SmartGlass: A Big Step toward Convergence of TV and the Web Across Screens

Microsoft Xbox SmartGlass is CoTV 1.0 (maybe) -- on to CoTV 2.0!

With the release of Xbox SmartGlass, I am gratified to see many of the concepts I described as "Coactive TV" in 2002 finally being realized. I had been seeing increasing progress in recent years, as noted in my January post, but those have been very fragmented, partial steps, and I was being optimistic to refer to it then as CoTV 1.0. SmartGlass might be considered a major complementary step toward what (when integrated with those other pieces) will become representative of what I had in mind as CoTV 1.0.

The basic concept of CoTV is that we have multiple screens and input devices, and multiple content sources that have a Web of interconnections.  What we really want (even if most do not realize it yet) is to use the right combination of screens and input devices, at the right time, in the right way -- to work with whatever content we want at a given time. What connects them is the cloud, and our devices should use the cloud to support our media use seamlessly, not constrain it.

As noted in that January post, and more fully in my January "CoTV Now" summary, we are getting there, but there is still much more to come -- what might be looked to as CoTV 2.0 and beyond.  Now we seem to be at a significant milestone.  That makes this a good time to review where we are now, and to look to what will follow.  Based on the announcement materials, it seems as follows.

Now/emerging (CoTV 1.0):

• Numerous  iPad, iPhone, Android (and soon Surface) companion apps
• Social TV
• Producer and third party enhancements on the second screen
• AirPlay (and Miracast) screen-shifting 
• and now a much richer any-screen experience with SmartGlass that includes rich remote control and enhancements, and steps toward full multi-screen hypermedia browsing.

Still to come (CoTV 2.0):

• Selectable, Alternative "Enhancement Channels" 
• Screen targeting 
• Flexible session-shifting
• Link-and-pause (and sync bookmarks)
• Full multi-screen hypermedia browsing  
• TV Context parameter/API
• Full Coactive Internet commerce and advertising
• Third-party linking rights/fees

Some links expanding on this are listed below.

-------------

I want my CoTV!  ...SmartGlass promises to be a reasonable start!

(Apple, your move. AirPlay was nice, but SmartGlass goes much farther.  Google?  Others?)

-------------

On SmartGlass:


A very nice video overview:
Xbox SmartGlass and Internet Explorer for Xbox - E3 2012 HD

Some descriptions:
Introducing the New Entertainment Experience from Xbox
Xbox SmartGlass goes beyond the second screen
Introducing Xbox SmartGlass

More video:
E3 2012: Xbox Media Briefing Smartglass Highlights
E3 2012: Xbox SmartGlass
Xbox SmartGlass Walkthrough

On CoTV:

CoTV Now

i[Carter]Phone? -- Apple and Anti-Competitive Tying

Apple is pushing the laws prohibiting anti-competitive behavior, as noted in an interesting article by James Stewart in today's NYTimes, with reference to Maps and the iTunes Store.  It considers how Apple's efforts at total control of their ecosystem may be both harmful and illegal--at some point, if not yet.

For some time I have had similar concerns, and have been wondering how long until we see an "iCarterPhone Decision."  What do I mean by that?  Followers of communications history will remember the Carterfone Decision (1968) as a landmark step toward the breakup of the Bell System monopoly. Until then it was illegal to attach a phone not approved by AT&T to the US telephone network.  This was based on the AT&T argument that attaching any device not fully tested and approved by them to the network might introduce voltages or other electrical effects that would run through the wires and harm their central office equipment, potentially causing widespread harm.  The only permissible way to add a specialized device like the one sold by Carterfone was to use a Rube Goldberg-like acoustic coupler, with rubber cups that relayed sound in or out of a standard Bell telephone handset ear and mouthpiece  with no direct electrical connection (and with issues of signal quality).  Some of you remember early modems that connected to computers that way. The Carterfone Decision changed all that, and opened the way for the vibrant market in phones, answering machines, faxes, modems, etc. that we now take for granted.

The iPhone/iTunes ecology smacks of much the same kind of anticompetitive control, with restrictions that limit consumer rights, raise consumer costs, and limit competitive innovation.  The Times addresses the current flap over Apple's inferior maps app, as well as Department of Justice price fixing charges against Apple relating to e-books sold through the iTunes Store.  Similar issues apply to control of apps in general that Apple does not like for one reason or another --such as has been the case with Skype, Google, Flash, and many others.  Contrast this with Microsoft PCs that allow you to run any software from any source, with no involvement of Microsoft whatsoever.  Of course we are free of migrate to the Android ecosystem to get greater openness, and many have chosen to do just that.

As the Times article notes, Apple is not dominant the way Microsoft was (or AT&T), and thus its tying sales in the App Store may not reach a level actionable under antitrust laws. (Its alleged price fixing is another story.) But at an ecosystem level, given its disproportionate number of apps, it does already have a level of dominance that might warrant correction.

Other areas in which Apple is riding roughshod on the market (and consumers) relate to other kinds of proprietary behavior.  Apple champions open standards like HTML5 over proprietary standards like Flash when the proprietary standards belong to the competitor, and it suits their interests to smash them , but insists on proprietary standards of its own, such as for its iPhone connectors and its AirPlay protocol, for which it charges exorbitant prices (adapter retail $29?) or licensing fees (AirPlay speakers retail price bump $100?).

It will be very interesting to see how this develops -- whether the market rebels or the government finds cause to draw a line, or they just fail to maintain their edge.  From the market perspective, Apple is walking a very fine line, balancing the positive perception of product quality against the negative perception of arrogance and rapaciousness. Jobs was able to ride that balance for a very profitable run, but the maps fiasco, and the increasing success of Android (and maybe Microsoft, or someone yet to appear) suggests that this is a precarious and anti-consumer position, and that Apple's days of dictating to consumers and its ecosystem partners may be numbered.

The Necessity of Steve Jobs: ...Inventor? ...or Necessitor?

The recent comparisons of Steve Jobs to Edison and Ford brought me back to an important point: Invention is the mother of necessity. We don't realize we need something until an "inventor" shows us what it can be, and what it can do for us.

Which came first? Is necessity the mother of invention? (as the saying goes) ...or is invention the mother of necessity? Is inventing unrecognized necessities the real heart of inventing? As Jobs famously said: "It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want.”

Jobs was more important as a necessitor, than as an inventor.  It struck me that the point some have raised -- that Jobs did not invent the technologies he popularized -- has some validity, but fails to balance the picture with this important point.  It is true that the mouse, the "drag-and-drop" graphical user interface, hypertext, music downloads, MP3 players,smartphones, tablets, touchscreens, computer animation, and many more key "inventions" applied by Jobs were not invented by him.  It seems widely recognized that Jobs' key contribution was that he saw how such things could be put to use in new configurations, and to serve needs that others did not see or saw less clearly (and also that he had the drive and resources to realize his visions...)

This resonated with me, because I have often felt that my own history as an inventor has a similar focus (even if hardly on the scale of Jobs').  The contribution is not so much in solving a recognized technical problem, but in seeing what technical problems should be solved, and why, and what else that would mean.  (That is why the theme of this blog is "user-centered media" -- that is pretty much the theme of much of my work.)

In a sense, this relates to innovation at the level of "systems thinking."  The necessitor does not just solve a problem, but creates a whole new system, within the larger system of people, technology, economics, and culture.  Jobs saw that what was missing in the music business was a new model for aggregated, simplified sales of music, and integration of an e-commerce system (the iTunes store) with a user agent (iTunes) and a device (iPod).  Once people saw that, they needed it.  No one created the wholistic vision that enabled that necessity to be recognized and acted on until Jobs did.

Similarly, some argue that Edison's real impact was not the light bulb, but the electric distribution system and related infrastructure that he recognized as needed to make the light bulb broadly useful.  It is perhaps more apparent that Ford was not so much an inventor of cars and mass production, but a necessitor, who realized that we needed simple black cars, and lots of them.  Often such cases are not simple inventions, but whole systems of invention.  One necessity/invention leads to other necessities/inventions, to whole ecologies of inventions.

So which came first? the necessity or the invention?  I suggest, as in most things, the answer is a non-dualistic "yes, both."  It is hard to separate the two.  Our patent system seems to think of inventions as the thing that matters.  The constitution defines patents to be for "any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvements thereof."  This has always seemed to me a limited view of what inventors do.

I suggest an equal form of "invention" is what Robert Kennedy spoke of:  "I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?"  Once we take that step, we may need to invent some technology, but often what we need to do is take the vision, understand all that it entails, and assemble a whole system from technologies that may have previously existed, but not been combined and adapted in the right way.  This kind of systems thinking, is on a much different level than the more commonly recognized engineering tasks of solving the technical problems to meet a previously recognized need.

...This also has led me to questions about the place for such contributions in the patent system.  It seems to me that such contributions may be equally deserving of some kind of patent protection, to reward the creative thinking that advances our "useful arts" and our civilization in general.  Just as with more narrow senses of technical invention, this takes not just inspiration, but perspiration (to paraphrase Edison).  But just how this kind of invention of necessity fits (or could be fit) with our current patent system seems a bit unclear.

------

[Should anyone know of any good thinking by others on this theme, I would welcome references.]