.

There's reason to worry. Although Internet access is growing rapidly in the developing world, some 87 percent of all Internet users live in industrial countries. Fewer than one percent of the people in China, India or the continent of Africa are online. This fact only begins to engage concerns over how an Internet dominated by corporate media might affect the availability of content.

Still, if the conversations going on among the players in attendance at Digital Hollywood mean anything, then the optimism on display indicates a healthy open-mindedness.

VIDEO: Slow Connection | Fast Connection: Loretta Staples:
This is kind of funny to say this but I think content is going to get both better and worse at the same time, but what that will result in —I hope— that people will have to be more discerning. So I think the actual critical faculties of this society and culture will actually have to get better, crisper in order to make meaningful choices and judgments. So I think that's really a good thing. It might sound like it has a canceling-out effect, but I actually think it's a positive thing.

As fast-moving as the business of technology is right now, there remains the strong possibility that tech-driven necessity will force more interesting appeals to consumers than have previously been imagined.

_{VIDEO: Slow Connection | Fast Connection}: Jonathan Klein:
You know, when you're sitting in the office with the T1 connection that the boss is paying for, it's the perfect time to start exploring the world.

- Donnell Alexander, editor.
- Doug George, multimedia producer.