Are you ready, box? Start walking 1935 - 1960 - 2008 - 2058
As part of its 50th anniversary celebrations, the marketing communications agency BPC has commissioned a series of "Future Pointer" studies. In this series, being published in association with The Times Business, marketing and communications experts and thinkers provide their views on the changing face of communications over the next 50 years.
Anno Domini 1935
When TV was still a baby prophets cropped out to predict its future. In 1935 Rudholf Arheim, an expert in cinema studies, wrote an essay called A Foretaste Of TV. This is the future he envisaged for TV viewers:
"The pathetic hermit, squatting in his room, hundreds of miles away from the scene that he experiences as his present life, the 'viewer' who cannot even laugh or applaud without feeling ridiculous, is the final product of a century-long development, which has led from the campfire, the marketplace and the arena to the lonesome consumer of spectacles today."
The champions of established media always tended to look down on new media which they considered to be upstarts!
In the same period another important person, whose name I do not recall (I never manage to find the sources when I need them!) said that:
"TV does not have a commercial future."
Pathetic hermits? Many are saying the same thing about internet users now. No commercial value? Tell that to Murdoch or Berlusconi! Ooops... not a good start for TV futurologists!
Oh why should I try to predict the shape of TV in 50 years' time? If I write this piece BPC would give a contribution to a charity. Can I say no? Besides, the risk of being a bad prophet is minimal. Most of the readers of this piece would not be around 50 years from now and those who would be around will surely not remember what I have written.
So let me strive forward with mentioning another momentous date besides 1935.
Anno Domini 1960 (approximately)
Toni ta' Tona, God bless his soul, was the first resident of St Anthony Street, Balzan (where I was born and brought up) to buy a TV set. He placed it in his front room and invited all the kids of the street to watch with him. England was playing Italy.
I supported the English team and have done so ever since.
England annually commemorates the day when I offered my support.
This innovation brought with it other effects. It was the end of ħarba, gwerra Franċiża and open-air street football in St Anthony Street. It was the start of watching Carosello and other programmes generally received as a very grainy (bir-ross, we used to say) picture. From time to time Toni ta' Tona patiently tried to adjust the picture with little success as reception in our area was bad. But what the heck! We were seeing moving pictures coming from far away, so why should one complain about little problems of picture definition?
Anno Domini 2008
In a certain sense TV is today very similar to what it was then. OK, OK, it is also quite different. But basically it is still a box on which you see pictures and listen to sounds originated by someone else at a distance and at the time that person decides to do so.
Now the sound can be stereo, the pictures are in colour, the ross has disappeared, and the number of stations is legion.
The seeds of the future are being sown. In a certain sense the future of TV is already here. Let's see how these seeds can develop.
Anno Domini 2058 (approximately)
I typed "future of TV" and did a Google search. Within 0.71 seconds I got 404,000,000 results! I read them all and am giving here the synthesis of all those pieces. (If you believe what you see and listen to on TV then you will believe that one as well).
My predictions about the future of TV can be summed in three words: personal, ubiquitous and interactive.
The future of TV will be personal
We are moving from the viewer as user to the viewer as producer. Most owners of mobile phones are potential TV producers. If you have a digital camera you can produce longer programmes. No need to cry "Action", just shoot.
Is it a private party, a naughty prank or a school play where your young kid makes his debut as a budding actor?
Shoot, upload it on You Tube and share it with dozens or hundreds of thousands. This video-hosting website has grown by leaps and bounds since it was set up in 2005.
Sometimes more important events are caught on mobile or camera. The people's protests in Myanmar were communicated to us in that way. Large TV corporations and stations now have dedicated a part of their websites to these citizen journalists/photographers who manage to film what the professionals miss.
A good example of how the future is already present is current TV.
This is an Emmy Award interactive cable channel where viewers send in video stories they've created to be aired on the network. It is owned by former US Vice-President Al Gore and businessman Joel Hyatt. It has been broadcasting since 2005. Last year it also started its operations in the United Kingdom for Sky and Virgin Media subscribers.
Initiatives such as these enable viewers to move from couch potatoes to TV producers.
Televiewers will now also migrate to becoming heads of programmes or station creators. We are moving away from the push towards the pull media. In the first scenario the media moguls build stations, create programmes and transmit them at the time they decide. Existent technology already enables one to pick and choose from different programmes on different TV stations, video on demand services and IPTV and form their own TV station.
The days of stations targeting mass audiences are numbered and will be over and done with by 2058. The internet will be the natural habitat of such stations.
The future of TV will be ubiquitous
Up till now TV is received through a "box" in the sitting room, bedroom or some other room. One of the advantages of radio over TV was its mobility. That is becoming a thing of the past.
The future is Mobile TV
Through mobile phones or some other gadgets we will be able to watch TV whenever and wher-ever we want to. Today's limited initiatives of mobile TV consist of traditional TV broadcast on mobile sets. This will change radically. Mobile TV will develop as TV in its own rights.
New aesthetics based on big close-ups and talking heads will be the order of the day. It is not realistic to broadcast large vistas and panoramas on the small mobile screen. Even programme duration and content will have to change.
It has to fit in the hectic timetable of people whose most scarce commodity is time. Uploading your content on these stations will be as easy and quick as posting comments in reaction to a blog or any other item on a web-paper.
Mobile TV is for mobile people.
Shorter and punchier programmes with more on-demand facilities will be the order of the day. Orgad, in the report I referred to, mentions "snackable content" and "mobisodes". The former is described as "mobile TV content ... suitable for 'snacking'. Mobisodes are fragmented and small made-for-mobile episodes that cater to bite-sized portions of content on the go".
Eventually this will also lead to a radical change in the way "traditional" TV communicates.
This is just the start. There is something more exciting or scary - depending on your point of view. During a discussion I listened to on BBC one of the participants said that we do not see through our eyes but thanks to a certain part of our brain.
"The brain: that's where we want to place our chip," he said.
So the ultimate mobility will come when the TV set is reduced to a chip implanted into our brains and our eyes or perhaps our powers of imagination become the screen. Would we change channels by blinking our eyes? Who knows? One thing is certain: it will be the ideal remedy for boring homilies as well as tiring, never-ending meetings. But the daunting fact would be that:
You are the TV set.
And the TV set is you.
The future of TV will be interactive
Today we sit in front of the TV screen. We plonk ourselves on some comfortable sofa, nibble crisps or something less junky while drinking beer or soya milk. We look at it, adore it, curse it or enjoy it. We are here. It is there.
By 2058 TV will surround us. We will be engulfed by it.
The TV set will not be in one room but one room will become the TV set. The TV screen will cover the rounded room - no edges, just a continuum. You sit in the middle of the action which happens in front of you, behind you and on all sides. Virtual reality and hologram technology will replace present-day TV technology. The effect is fantastic. It can be frightening.
If you watch Animal Planet you will be in the middle of the safari. Lions and tigers are all around you. Their roar is deafening. There can be problems, as well.
What will you do if the lion does you know what? Who will clean up the mess? The husband, the wife, the kids or the domestic robot?
Imagine a different scenario. You are in the middle of a battle. I'm sure you will be tempted to put on a bulletproof vest before going into the room-TV. On the TV menu there will, quite naturally, be other sort of activities which are more - how shall I put it - pleasurable and enjoyable. Enjoy.
TV will not be interactive solely because being in the middle of things is interactive. It will be so in other ways and means. Probably you will be in possession of some kind of gadget that will enable you to choose from different plots at different stages of the film you are watching. You will be able to vote for the winners.
Participants in quizzes or reality shows will most probably sit in a kind of ejector seat. Those who are voted out will be physically ejected from the screen.
The question is:
Will the participants have some gadget that will be able to eject the viewers?
Probably this technological development will happen in the 50 years after 2058. I will write about it in a future piece.
Heart of a machine
Up till now this piece concentrated on future gizmos and technologies; but TV is much more than a technology.
Remember Toni ta' Tona?
The introduction of the technology (i.e. TV set) brought with it social innovations in St Anthony Street. No more gwerra Franċiża, remember? In actual fact what starts as a technological innovation tends to become a social and economic innovation (if not a revolution) and eventually a cultural phenomenon.
I will not go here into the debate of what triggers what, i.e. does technology trigger the social and economic innovation or vice-versa?
The technological changes that I mentioned above will undoubtedly be accompanied by social and cultural upheavals. What will these be? How will they change us? Will we have more concentrated ownership patterns? Or will there be a more diffused and democratic ownership structure? Will this sophisticated technology create a new divide or bridge old ones?
An ancient Chinese sage once said that whoever uses machines will get the heart of a machine.
This technophobic statement points out a very important question:
Will the TV technology of 50 years from now help to humanise us or dehumanise us? Will it continue to amuse us to death as postman laments or will it enlighten us?
These are the important questions.
Fr Joseph Borg has been around quite a lot in the Maltese media environment. His white hair is a faithful and convincing witness. If that is not enough one can visit a number of relics spread over the island as further proof. Public transport permitting, one can visit RTK, the Media Centre, Campus FM, the offices of Il-Ġens and of the editorial board of Public Broadcasting Services. His voice can be heard and face seen thanks to a number of tapes storing radio and television programmes broadcast on these stations.
When TV was still a baby prophets cropped out to predict its future. In 1935 Rudholf Arheim, an expert in cinema studies, wrote an essay called A Foretaste Of TV. This is the future he envisaged for TV viewers:
"The pathetic hermit, squatting in his room, hundreds of miles away from the scene that he experiences as his present life, the 'viewer' who cannot even laugh or applaud without feeling ridiculous, is the final product of a century-long development, which has led from the campfire, the marketplace and the arena to the lonesome consumer of spectacles today."
The champions of established media always tended to look down on new media which they considered to be upstarts!
In the same period another important person, whose name I do not recall (I never manage to find the sources when I need them!) said that:
"TV does not have a commercial future."
Pathetic hermits? Many are saying the same thing about internet users now. No commercial value? Tell that to Murdoch or Berlusconi! Ooops... not a good start for TV futurologists!
Oh why should I try to predict the shape of TV in 50 years' time? If I write this piece BPC would give a contribution to a charity. Can I say no? Besides, the risk of being a bad prophet is minimal. Most of the readers of this piece would not be around 50 years from now and those who would be around will surely not remember what I have written.
So let me strive forward with mentioning another momentous date besides 1935.
Anno Domini 1960 (approximately)
Toni ta' Tona, God bless his soul, was the first resident of St Anthony Street, Balzan (where I was born and brought up) to buy a TV set. He placed it in his front room and invited all the kids of the street to watch with him. England was playing Italy.
I supported the English team and have done so ever since.
England annually commemorates the day when I offered my support.
This innovation brought with it other effects. It was the end of ħarba, gwerra Franċiża and open-air street football in St Anthony Street. It was the start of watching Carosello and other programmes generally received as a very grainy (bir-ross, we used to say) picture. From time to time Toni ta' Tona patiently tried to adjust the picture with little success as reception in our area was bad. But what the heck! We were seeing moving pictures coming from far away, so why should one complain about little problems of picture definition?
Anno Domini 2008
In a certain sense TV is today very similar to what it was then. OK, OK, it is also quite different. But basically it is still a box on which you see pictures and listen to sounds originated by someone else at a distance and at the time that person decides to do so.
Now the sound can be stereo, the pictures are in colour, the ross has disappeared, and the number of stations is legion.
The seeds of the future are being sown. In a certain sense the future of TV is already here. Let's see how these seeds can develop.
Anno Domini 2058 (approximately)
I typed "future of TV" and did a Google search. Within 0.71 seconds I got 404,000,000 results! I read them all and am giving here the synthesis of all those pieces. (If you believe what you see and listen to on TV then you will believe that one as well).
My predictions about the future of TV can be summed in three words: personal, ubiquitous and interactive.
The future of TV will be personal
We are moving from the viewer as user to the viewer as producer. Most owners of mobile phones are potential TV producers. If you have a digital camera you can produce longer programmes. No need to cry "Action", just shoot.
Is it a private party, a naughty prank or a school play where your young kid makes his debut as a budding actor?
Shoot, upload it on You Tube and share it with dozens or hundreds of thousands. This video-hosting website has grown by leaps and bounds since it was set up in 2005.
Sometimes more important events are caught on mobile or camera. The people's protests in Myanmar were communicated to us in that way. Large TV corporations and stations now have dedicated a part of their websites to these citizen journalists/photographers who manage to film what the professionals miss.
A good example of how the future is already present is current TV.
This is an Emmy Award interactive cable channel where viewers send in video stories they've created to be aired on the network. It is owned by former US Vice-President Al Gore and businessman Joel Hyatt. It has been broadcasting since 2005. Last year it also started its operations in the United Kingdom for Sky and Virgin Media subscribers.
Initiatives such as these enable viewers to move from couch potatoes to TV producers.
Televiewers will now also migrate to becoming heads of programmes or station creators. We are moving away from the push towards the pull media. In the first scenario the media moguls build stations, create programmes and transmit them at the time they decide. Existent technology already enables one to pick and choose from different programmes on different TV stations, video on demand services and IPTV and form their own TV station.
The days of stations targeting mass audiences are numbered and will be over and done with by 2058. The internet will be the natural habitat of such stations.
The future of TV will be ubiquitous
Up till now TV is received through a "box" in the sitting room, bedroom or some other room. One of the advantages of radio over TV was its mobility. That is becoming a thing of the past.
The future is Mobile TV
Through mobile phones or some other gadgets we will be able to watch TV whenever and wher-ever we want to. Today's limited initiatives of mobile TV consist of traditional TV broadcast on mobile sets. This will change radically. Mobile TV will develop as TV in its own rights.
New aesthetics based on big close-ups and talking heads will be the order of the day. It is not realistic to broadcast large vistas and panoramas on the small mobile screen. Even programme duration and content will have to change.
It has to fit in the hectic timetable of people whose most scarce commodity is time. Uploading your content on these stations will be as easy and quick as posting comments in reaction to a blog or any other item on a web-paper.
Mobile TV is for mobile people.
Shorter and punchier programmes with more on-demand facilities will be the order of the day. Orgad, in the report I referred to, mentions "snackable content" and "mobisodes". The former is described as "mobile TV content ... suitable for 'snacking'. Mobisodes are fragmented and small made-for-mobile episodes that cater to bite-sized portions of content on the go".
Eventually this will also lead to a radical change in the way "traditional" TV communicates.
This is just the start. There is something more exciting or scary - depending on your point of view. During a discussion I listened to on BBC one of the participants said that we do not see through our eyes but thanks to a certain part of our brain.
"The brain: that's where we want to place our chip," he said.
So the ultimate mobility will come when the TV set is reduced to a chip implanted into our brains and our eyes or perhaps our powers of imagination become the screen. Would we change channels by blinking our eyes? Who knows? One thing is certain: it will be the ideal remedy for boring homilies as well as tiring, never-ending meetings. But the daunting fact would be that:
You are the TV set.
And the TV set is you.
The future of TV will be interactive
Today we sit in front of the TV screen. We plonk ourselves on some comfortable sofa, nibble crisps or something less junky while drinking beer or soya milk. We look at it, adore it, curse it or enjoy it. We are here. It is there.
By 2058 TV will surround us. We will be engulfed by it.
The TV set will not be in one room but one room will become the TV set. The TV screen will cover the rounded room - no edges, just a continuum. You sit in the middle of the action which happens in front of you, behind you and on all sides. Virtual reality and hologram technology will replace present-day TV technology. The effect is fantastic. It can be frightening.
If you watch Animal Planet you will be in the middle of the safari. Lions and tigers are all around you. Their roar is deafening. There can be problems, as well.
What will you do if the lion does you know what? Who will clean up the mess? The husband, the wife, the kids or the domestic robot?
Imagine a different scenario. You are in the middle of a battle. I'm sure you will be tempted to put on a bulletproof vest before going into the room-TV. On the TV menu there will, quite naturally, be other sort of activities which are more - how shall I put it - pleasurable and enjoyable. Enjoy.
TV will not be interactive solely because being in the middle of things is interactive. It will be so in other ways and means. Probably you will be in possession of some kind of gadget that will enable you to choose from different plots at different stages of the film you are watching. You will be able to vote for the winners.
Participants in quizzes or reality shows will most probably sit in a kind of ejector seat. Those who are voted out will be physically ejected from the screen.
The question is:
Will the participants have some gadget that will be able to eject the viewers?
Probably this technological development will happen in the 50 years after 2058. I will write about it in a future piece.
Heart of a machine
Up till now this piece concentrated on future gizmos and technologies; but TV is much more than a technology.
Remember Toni ta' Tona?
The introduction of the technology (i.e. TV set) brought with it social innovations in St Anthony Street. No more gwerra Franċiża, remember? In actual fact what starts as a technological innovation tends to become a social and economic innovation (if not a revolution) and eventually a cultural phenomenon.
I will not go here into the debate of what triggers what, i.e. does technology trigger the social and economic innovation or vice-versa?
The technological changes that I mentioned above will undoubtedly be accompanied by social and cultural upheavals. What will these be? How will they change us? Will we have more concentrated ownership patterns? Or will there be a more diffused and democratic ownership structure? Will this sophisticated technology create a new divide or bridge old ones?
An ancient Chinese sage once said that whoever uses machines will get the heart of a machine.
This technophobic statement points out a very important question:
Will the TV technology of 50 years from now help to humanise us or dehumanise us? Will it continue to amuse us to death as postman laments or will it enlighten us?
These are the important questions.
Fr Joseph Borg has been around quite a lot in the Maltese media environment. His white hair is a faithful and convincing witness. If that is not enough one can visit a number of relics spread over the island as further proof. Public transport permitting, one can visit RTK, the Media Centre, Campus FM, the offices of Il-Ġens and of the editorial board of Public Broadcasting Services. His voice can be heard and face seen thanks to a number of tapes storing radio and television programmes broadcast on these stations.
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