Understanding Our Digital World
November 1, 2009
The Digital Era has witnessed many a battle between the old and the new, the DVD and the digital. When the MP3 roared its way to prominence in the late '90s, it set the major record label executives on edge for fear of piracy and degeneration of quality. Their worst fears came true. And the band marched on. Unable to stop the stream of digital downloading followers, the labels succumbed and cut deals with iTunes, a bold move that underscored a growing thirst for similar transitions and digital content websites such as Hulu (streaming TV shows), the upcoming Spotify (streaming music) and YouTube (streaming videos), to name a few. Meanwhile, Blockbuster has been shuddering in the wings, perched on stockpiles of an old format: the DVD. Not only does the end seem inevitable, the video giant's late fees feel like old school corporal punishment. And everyone's running.
Countdown to a Meltdown
Blockbuster first opened its doors in Dallas, Texas in 1985, the same year MTV broadcast Live Aid. The company's first ringside match was with its rival Netflix, the online DVD rental company, founded in 1997, that quickly established itself an an industry leader and readily morphed its operations into a digital streaming hub for movies and television shows. The rumors began circulating almost immediately that Blockbuster would have to change its business model or turn into another brick-and-mortar relic. It launched Blockbuster Online in 2004, its copycat retort to Netflix, sparking a patent infringement lawsuit, which resulted in an alleged multi-million dollar settlement, payable to Netflix, and a lagging bottom line.
But perhaps it was too little too late. Blockbuster, which is considering shuttering more than one-fifth of its 4,356 domestic stores by the end of 2010, may just be another punctuation mark in the omnipotent (and often oppressive) post-Industrial Age bumper sticker that reads: "Go Digital or Die."
What ever happened to the answering machine?
Aside from all the battles, the Digital Era has all but mocked analog and made a mound of dinosaur ash out of black boxes — from answering machines to CD changers to typewriters to Polaroid cameras to corded telephones. Toss in your DVDs. It seems like the refuse bins can't fill up fast enough.
AMC theaters announced earlier this year that it would dump all of its conventional film projectors for digital projectors from Sony. Television broadcasters NBC, ABC and Fox continue to fuel Hulu fever by serving up huge helpings of digital TV content for the online masses. Meanwhile Sony executives in the UK initiated their version of Cash for Clunkers by offering $250 to customers who purchased brand new digital TV sets while dumping their old TV models.
Everything from videos, text, graphics, photographs, audio and visual content is being digitized, compressed, squeezed and stripped down to end up on increasingly shrunken digital devices that can be tucked in a pocket or clipped on a strap. Apple's new iPod is so small it's amazing any of us can see it. If we're not yet on the road to becoming Cyborgs with arm patches that dispense digital content directly to our brains, we surely know that the unwavering prevalence of laptops, cell phones, iPhones, iPods, BlackBerrys, MP3 players, e-readers and the like has made it abundantly clear that if it's not digitized, it's living in a '70s museum.
How Google Plans to Save Newspapers"...Google is working on a micropayment system for newspapers. The plan sounds like it might just save the dying industry while accelerating the death of many publications. But, it's okay. That's probably a good thing." read more at The Atlantic Monthly
Brick and mortar print is fading faster in the world of news journalism than it is in book publishing, given the fact that several news outlets across the country are finding their flagship dailies paddling in the ocean. Bankruptcy has vanquished the Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer while financial turmoil is looming at newspapers everywhere. Editors are moving readers to their online editions where readership figures often outpace their circulation figures in the real world.
Bemoaning the situation hasn't stopped the carnage. The smart money may be on Digital Journal, an online news service that posts stories from everyday citizens who hop on the bus, race to the scene of a news breaking event and upload their digital reports from the ground; postal workers, students and clerks can now switch costumes and get the same adrenaline rush that Peter Parker got every time he turned into Spiderman. Digital content keeps growing strong because it empowers so many of us.
But the shift can be painful.
Parting with all the smudgy ink and broadsheets seems a lot easier and a lot less personal than displacing trained poets and literary writers, many of whom have spent years refining their crafts only to watch uncredentialed bloggers spew posts and draw wages from Google Adsense and ad sponsors. (Who are these people?) While writers coming of age in the Digital Era have mastered the tweet on Twitter and use Facebook to build a nation of fans, many traditional writers remain tethered to the Gutenberg Bible and still rely on book tours, as well as the book stores who carry their work, to help build fans. But Old School promoters have to cope with the fact that the book stores who host the book tours have been steadily vanishing as the number of book sales on the internet, led by giant Amazon, has changed the marketplace.
Behind the Eight Ball
Everywhere everyone in corporate America is playing digital catch up. Amazon's Kindle has been trying to rechoreograph the dance between literary writers and the Digital Era. Blockbuster hopped on the train after Netflix laid down the tracks. And record labels are trying to corral rebellious artists who continue to cite internet success stories like Radiohead's "In Rainbows" to prove that digital content will eventually trump everything. The mavericks who stand to reshape our society while making substantial windfalls are the venture capitalists and inventors who remain one step ahead of the curve — the digital engineers who hold the patents to theatrical digital streaming for feature films via satellite, for example, or the up and coming wunderkinds who will one day reinvent the internet and best Google. This is the Age of the Entrepreneur.
As for individual artists with any autonomy, traditional or not, they're best bet is to go the way of the hybrid professional. The growing number of writer/bloggers, digital filmmakers, iTunes singer/songwriters and web TV programmers has proven that the demand for digital content has far outlived the dot com bust of the late '90s and has far outgrown "new media" programs at art schools. Digital is mainstream at a theater near you. And the jobs, gizmos and goods lost to the new era have not been outsourced. They've simply disappeared. So where will digital go next? Digital dinner anyone? NewsSip
