"As We Will Think" -- The Legacy of Ted Nelson, Original Visionary of the Web

From Nelson, As We Will Think (1972 version)

The vision of the Web in 1945

From a recent email from the Editor of The Atlantic:

In July 1945, Vannevar Bush, then the director of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development—the military’s R&D lab, the predecessor to DARPA—published an essay in The Atlantic that would become one of the seminal pieces of technology literature of the 20th century.

Entitled “As We May Think,” the essay laid out a vision for a new kind of relationship between human and machine. Bush introduced an idea he called the memex: a sprawling, shared store of humankind’s knowledge that could be used for social good, not destruction. In the following years, preeminent technologists—including Doug Engelbart, whose work eventually led to the invention of the mouse, the word processor, and hyperlinks; and Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web—cited “As We May Think” as inspiration for their work.

The seminal re-visioning in the 1960's

It seems ironic that even the Atlantic seems to be neglecting Ted Nelson's role as an equally seminal visionary of the Web -- especially given that one of his early works was an explicit call to re-center on and realize Bush's vision, a work that plays off Bush's title as "As We Will Think."

I tweeted back to the Atlantic:

@JeffreyGoldberg Your email on "As We May Think" omitted a key link: Ted Nelson (who coined the term hypertext), wrote "As We Will Think" in 1968, bringing Bush to the attention of those you name. (I have a copy if you would like one.)

— Richard Reisman (@rreisman) November 8, 2018

Some further tweets raised the question whether that was online somewhere, and it seems to be only in The Wayback Machine (archive.org), as a 1972 version -- and a poor copy at that, missing the original figures.

It happens that I have a better copy of the 1972 version, as well as another version that is labelled as being from 1968. So I am posting scans of both versions online (links below). I include some comments on provenance and on my recent email interchange with Nelson below (both of which lead me to believe the 1968 date is correct). But first...

Why Nelson matters 

A fuller explanation of  why Nelson matters is in my post from a few years ago, Digital Camelot - The Once and Future Web of Engelbart and Nelson, but here I caption its core message:

If you care about modern culture and how technology is shaping it, this is worth thinking about -- A powerful eulogy for where the Web might have gone, and still may someday, and the friendship of the two people most responsible for envisioning the Web*  --  Ted Nelson's eulogy for his friend Doug Engelbart, as reported by John Markoff in The Times -- with Nelson's inimitable flair.

As Markoff says:

Theodor Holm Nelson, who coined the term hypertext, has been a thorn in the side of the computing establishment for more than a half century. Last week, in an encomium to his friend Douglas Engelbart, he took his critique to Shakespearean levels. It deserves a wider audience. 

Dr. Engelbart and Ted Nelson became acquaintances at the dawn of the modern computing era. They had envisioned and invented the computing that we have come to take for granted.

I first encountered both of them in 1969, and what I saw set the direction for my life's work.  Engelbart gave "The Mother of All Demos" in 1968 (and I first saw him give a follow-up the next year, and read most of his work).  Nelson dreamed of hypertext and hypermedia, and wrote papers on what he called "hypertext" in the 'mid-60s and the highly influential Whole Earth Catalog of "Computer Lib / Dream Machines" in 1974.

As Nelson laments, both received a degree of recognition, but both were marginalized. Powerful as it may be, expediency took the Web in more limiting directions.

Their ideas remain profound and forward looking. Anyone who really cares about the future of media, intellect, and culture, and how information technology can augment that, should consider their work. Just because the Web took a turn to expediency in the past does not mean it will not realize its richer potential in the future. (One hint of that is noted in the next section [of that post].) ...

Nelson's insight

Ted's iconoclastic and visionary style is apparent from the opening of his "As We Will Think" (1968 version):

Bush was right, His famous article is, however, generally misinterpreted, for it has little to do with "information retrieval" as prosecuted today, Bush rejected indexing and discussed instead new forms of interwoven documents. 

It is possible that Bush's vision will be fulfilled substantially as he saw it, and that information retrieval systems of the kinds now popular will see less use than anticipated.

As the technological base has changed, we must recast his thesis slightly, and regard Bush's "memex" as three things: the personal presentation, editing and file console; a digital feeder network for the delivery of documents in full-text digital form; and new types of documents, or hypertexts, which are especially worth receiving and sending in this manner.

In addition, we also consider a likely design for specialist hypertexts, and discuss problems of their publication. 

BEATING AROUND THE BUSH

Twenty-three years ago, in a widely acclaimed article, Vannevar Bush made certain predictions about the way we of the future would handle written information (1). We are not yet doing so. Yet the Bush article is often cited as the historical beginning, or as a technological watershed, of the field of information retrieval. It is frequently cited without interpretation (2,3). Although some commentators have said its predictions were improbable (4), in general its precepts have been ignored by acclamation...

In hindsight, it is obvious that Ted was right about Bush's vision. The memex pre-saged wonders far beyond the mundane notion of "information retrieval" as generally understood in the 1960s (even if not all of Bush, Engelbart and Nelson's visions have been embodied in the Web).

For an interesting update that theme, see this 2016 Quartz article and its reference to Werner Herzog's interview of Ted for his film Lo and Behold, and a short video of Ted expanding on what he spoke of. Both provide a nice live demos of the "parallel textface," much as shown in the above image from Ted's 1972 article. This also explains Ted's ideas of "transclusion" of elements from one work into another, as a rich kind of mashup that retains the identity of the original elements.  He explains how that can support creator rights to what is linked in, and micropayment-based payment/compensation models.* I have often heard people speculate about some of these exciting ideas, thinking they were new (and sometimes that they invented them). Few realize that Ted described all this in the '60s and '70s,

Those trying to invent this "deeply intertwingled" future might want to stand on Ted's shoulders. Ted may not have had the entrepreneurial genius of Steve Jobs, but his inventive vision is second to none.

The Atlantic might want to talk to him...

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1968? really? -- it seems yes

Nelson actually wrote previously about his ideas for hypertext (in the mid 1960s), so the exact date of this particular paper may not be of great importance, but its earliest provenance is a be a bit of a puzzle.

I recently corresponded with Ted by email, and he was intrigued by these finds -- happy to have the full 1972 version and puzzled by the "1968" version. He said he did not recall a formal publication from that date, but that he might have provided a version at the ACS Annual Meeting then.

Both papers are from my hard copy file, just as they appear in the scans now posted (with the hand annotations apparently being mine, from when I first read them). I believe I had ordered them from my company library and that the label "ACS Annual Meeting 1968" was the citation information with which I ordered that copy. (I presumed that referred to the American Chemical Society, which seemed a bit far afield, but Ted did have a wide range.) So it seemed to remain a puzzle.

However as I was drafting this post, I noticed that the 1968 version says "Twenty-three years ago..." while the 1972 version says "Twenty-seven years ago..." That would seem to be compelling evidence that my "1968" version actually was from that year.

To add more personal history, I had the pleasure of meeting with Ted in 1970 to explore assisting in an experimental hypertext implementation under Claude Kagan's direction, as part of my masters degree fellowship work at the AT&T Western Electric Research Center. That project did not materialize, but chatting with Ted about hypertext was one of the most memorable hours of my career.

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Early works by Ted Nelson from my collection

The following are items by Ted that may not to be generally available online. I collected these from 1969 onward, and plan to post scans of all them as I get time (after checking whether comparable copies are already accessible elsewhere).

• As We Will Think ("ACS Annual Meeting 1968" version
  (unable to confirm citation and date)
• As We Will Think ("Online 72 Conference Proceedings" version 
  (fuller than the scan at archive.org, includes original figures/photos)
• “Hypertext Editing System,” published by Brown University on 5/6/69 for the Spring Joint Computer Conference, 5/14-16/69
  (My first exposure to hypertext. I clicked a link and saw the future. It was at the IBM booth running on a "mid-sized" IBM 360/50 mainframe with a 2250 vector graphics workstation equipped with a light-pen. Coincidentally, I knew Andy van Dam and some of the developers from my time at Brown the years just before.)
• Short Computer Lib “$5 First Edition” ©’73, on typewriter paper hand-duplexed, 12 pages including Dream Machines flip-side.
• A File Structure for the Changing and the Indeterminate, ACM National Conference 1965
• Xanadu Draft Brochure, 27 November 1969
• Computer Decisions 9/70  -- No More Teacher’s Dirty Looks
• Hypertext Note 0-9, various dates in ‘67
• Decision/Creativity Systems dated 19 July 1970
• Hypertexts 20 Mar 70
• Getting it out of our system, in Schechter, ‘67
• A 14 December 1970 PDP10 teletype printout of Ted's “final report” for Claude Kagan of Western Electric (maybe incomplete with related fragments) -- as noted above, I met with Ted around that time to discuss assisting in this project while in my master's degree fellowship program. (I suspect this was not distributed beyond Ted, Claude, and me.)

(Copies will also be placed on Google Drive.)

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*An innovation of my own is relevant to this use of micropayments. Micropayments have a long history of enthusiasm and failure. The problem is that micropayments add up to macropayments, resulting in the shock of a nasty surprise when the bill is presented, or the fear of such a surprise. My short answer to how to fix that is to make the micro-payments variable, including some form of volume discounts and price caps, and to provide forgiveness when the value received is not satisfactory. Details of how do that are in this recent post on my other blog: "The Case Against Micropayments" -- From Fear and Surprise to The Comfy Chair.

Historical Clarification:  I should note that my original tweet, above was imprecise in saying "bringing Bush to the attention of those you name." I gather that Engelbart arrived at the basic idea of hypertext independently, and only later became aware of Ted's work. However my understanding is the Tim Berner-Lee was influenced by Ted, as referenced in his proposal for the WWW.

2016: Fake News, Echo Chambers, Filter Bubbles and the "De-Augmentation" of Our Intellect

Silicon Valley, we have a problem!

The 2016 election has made it all too clear that growing concerns some of us had about the failing promise of our new media were far more acute than we had imagined. Stuart Elliott recently observed that "...the only thing easier to find than fake news is discussion of the phenomenon of fake news."

But as many have noted, this is a far bigger problem than just fake news (which is a reasonably tractable problem to solve). It is a problem of echo chambers and filter bubbles, and a still broader problem of critical thinking and responsible human relations. While the vision has been that new media could "augment human intellect," instead, it seems our media are "de-augmenting" our intellect. It is that deeper and more insidious problem that I focus on here.

The most specifically actionable ideas I have about reversing that are well described in my 2012 post, Filtering for Serendipity -- Extremism, "Filter Bubbles" and "Surprising Validators,"which has recently gotten attention from such influential figures as Tim O'Reilly and Eli Pariser. (Some readers may wish to jump directly to that post.)

This post aims at putting that in the broader, and more currently urgent context. As one who has thought about electronic social media, and how to enhance collaborative intelligence, and the "wisdom"/"madness" of crowds since the 1970s, I thought it timely to post on this again, expand on its context, and again offer to collaborate with those seeking remedies.

This post just touches on some issues that I hope to expand on in the future. This is a rich and complex challenge. Even perverse: as noted in my 2012 post, and again below, "balanced information may actually inflame extreme views." But at last there is a critical mass of people who realize this may be the most urgent problem in our Internet media world. Humanity may be on the road to self-destruction -- if we don't find a way to fix this fast.

Some perspectives -- augmenting or de-augmenting?

Around 1970 I was exposed to two seminal early digital media thinkers. Those looking to solve these problems today would do well to look back at this rich body of work. These problems are not new -- only newly critical.

• Doug Engelbart was a co-inventor of hypertext (the linking medium of the Web) and related tools, with the stated objective of "Augmenting Human Intellect."  His classic tech report memorably illustrated the idea of augmenting how we use media, such as writing to help us think, in terms of the opposite -- we can de-augment the task of writing with a pencil by tying the pencil to a brick! While the Web and social media have done much to augment our thinking and discourse, we now see that they are also doing much to de-augment it.
• Murray Turoff did important early work on social decision support and collaborative problem solving systems. These systems were aimed as consensus-seeking (initially focused on defense and emergency preparedness), and included the Delphi technique, with its specific methods for balancing the loudest and most powerful voices. 

Not so long after that, I visited a lab at what is now Verizon, to see a researcher (Nathan Felde) working with an experimental super-high resolution screen for multimedia (10,000 by 10,000 pixels, as I recall -- that is more than 10 times richer than the 4K video that is just now becoming generally available). He observed that after working with that, going back to a then-conventional screen was like "eating dinner through a straw" -- de-augmentation again.

Now we find ourselves in an increasingly "post-literate" media world, with TV sound bites, 140 character Tweets, and Facebook posts that are not much longer. We increasingly consume our media on small handheld screens -- mobile and hyper-connected, but displaying barely a few sentences -- eating food for our heads through a straw.*

What a fundamental de-augmentation this is, and why it matters is chillingly described in "Donald Trump, the first President of our Post-Literate Age," A Bloomberg View piece by Joe Weisenthal:

Before the invention of writing, knowledge existed in the present tense between two or more people; when information was forgotten, it disappeared forever. That state of affairs created a special need for ideas that were easily memorized and repeatable (so, in a way, they could go viral). The immediacy of the oral world did not favor complicated, abstract ideas that need to be thought through. Instead, it elevated individuals who passed along memorable stories, wisdom and good news.

And here we begin to see how the age of social media resembles the pre-literate, oral world. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and other platforms are fostering an emerging linguistic economy that places a high premium on ideas that are pithy, clear, memorable and repeatable (that is to say, viral). Complicated, nuanced thoughts that require context don’t play very well on most social platforms, but a resonant hashtag can have extraordinary influence. 

Farad Manjoo gives further perspective in "Social Media’s Globe-Shaking Power," closing with:

Mr. Trump is just the tip of the iceberg. Prepare for interesting times.

Engelbart and Turoff (and others such as Ted Nelson, the other inventor of hypertext) pointed the way to doing the opposite -- we urgently need to re-focus on that vision, and extend it for this new age.

Current voices for change

One prominent call for change was by Tim O'Reilly, a very influential publisher, widely respected as a thought leader in Internet circles. He posted on "Media in the Age of Algorithms" and triggered much comment (including my comment referring to my 2012 post, which Tim recommended).

Another prominent voice is Eli Pariser, who is known for his TED Talk and book on The Filter Bubble, a term he popularized in 2011. He recently created a collaborative Google Doc, which, as reported in Fortune," has become a hive of collaborative activity, with hundreds of journalists and other contributors brainstorming strategies for pushing back against publishers that peddle falsehoods" (I am one, contributing a section headed "Surprising Validators). The editable Doc is apparently generating so much traffic that a read-only copy has been posted!

Shelly Palmer did a nice post this summer, "Your Comfort Zone May Destroy The World." We need to not just exhort stepping outside our comfort zones, which few will do unaided, but to make our media smart about enticing us to do that in easy and compelling ways.

The way forward

As I said, this is a rich and complex challenge. Many of the obvious solutions are too simplistic. As my 2012 post begins:

Balanced information may actually inflame extreme views -- that is the counter-intuitive suggestion in a NY Times op-ed by Cass Sunstein, "Breaking Up the Echo" (9/17/12).   Sunstein is drawing on some very interesting research, and this points toward an important new direction for our media systems.

Please read that post to see why that is, how Sunstein suggests we might cut through that, and the filtering, rating, and ranking strategies I suggest for doing that. (The idea is to find and highlight what Sunstein called "Surprising Validators" -- people who you already give credence to, who suggest that your ideas might be wrong, at least in part -- enticing you to take a small step outside your comfort zone, and re-think, to see things just a bit more broadly.)

I hope to continue to expand on this, and to work with others on these vital issues in the near future.

=================================

Supporting serious journalism

One other critical aspect of this larger problem is citizen-support of serious journalism -- not chasing clicks or commercial sponsorship, but journalism for citizens. My other blog on FairPay addresses that need, most recently with this companion post: Panic in the Streets! Now People are Ready to Patron-ize Journalism!

=================================

See the Selected Items tab for more on this theme.

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*Relying on smartphones to feed our heads reminds me of my disappointment with clunky HyperCard on early Macs (the first widely available hypertext system -- nearly 20 years after the early full-screen demos that so impressed me!), with its tiny "cards" instead of pages of unlimited length. How happy I was to see Mosaic and Netscape browsers on full-sized screens finally appear some 5 years later. We are losing such richness as the price of mobility! (I am writing this with a triple-monitor desktop system, which I sorely miss when away from my office, even with a laptop or iPad. And I admit, I am not great at typing with just my thumbs. ...Does anyone have a spare brick?)

[Image:  Thanks to Eli Pariser and Shelly Palmer for the separate images that I mashed up for this post.]

Digital Camelot - The Once and Future Web of Engelbart and Nelson

If you care about modern culture and how technology is shaping it, this is worth thinking about -- A powerful eulogy for where the Web might have gone, and still may someday, and the friendship of the two people most responsible for envisioning the Web*  --  Ted Nelson's eulogy for his friend Doug Engelbart, as reported by John Markoff in The Times -- with Nelson's inimitable flair.

As Markoff says:

Theodor Holm Nelson, who coined the term hypertext, has been a thorn in the side of the computing establishment for more than a half century. Last week, in an encomium to his friend Douglas Engelbart, he took his critique to Shakespearean levels. It deserves a wider audience. 

Dr. Engelbart and Ted Nelson became acquaintances at the dawn of the modern computing era. They had envisioned and invented the computing that we have come to take for granted.

I first encountered both of them in 1969, and what I saw set the direction for my life's work.  Engelbart gave "The Mother of All Demos" in 1968 (I first saw him give a follow-up the next year, and then read most of his work).  Nelson dreamed of hypertext and hypermedia, and wrote papers on what he called "hypertext" in the '60s and the highly influential Whole Earth Catalog of "Computer Lib / Dream Machines" in 1974.

As Nelson laments, both received a degree of recognition, but both were marginalized. Powerful as it may be, expediency took the Web in more limiting directions.

Their ideas remain profound and forward looking. Anyone who really cares about the future of media, intellect, and culture, and how information technology can augment that, should consider their work.  Just because the Web took a turn to expediency in the past does not mean it will not realize its richer potential in the future. (One hint of that is noted in the next section.)

---

As to Nelson's comment about "keeping the links outside the file," he refers to the important point that HTML embeds the links in the HTML file, which largely limits linking and annotating to the author/distributor of the HTML page. Nelson views this a crippling to the vision he and Engelbart (and Bush) had, in which links could be created by third parties and associated with the page from outside, thus allowing anyone to link from, annotate, and enhance any work.

I was struck by the fact that  interactive hypermedia centered on TV and video are becoming mainstream, and much of it now does keep the links outside the file. Perhaps just a primitive version of Engelbart and Nelson's ideas, but a step in the right direction that might lead to further movement, and maybe spill over into other Web services...

Prime examples are the growing use of Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), which recognize a program and current viewing time-position, and is used to associate independent linkbases with video.  This is occurring both with 2-screen apps like Shazam, Zeebox, and IntoNow (Yahoo), and with 1-screen apps in smart TVs from most of the major TV vendors, and with support from major studios.

Video seems to naturally make embedded links problematic (where to put them?).  The TV industry tried to embed the links into the content (in such forms as ATVEF trigger streams in the VBI, and more recently in cable operator OCAP/EBIF platforms), but this has proven difficult to get to mass market.  Meanwhile, ACR has become popular -- first on the fringes, but now increasingly accepted by both the market and the industry.  Studios like Fox are even opening up their TV enhancement content to let independents like Zeebox use that content apart from (and in competition with) the Fox apps.  They recognize that the value of their services is enhanced by letting others re-distribute enhancements to their shows (along with independent enhancements) -- anything to increase attention to their shows.

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*Of course there were others, most notably Vannevar Bush, who inspired both Engelbart and Nelson.

"The Future of TV" - MITEF-NYC Think Tank Session 1/14 (First in a Series)

Given our success at thought leadership in MITEF-NYC events, we are trying a new kind of Think Tank session that builds on the inventiveness of our MITEF community.  The Future of TV is the first of a series of Think Tank sessions on different industries, "The Future of X."

MITEF Think Tank Session: The Future of TV - January 14, 2014, NYC
Propositions for an audience that has seized (the remote) control

The first of a series of MITEF Think Tank Sessions on The Future of X
Tech-based opportunities for changing industries and changing audiences

...It is up to the brightest minds in technology to find solutions to these exciting challenges--and how to profit from that. MITEF-NYC is therefore introducing a new event format. In a highly engaged and interactive setting, a Think Tank session will gather ideas and concrete answers on how technology and innovation can shape the future of television

Some prominent industry participants (including seasoned executives and consultants, respected columnists, and successful entrepreneurs and inventors) are already registered, and space is filling up. Now is the time to register if you have not already.

We look forward to a stimulating session with strong audience participation. We hope to not only generate lots of good ideas for innovators, but also for learning how this format works and can be extended. 

Future events might target other industries in disruptive transitions where technology is both a challenge and an opportunity, such as publishing, music, retail, transportation, and education.

Some background on our Think Tank format...

As a long time co-chair of the programming committee, and co-organizer of this event, I am enjoying the process of trying this new format. I have been involved in applying several successful formats at MITEF since the late '90s, notably panel sessions, and we have done many ground-breaking events that established our reputation for thought leading coverage of important developments, panels of top-level innovators, and sophisticated audiences of entrepreneurs and those who work with them.

The Think Tank idea arose at a member/volunteer brainstorming session we did in August to generate new program ideas for the coming year, and emerged as the brainchild of one of our recently joined members, now co-organizer of this event, Katja Bartholmess. She is an energetic champion of new ideas with an eclectic background in e-commerce and branding. She pointed out that we have such smart audiences that maybe we don't need formal speakers and panelists, just a little catalyzing. We began to work together, settled on TV as the place to start the series, and are working to find a format that is manageable, brings out the best in our base of attendees, and lets them create. We thought of calling it a salon, brainstorming, or a round table, but went with think tank. We see our roles as facilitators, to help frame and herd the discussion, but with the real energy coming from our participants. We also hope to find ways to give the session continuing life, to build on ideas and human connections made that evening.

We are identifying a small number of "lead" participants who have experience innovating in the industry to help stimulate discussion, and shape it with their knowledge, but view them as "first among equals," with the idea that all of our audience participate actively, and that creative outsiders can often bring new thinking, outside the box, to sometime see opportunities that insiders ignore.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

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.

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

Social TV -- The "Killer App" for Coactive TV -- Ready for Ubiquity

Social TV promises to be the killer app for coactive TV (CoTV).  (A "killer application" is an application that is so desirable to users that it drives the adoption of a larger technology.  The concept emerged when spreadsheets and word processors drove the adoption of PCs, which have obviously broadened to far wider importance.)

There are a number of signs that Social TV is emerging as such a killer app (some mentioned in previous posts).

• IntoNow launched in January 2011 and was quickly acquired by Yahoo on 4/25/11, and Spot411 re-launched 7/18/11 as TVplus.  Both have gotten prominent press and both do fully automatic syncing to any program, without need for any involvement by the TV distributor. 
• The Wikipedia article on Social Television was created in 5/07 with 3,244 bytes, grew to 5,528 by the end of 2009, then grew to 10,469 by the end of 2010, and to 16,851 by 8/23/11.  It now includes a list of 32 such systems (not all of which involve two-screens).
• One of the most popular FIOS TV apps was the Twitter app.

Being a killer app does not mean it will ultimately dominate the use of the platform, but only that it drives early adoption.  I suggest there are other killer apps for coactive TV as well, and that the long term value will span a wide range of apps.

• From a user viewpoint, EPGs (electronic program guides) are another important killer app, not least because it is one the MSOs (multi-system operators, TV distributors) are embracing along with users.  EPGs showcase the value of the companion device to allow interaction with a nice UI, and without interfering with current viewing.   The irresistible power of the iPad UI and relatively open ecosystem has finally convinced the MSOs that they must go outside the box (at least as to the set-top box and the TV screen).  Comcast and Time Warner Cable have moved quickly to offer tablet-based EPGs and DVR programming.  The coactive EPG will evolve into the full "Media Concierge" service that I have been blogging about since 2005). 
• The real money to drive all of this is in advertising.  Obviously this will drive the service providers and advertisers, but I submit that users too will recognize and increasingly demand the value of well targeted ads that exploit the flexibility of coactive UIs to be unobtrusive.  Well targeted ads can be a valuable service, as long as they are no more intrusive than the viewer wants them to be (which may vary from time to time, and from ad to ad).  Coactive ads--driving from a short spot to a companion microsite (whether linked to live, or deferred using a bookmarking feature)--can be far less intrusive and far more useful than a longer TV ad with no coactive companion element. A good UI can give the user control over when and how such ads appear.

All of these promising killer apps have synergy with one another.  Coactive TV is at heart hypermedia, and thus "everything is deeply intertwingled." (Quoting Ted Nelson, who also coined the terms hypertext and hypermedia.)

• Social TV apps can work both as program enhancements and to provide program guide/media concierge services.  
• Social TV can also be about ads, such as during the Superbowl, or when any ad of interest to my social circle appears.
• All of these will drive usage of enhancement content (such as IMDB pages), which will create further synergies.

But there is one more thing that is essential, and that is ubiquity. While full, ubiquitous coactivity is not central to all Social TV, I suggest it is essential to enabling it to reach scale.

• Synchronizing Web browsing to TV can be done manually, and has for decades.  Viewers have created their own Social TV ever since the first two people sat with a laptop in front of a TV, and ever since the first online chat about a TV program.  It can also be automated with program specific apps.  ABC did it a decade ago with Enhanced TV for the Oscars and other shows, and now on the iPad for Grey's Anatomy, but program and network apps cannot create massive synergy.
• What is essentially to enabling Social TV (and most other CoTV apps) to cross the chasm is ubiquity.  Siloing companion apps to a separate app for each network or program or advertiser is hugely self-defeating.  How many users will load more than a few apps, and how many will bother to open those apps more than once?  Just as the Web eliminated the need for separate apps for every content service, a ubiquitous CoTV service will require only a single context-linking app to reach services for every program, to every Web service. There will be all kinds of mashups driven by that context, but an effective context-linking service must be essentially universal.

A truly ubiquitous coactive TV service will be always on, and always aware of a viewer's TV context (except when disabled).  Such a ubiquitous service can activate any Web service and any application, in a rich ecology much like that on the Web.  That way a user can just set up the coactive companion context service just once, and get synchronized for any program or ad, to any social networking service, content service, or whatever -- whether directly, or via mashups.  (Just how such services can be structured to enable flexibility and user control was described in my published patent disclosures, and will be a subject of  future posts.)

It now appears that Social TV is the next big thing in TV, and will drive full coactivity -- but a whole lot of other functions will ride its coattails.

TVs, iPads, Time Warner Cable, and Viacom -- Copyright vs. Copyrape

The latest overreach of copyright owners over the Time Warner Cable iPad TV app is an interesting encapsulation of all that is wrong with the current excesses of copyright.

I see this as a key policy issue relating my theme of "user-centered media" -- one that gets to the heart of the social contract behind copyright and all intellectual property. The key question is the balance of what is good for users, and what is fair incentive to content creators. The Constitution wisely embraced that balance, but many have lost sight of it.

The case reported by the NY Times Media Decoder is a classic of overreach (and one in which I find myself in the surprising position of supporting the cable companies).  As the Times reports, Viacom pleads that Time Warner Cable’s actions “will interfere with Viacom’s opportunities to license content to third-party broadband providers and to successfully distribute programming on its own broadband delivery sites.”  Let's think about that, both from a technical and a policy perspective.  This is not really a question of TWC vs. Viacom, but of the public vs. the rights-holders.

First, an quick look shows how silly this is from a technical perspective:

• Doesn't Time Warner's distribution of Viacom channels to TVs in the home limit "Viacom’s opportunities to license content to third-party broadband providers?"  If I could not get The Daily Show from TWC, I would certainly be much more inclined to use Hulu for it.  Why does Viacom allow that?
• How is an iPad different from a TV?  (Answer keeping in mind that this is the 21st Century.) 
• I have a Blu-Ray player and a Mac Mini both HDMI-connected to my TV, so I can watch any "third-party broadband provider" programming on my TV, and don't need TWC if Viacom is available through other providers. I can view such broadband provider content on any screen I like, and they are completely free to compete with TWC.  (Such any-screen connectivity will soon be the norm.)
• Why should TWC be locked off the iPad when Hulu is sold rights to distribute Viacom programming to any Internet-connected screen, including both TVs and iPads.
• Remember also that both TWC cable TV and broadband in TWC-served homes both arrive as RF signals running in different channels on the same coaxial cable!
• Once more, what century is this?

But this is really a deeper question of policy, and both content owners and content users seem to forget the basic social contract that drives copyright.  Let's step back to those basics:

• Copyright is designed to maximize social welfare by encouraging content creation
• Copyright owners are given limited rights as their incentive to create content
• The public pays to compensate creators for content.
• The public also may pay distributors and device manufacturers for facilitating access to content, but that has nothing to do with copyright.  (I have to pay for a book of Shakespeare plays or the Bible, or to download it to my cell phone in Timbuktu, but the content is free.)

Thus various parties have rights to compensation:

• The creators of Viacom content have rights to compensation for their content.
• Viacom is entitled to collect such copyright-related compensation, as well as compensation for their contribution to distribution (as well as some profit).
• Distributors and device providers are entitled to compensation for distribution and devices (which, again, has nothing to do with copyright).

But the viewer who pays for content has purchased the right to enjoy that content.  That can take a number of forms, but none are tied to what screen the viewer is using.  For a single viewer (or household, or whatever unit is bought):

• I can pay for time-limited access (such as a streamed subscription) or for permanent access (such as a download or DVD).
• Those costs may be bundled with distribution and device costs, but the underlying copyright fee is a simple and distinct component of that bundle.
• Any copyright-based limitation to content by device or location or technology that goes beyond the simple distinction of time-limited or unlimited access is without foundation.  Such limitations might be forced by technical limitations, but once those technical limitations disappear, they have no basis.

So if I pay for a Viacom program (content) one time, for a month, or forever, I should have unlimited rights to enjoy viewing that content, one time, for that month, or forever.  There might also be software fees for apps, and bandwidth fees for distribution, but there is no basis for any further content viewing fee.*

The copyright owners seem to have forgotten that the maze of licensing that they have so many lawyers working on is mostly an accident of technological history.  Hopefully the courts will not lose sight of the basics and let the tail wag the dog, now that technology is liberating us.  Hopefully they will not let copyright turn into copyrape.

Content does not want to be free, if its creator wants compensation (subject to his limited copyright).  But once I have paid for a license, I should be free to view it as I like, for whatever amount of viewing I have paid the creator for.  Watching multiple times might be a multiple use, but watching on one screen rather than another is not a different use.

Ask not for whom the copyright tolls, it tolls for thee -- for the public welfare.

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*A related issue is the current idea that cable-sourced access might be limited to in-home viewing.  That too is an artificial limitation,with no inherent justification.  It may be hard to prevent abuse of licenses, if I can let all my friends view my TWC content in their homes, but as long as TWC has the technical means to limit viewing to valid subscribers (and those viewing with them) why should there be any geographic restriction limiting out of home viewing? 

How do you explain something that's never existed before?

This is one of my favorite images, and largely speaks for itself.  So you can stop here (all else is commentary).  

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A "better mousetrap" is easy to explain.  The first mousetrap, like the first wheel, is not so easy.  

This cartoon is from the October 1981 announcement of the Xerox Star workstation, the productized version of the Alto, the very first WIMP (Window, Icon, Menu, Pointing device) Graphical User Interface.  (To anyone who has the full advertisement this was clipped from, I would love to have a better, more complete copy.)

Relevant to my theme of user-centered media, this gets to the idea that the user may not know what he really would like.  In many respects, Steve Jobs is a champion of user-centered media (even if maybe not user-centered business practices).  Asked why Apple doesn’t do focus groups, Jobs responded: "We figure out what we want. You can’t go out and ask people ‘what’s the next big thing?’ There’s a great quote by Henry Ford. He said, "If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘A faster horse.’"”  Of course we need to think of the user, and usually should listen to them, but to innovate, one must look far in front of them.

All the best really new ideas are simple at heart, but have many aspects and embodiments.  Like an embryo, it may be all there at conception at some level, but the details that work in the world unfold as you let it grow to maturity.  Depending on context, some aspects grow faster and are more apparent than others.  But explaining them is no easy task.  I have enjoyed seeing many new ideas in early stages, but am still trying to learn how to explain them.  Steve Jobs has the advantage of being able to build them and show them off.  I have not had his resources.  And sometimes no one has the resources until the time is right.

I tried to convince Mobil Corporation to buy a Star workstation to experiment with when I was in their technology planning group in 1981, but it was too expensive, even for Mobil (which was the first company to buy a Cray supercomputer)!  The workstation cost about $100K, but  as I recall, a useful single-user system also needed a file server, print server, and communications server, totaling about $250K minimum (about $600K in current dollars).

I watched hypertext unfold since 1969.  Ted Nelson did a masterful job explaining it (inspired by Vannevar Bush's 1945 vision in The Atlantic Monthly), and Doug Engelbart spectacularly demonstrated similar techniques in what was called "the mother of all demos" in 1968.  But it was slow to reach wide recognition until technology advanced, Berners-Lee simplified it, and Andreesen packaged it.  

As to my own inventions, I have struggled with the challenge of trying to explain online/local hybrids in 1994 (now in RSS, AJAX, and HTML5), coactive TV companion devices (now emerging for iPads) in 2002, and now for FairPay in 2010.  (A companion post is on my FairPayZone blog.

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[Caption text:  "How do you explain something that's never existed before? ... He had a similar problem"]

Hyperlocal News symposium by MIT Enterprise Forum of NYC -- 2/24

Hyperlocal News: A New of World of Journalism, Sustainable Business Models, and the $30B Local Ad Market promises to be a very interesting NYC panel session.  As board organizer of the event for MITEF-NYC, I am pleased to have a very strong and diverse mix of panelists, and look forward to some stimulating dialog.  Aside from major players like the NY Times and Patch, we have a smaller startup, the Alternative Press, and Outside.in, a technology/infrastructure provider.

A very nice preview article on the event, and on the MIT Enterprise Forum, was published today by The Alternative Press.

From my "user-centered media" perspective, hyperlocal is an interesting development, with farther to go in use-centered control of locality -- as to geography, time, and context.  Instead of just a newspaper focused on my community, I want to see more context sensitivity and control.  Sometimes I want to know:

• why there are sirens in my neighborhood right now (more and longer than usual, this being Manhattan)?
• what are the fireworks I see on the Hudson now, and how do I get advance notice of them?
• what events match my interest profile (graded by distance vs. level of interest)?
• about my home location, my work location, or a location I am visiting or passing through.

I don't know that the panel will get to these questions, but there are many other interesting ones they will address.  I have been involved in various online news services since the late '80s, and what I see as interesting is not always shared by the powers that be.

One of my recent projects (with impact yet to be determined) is a radically new pricing process for digital media called FairPay.  This has strong potential for news services, including hyperlocal ones.  More on that is on the at my FairPay Zone blog.

Of course I will be at the event, and will be happy to discuss FairPay, and other user-centered issues, with anyone there.

The Daily, iPad, and Apps ...or Web browsing with HTML5 -- Which paradigm?

The appearance of  The Daily from News Corp. is seen as a big step in the online journalism business, as described in a WSJ article.

I played with it briefly and it brings me back to some key questions about the future of media.  It will be very interesting to see how it does.  There are a range of important issues, and here are some impressions.

The interesting business issue is how app models are seen as a last chance to give publishers another bite at the monetization apple (pun intended) vs. free Web content.  This depends to some extent on whether Apple and other app stores let publishers keep enough money and enough control of the customer relationship (which Apple clearly hates to do, but Google is more open to).  But with HTML5 Web apps as alternative, that may become a harder sell than Murdoch now hopes.

Underlying this is the big technology question of whether the app fad loses out to HTML5 Web browsing.  In many respects, the app/widget model is a giant step backward.  Pre Web, there were "apps" for every online service, and they were all unique and non-interoperable with a clutter of invocations and divergent UIs.  The Web/browser brought a "World Wide Web" of consistency and interoperability that still enabled flexibility and varying look/feel.  A key issue is how to benefit from apps/widgets without going back to another age of islands and silos?  I built some of the first pre-Web publisher "apps" for TV Guide (hello again News Corp), Golf Magazine, Sierra, and others in the early '90s, and saw first hand how much the Web simplified things for both publishers and users.

The question is why bother downloading apps, when it seems HTML5 will soon give pretty much the same UI with no download?  Most of the current UI benefits of apps will soon go away.  The lasting benefit of the app store is central merchandising/sales (and a home page UI), and as Google shows with their Web app store, this can be done as little more than a Web site.  A few useful links are an Engadget article, the Chrome Webstore, and its FAQ.

Check out NY Times and SI Snapshot Chrome apps for an app-like experience in a browser, with little or nothing to download.  The NYTimes chrome site actually runs in Safari on the iPad and looks/acts much like the iPad app (but seems to give a different content mix).  The only essential thing the app store really adds is the home page array of icons (and maybe a different way to get people to pay).

I will bet on the browser.  It offers the best overall and most open user-centered experience.  And I think there are other ways to solve the monetization problem.  (One in particular is my FairPay pricing process, with an example of usage for a newspaper on my FairPay Zone blog.)

The awakening of TV to the 21st Century ...Real Soon Now?

CoTV was ahead of its time in 2002...  Now the stars may really be aligning for TV "companion" apps.


When I talked about CoTV to people at major TV and Web companies in 2002-5, they thought it was a good idea and assured me "Yes, I get it."  Some did, and some just thought they did.  Like all forms of "interactive TV" it has been "just around the corner" for many years "waiting for the stars to align."  But now the stars really do seem to be aligning.


At the recent TV of the Future "TVOT NYC Intensive"  from iTVT and Canoe, it was evident that important things are happening:

• iPad has awakened he giants:  Comcast, Time Warner, TV networks, TiVo, and many others are jumping into coactive "companion" apps for tablets (and phones).  iPad and other tablets are nearly ideal companion devices, and already in millions of laps.
• Platforms for interaction (CableLabs/Canoe, ETV, EBIF, ...) are enabling real innovation and increasing openness from within the distribution establishment.  EBIF is in over 20 million homes, and growing rapidly, not only in cable systems.  ETV is getting real.  The PayPal Buy Button is a nice example.
• Over-the-top alternatives are real -- the incumbent system operators know they need to get into the 21st century or watch their content distribution business get bypassed.

At the same time, others are moving in the same direction, and users are doing it themselves, manually and awkwardly, but in growing numbers:

• External plays based on TiVo, Blu Ray (Pocket BLU), and sound recognition (Spot411 Entertainment Tonight) show how this can be done outside the cable plant, even for shows distributed on cable.
• Social TV apps (about what you are watching now) are making the viewer value proposition even more powerful.

What is missing is for a smart player to provide an "always-on" TV sync connector -- a single app and context portal that drives any companion content for any show (and any ad) to a large base of households.  The problem has been that nearly all attempts to provide TV companion apps have been siloed, and limited to a single program or network.  

• In the early 2000's ABC ETV and Goldpocket did second-screen companion apps for major network shows (Millionaire, Sunday/Monday Night Football, Academy Awards, etc.) but only if you navigated to an ABC or program-specific Web site.  Up-take was rarely even 1% of  viewership, hardly a basis for a business.
• Now iPad and iPhone apps are creating similar experiences, but for the most part it is still a different app for each show or network.

How can anyone really expect significant uptake when users must know there is a particular app, bother to get it, then bother to use it, and then do the same every time they change channels or programs?  Even now at TVOT, I spoke to someone from Canoe who seemed to think I must be some kind of idiot to view this as a problem.  Saying (my paraphrase): "The user can just get the right app, or just go to the right Web site.  That BMW ad you want to sync to is a network ad, not a cable ad, so the network has to provide the app -- or the viewer can just go to bmw.com. That is simple -- why can't you see that???"  

One more time:  The viewer should not have to switch from a Comcast app to an ABC app to an MTV app to a BMW app (or enter a different URL) every time a program or ad changes. Only when there is one app (or Web portal) that seamlessly syncs enhancements for any show and any ad will this be easy for the viewer.  I should just be able to turn enhancements on, and have them appear on my tablet with no further effort (until I turn them off).  And when it is that easy, companion enhancements might quickly grow to 10-20-30% of viewership or more.  Just the linkage revenue from linking those ads would be worth many billions.

So does anyone get it yet?  Yes.  My contacts with well-placed industry players indicate that more and more of them now do get it, and some see it beginning to happen in the next year or two.  The cable operators have finally recognized that set-top boxes are good MPEG engines, but hopelessly inadequate platforms for user interfaces, and that they must open up to partners using Web-based technologies.  Canoe is seeking outside partnerships and ideas.  Maybe the system operaors will actually do what they need to do.  One interesting hint of this new direction is the eBay companion TV app, which can sync an iPad with any program on an EBIF-enabled set-top.  A demo by RCDb at TVOT Intensive showed a similar app for syncing iPad enhancements to deliver IMDB pages and other content.  Cable operators are starting with companion program guides, but a program guide that does not know what you are watching right now is pretty lame (as they are aware).  Once they provide that added smarts to the companion, linking to program-specific enhancements will be (relatively) easy.

And if the distributors do not get their act together, outsiders will do it.  The Spot411 effort shows one approach, and there are many others.  TiVo is well positioned to do it (and could still win big if it did).  And if it comes too slowly to the legacy providers, the IPTV players will soon have enough viewership on big screens to lead the way.

So who will it be that realizes this is a critical race, does it right, and wins it? TV is ready to be reborn for the 21st Century.  Once someone makes it easy to use across the board (and does not cripple it), it will happen very fast.

Introducing FairPay: An adaptive pricing process that can change the game in the media/content industry

I have started a new blog for my latest project, which I think is very exciting, and will be posting more actively there.

This project is called FairPay, which is a radically new adaptive pricing process that I think has great potential, and both business and intellectual interest. I also have a mini Web site devoted to FairPay.

Repeating the first post from the new blog:

The Internet has led to a crisis in revenue models for media/content -- but the Internet also enables a way to create a radically new kind of pricing process.

What is needed in a revenue model, is not to choose the right price for digital products (free or not), but to create an adaptive pricing process.

1. Selectively offer to let the buyer set any price he considers fair after the sale (Pay What You Want, post-sale).
2. Let the seller (or a collective of sellers) track that price and use that information to determine whether to make further offers of that kind to that buyer in the future.

Instead of a fixed price, this process generates a cooperative and adaptive series of pricing actions, each based on feedback on how fairly the buyer sets his prices.

Call this enhanced process Fair Pay What You Want, or FairPay for short.

Because FairPay variations on Pay What You Want set prices after the sale, the buyer can have the product, use it, and verify its value, with no risk -- and then pay whatever he thinks fair.

• By adding FairPay feedback, the seller gains reduced risk and indirect control. The buyer develops a history, a FairPay reputation, that affects his future opportunities.
• That gives the seller the control needed to make FairPay offers only where his expected risk/reward profile is attractive. Instead of static pay walls and freemium schemes, this process supports seamless and dynamic hybrid models. Those who pay fairly, rise above the pay wall -- those who do not, must face it.

FairPay creates a win-win dynamic that can make both buyers and sellers much happier, and the economy much more productive.

• Sellers can profitably sell to everyone who sees a potential value, at a price corresponding to the perceived value to that individual buyer.
• Some will pay well, some will not. But sellers can expect that many more people will buy, and they will pay a fair price because their reputation is at stake.
• FairPay can take many forms, and can enable free sampling and blends of free and paid that are more dynamically adaptive and effective than ordinary “freemium” models.

The result is that total revenue, and total profit, might be significantly higher than with a fixed price (at least for products with low marginal cost, as with digital media) -- and that total value created can be maximized.

A fuller introduction to FairPay is provided at the FairPay Web site.

Building on Google TV: TV meets Webpad. Webpad meets TV.

As the Google blog says, "these features are just a fraction of what Google TV can do."

One hint, reported in the Wall Street Journal, is that "Linkages between Android phones and Google TV bring some unusual benefits. A Google engineer, for example, demonstrated how a person could use voice recognition in his cellphone to search for a TV program by speaking its name.

I see this as an opening for the kind of rich "Coactive TV" (CoTV) applications that coordinate TV viewing with enhancements and controls on a second screen device, such as an Android phone or tablet or notepad. While putting the Web onto the TV is desirable for some use cases, the real opportunity for convergence is to coordinate a Web device with a TV device. This can provide content and Social Web services on a Web device that knows what you are watching (such as to tweet about a program), and let the Web device control what you are watching) such as to swing a video from your tablet or phone to your TV.

Hopefully Google is well aware of this potential. I spoke to some senior people about these ideas some time ago (and as noted in a prior post, there is some interesting Google research, including a paper by some guy named "Brin, S"). But in any case, independent developers should be able to provide this (as long as the app police don't prevent them).

As noted in my previous post, iPad is beginning to show what a Webpad can do as a second screen. Google TV seems another big step in the right direction.

Comcast, Time Warner on iPad -- an ideal device for Coactive TV

The 5/12 announcement of Comcast's Xfinity iPad app, and comments by Time Warner that all cable operators are going to have similar offerings, looks like a big step toward a platform for Coactive TV on a mainstream basis. Two videos show the current steps.

First, this looks like a major step to position iPad (and presumably future tablets from other sources) as a well-integrated second screen for use with TV viewing. It will offer a rich remote control usable on the sofa for enhanced control of the big-screen TV, with full program guide and DVR control functions having an excellent UI, including its handy soft keyboard.

Second, it looks like a first step toward a simple coactive Social Web app. The Comcast demo shows how it lets you send an invitation to a friend, so he can tune in to the program you are watching with just a single click (if he has equivalent service).

iPad looks like a poster child for the kind of Webpad that would be an ideal second screen for Web services related to what you are watching on TV. With this device, and the level of TV context awareness in Comcast's demo, it would be very easy for the cable operators to add a full suite of coactive services. This could enable the iPad to show arbitrary Web content related to what you are watching on your TV.

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Some related news that is also encouraging in using such mainstream devices as TV adjuncts is from Crestron. This leading high-end whole house entertainment control company is embracing iPad as an alternative to its very expensive custom tablet remote controls.

Coactive viewing of TV and the Web -- the stars are aligning?

MTV, Sony, Verizon, Twitter, Facebook and others are moving into position. Some of the stars seem to be aligning, even if the full impact is still mostly unrecognized (even by many of them).

• A majority of people multitask while watching TV, increasingly using the Web while on TV
• Much of that is driven by the Social Web -- tweeting and IM-ing about the TV shows (or other video) we are watching.
• Some of it is driven by other services, such as looking at IMDB or other Web content related to what you are watching.

Some basic aspects of this are now widely recognized, as noted in a 2/14/10 front page NY Times story: Water-Cooler Effect: Internet Can Be TV's Friend. There has been a drumbeat of announcements by large and small players in support of this. Some are specific to a particular TV program, but some recognize that what we really need is a platform that works for whatever we are watching. Just as with the Web, what we need is not isolated apps for each program or network, but a platform that, like a browser, works for any content. You don't get mass audiences on niche platforms!

I have been seeking to develop such "Coactive TV" services since before 2002, and am happy to see more and more steps toward that vision.

• One of the most important milestones is the Verizon FIOS Twitter and Facebook widgets. These are TV widgets that run on your TV (if you have FIOS) and can be triggered to sense what program you are watching and send a tweet or update your Facebook status to inform people that you are watching it. Right now, these are for interaction on the TV, with limited integration with a PC or phone.
  -- That should be easy to add -- all it takes is a widget that talks to a Web server that coordinates other Web services with whatever is on your TV. There is no limit to what the Web services might be. Wouldn't someone like to be in the middle of that dynamic? ...Verizon? ...Anyone else?
• Another interesting step is by a startup called Spot411, that uses audio recognition to figure out what TV program or DVD you are watching, and link you to a Facebook page with others who are also watching that. They got some visibility with a PC and iPhone app done for Fox DVDs that is called FoxPop. Now they are doing the same thing for TV. These guys get the idea that we don't want different apps for each show -- we want one app that works for any show.
• Sony is doing an interesting variation for their Blu-ray discs, building on BD-Live Internet connectivity. It started as movieIQ, announced last June with IMDB-like information from Gracenote (the people who tell your PC what song is on the CD track you are playing). Soon they will be adding an iPhone app called movieIQ sync that will let you get the movieIQ information on your phone. Great for Sony discs, but what about all the rest? Repeat: You don't get mass audiences on niche platforms!
• Many media companies have iPhone apps that tie to their specific TV programs, DVDs, or games. Repeat: You don't get mass audiences on niche platforms!
• Miso is an app that lets you "check in" to any TV show or movie and send it to Twitter, Facebook, or foursquare. You have to manually enter or find the show (unlike Spot411), but it is an interesting start.
• MTV is one of the first of what may be a wave of companies building similar apps for the iPad, which they suggest "could be the appendage that makes interactive TV a reality." A nice start but...One more time: You don't get mass audiences on niche platforms!

Right now it is still a zero billion dollar industry, but we have come a long way from the days when people asked why anyone would want to use the Internet while watching TV. I have been seeing movement in the right direction for a long time, but it seems things are heating up rapidly all around this space, and flashover may not be far off. iPad may be a very nice base for some of this, but there are many ways to skin this cat. ...What is the missing link? Hmmm...