Number 208 - September 2000

Media Convergence
by Timothy Everingham - APCUG NOCCC, teveringham@earthlink.net - May 19, 2000
For years there has been talk about media convergence. They said your television, computer, telephone, and other things were all converging to become one device. As this convergence seemed to stall, they still said it is just a matter of time and kept putting off the date. Is this concept of media convergence dead, sleeping, or has it been transformed into something else?     Remember the commercials where it was predicted you would receive telephone calls on your television set or computer? Remember when the prediction of many was that most people would switch over to Web TV? That was only a few years ago. A few TVs and computers were built to answer telephone calls, but they died out. Web TV did not take off as expected. Everything merging into one box did not happen, but other things did. What did happen was a telecommunications revolution. The Internet turned computers into stations of a global interconnected community. Cellular phones allowed mobile voice and data connectivity for the masses. Miniaturization of electronics allowed first laptop computers, then PDAs such as Palm and Windows CE devices to come into being. You have connectivity and computing power that is increasingly becoming available to anyone at anytime and anywhere.     About three years ago some people started saying, against the conventional wisdom, that traditional media convergence was not happening, but something was happening that was similar. Instead of a device upon which everything would be centered, people were instead the focus of this convergence. There was no one device that was coming together to fit all media needs, but a series of devices that are keeping people in touch with their world. At work you have the desktop computers on local area networks connected to the Internet and microprocessor driven telephones. At home you have computers connected to the Internet and increasingly they are in close proximity to television sets and telephones. Away from these two places you have mobile phones with laptop computers and PDAs, which can be plugged into phone jacks or mobile phones for connectivity. In large metropolitan areas you now have the ability to always be in voice and data contact with the rest of the world. What has happened is that instead of convergence centering on a device, the convergence turned out to center on people. Media convergence today is about being able to immediately have access to anything, anywhere, anytime.     As such, media convergence will take other forms. Now that the TV networks and program suppliers are realizing that more computers are in the same room as the TV, they are working to take advantage of the situation. They have chat rooms and message posting sites for their programs. They are encouraging people to come to their sites while watching their programs. In reality they are training people for what comes next when enough people have cable modems or DSL in	their homes. It is coordinated advertising between what is broadcast on your TV and what is on their Website. Let us say that in a TV program the stars of the show walk into a clothing store. Right then an ad for that clothing store pops up on the show's Website. One of the stars tries on a jacket. The Website then pops up with an ad for a special offer on that jacket. When the show is not playing, the Website will have videos of the stars of the show doing various things. Just about everything in the video will be for sale from the clothes they are wearing, to furniture they are sitting on, to the car they are driving, to the food they are eating. All you have to do to start the buying process is click on the item in the video while it is going. This will pop up a browser window to the item's page of the online store that is selling it.     As for mobile phones, they are increasingly having PDA functions in them, including Internet browsers. Suppose you want to find out what concerts are in your town, but you are away from your office or home. In a few months you will be able to have your browser-enabled phone go to a site where the concert list is and the phone will automatically pick up the telephone number off the browser for the concert of your choice. Then at your command your phone will dial the number for you to order tickets.     Another thing that should be here by the end of the year is something useful for digital camera users. You are in an area you don't know, perhaps even a strange city. You have your laptop, a digital camera, a mobile phone, and a GPS. You need to quickly get prints of what your digital camera has taken. No problem. You upload the pictures into your laptop. You connect the laptop to your cell phone and connect to the Internet. You bring up the browser to a Website of a network of photo shops. You send the GPS data to the site (type in your location if you don't have a GPS). It then tells you where the nearest member of the network is, with directions on how to get there, and the cost to have your prints made. You then agree to the price and upload your pictures to the site. When you get to the photo shop your prints are waiting there for you. Again it is not just one device, but several devices working together to provide continuous access to communications, services, and products.     Yes, there will be some consolidation of devices, such as mobile phones and PDAs. However, the concept of one universal device is dead. Instead media convergence has been transformed to center on people. Media convergence is coming, but it is converging on you.     Timothy Everingham leads the Videoconferencing Pilot Project, which explores the uses of video technologies within computer user groups. He is the Secretary of APCUG (Association of Personal Computer User Groups.) He was President of the San Diego Computer Society for 3 years. http://home.earthlink.net/~teveringham.
Number 208 - September 2000