The Media Genie

postedPosted in Boob Tube, Media Matters on August 26th, 2011 by glennm

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Apple was forced to kill its $0.99 rental offering for television programs. As Greg Sandoval of CNet observes, this is the media industry’s reaction to technological change — trying to put the MPEG genie back in the bottle. Good luck, Luddites.

The Hollywood studios and TV networks don’t want another Netflix. Look around. They’re trying to stuff that genie back into the bottle. The talk coming out of Hollywood is about raising prices for content and offering Netflix less content, not more. There is no consensus in Hollywood about anything, but a large number of decision makers want to see their shows and films offered online on a pay-per-view basis as they try to protect their margins.

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12 Failed Tech “Revolutions”

postedPosted in Tech Bytes, Wonder Wonder on July 18th, 2011 by glennm

From the AT&T picturephone (1964 New York World’s Fair) to netbooks, a cool look by InfoWorld at a dozen heralded technological revolutions that simply FAILED.

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Fear of Acronyms

postedPosted in Tech Bytes, Wonder Wonder on July 7th, 2003 by glennm

A new study by AMD, the chip maker, finds that consumers are intimated by the techno-babble associated with PCs and other high-tech devices. Perhaps the most signficant conclusion is that the PC industry is not getting the full value of their advertising dollars because “only slightly more than half of PC users understand the term ‘megahertz’ — which is used in a vast majority of personal computer advertisements.” Technology Jargon Frightens Joe Public [PC Pro]. This is undoubtedly the biggest surprise of all, because the one thing everyone — expecially the Windows PC crowd — assumed is that buyers know that faster is better. Turns out they don’t know what fast is and can’t even understand the speedometer!!

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The larger issue is techno-phobia on a mass scale, epitomized by all those flashing clocks on VCRs. We are raising a society of spoon-fed morons, whose knowledge of everyday devices is steadily declining. What’s the difference between knowing that bleach removes stains from clothing and that MP3 players depend on a certain bitrate to reproduce music with clarity? Maybe TV advertising of the former plays a part, but I think that consumers increasingly are afraid to learn about technology. For those neanderthals who are proud of the absence of technology in their personal lives, well, that’s like putting your head in the sand. Their grandparents probably felt the same wey when refrigerators replaced ice boxes and when electric lighting replaced gaslights.

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