The Dead Media Notebook

by Bruce Sterling

  New media do not carry civilization forward in safety, handing the torch the culture to the next generation. On the contrary, they mostly become dead media. Any memory entrusted to the care of these dead media becomes a dead memory.

  The Internet in particular, the great titan of new media, is a fiendishly efficient device for destroying local languages, and local heritage, and local memory. Broadcast television was also very good at this.

  I give television every credit for enforcing national character, and destroying local character. I have seen this happen in my own region: the effect of national American television on regional cultures like Acadian Louisiana and the Texas-Mexican border has been absolutely astonishing. These backward, impoverished areas were almost obliterated by television in a single generation. But the Internet is even more powerful, because it encourages the user to talk back and take part. Television merely floods the landscape from a central source, like a kind of paint. People under television are the oppressed; people on the Internet are collaborators.

  The Internet appears at the user’s fingertips, and seductively asks him to take part in the global world, to become a global citizen. A global citizen has very little time or motivation to learn preindustrial regional languages.

  In my own case, these languages would be Comanche, Tonkawa and Lipan Apache. Comanche, Tonkawa and Lipan Apache are the languages spoken two hundred years ago in my home town of Austin, Texas.

  I am sure these languages have many valuable pieces of data about how to skin bison, dig roots, and live off the land of Texas in huts made of leather. I can guarantee you that I have no intention whatsoever of learning to speak these languages. UNESCO cannot make me learn them.

  A moral crisis cannot make me learn them. I bluntly refuse to learn them. I am far, far too busy surfing the Internet. Why? Because the Internet sends electronic mail inviting me to go to conferences in distant San Marino.

  Mastery of Comanche, Tonkawa, and Lipan Apache will never give me these valuable things. I do not defy the global Net. No, I choose to be here with you.

  By that very choice, I carry a message of doom. For the third part of my speech, let me turn to the subject of archival memory, or the collected history of the human race.

  Why do archives die? There are many possible causes.

  First, entropy. The passage of time. Natural decay. The elements. Insects. Fungus. Fire. Flood. Earthquake. Undergraduates. Paper can last for centuries if it is well cared for, but it can also turn to mush in a matter of hours.

  Second, mnemonicide, or the deliberate killing of memory. Human malice. This happened to the Mayans when their libraries were burned. It happened to the Incas when their knotted strings were burned. It happened in China at the command of the first Emperor. It happened under Stalin in the Soviet Union. It is happening in the Balkans today.

  The third reason is obsolescence. Indifference. Loss of interest. Civilization does not break down, there may be no foreign invaders, but the media of one’s ancestors goes out of vogue. The archives are no longer seen as possessing any value.

  Cultures change. People lived under the stone monuments of Egypt for hundreds of years with no idea how to read them.

  The Babylonians built their homes out of broken cuneiform bricks, the clay records and accounts of the past. One recalls the legendary words of doom: if these books deviate from the Koran then they are blasphemous; if they agree with the Koran, then they are superfluous.

  In the contemporary epoch this might be rephrased: If it’s on the Net then we have it already, and if it’s off the Net, then obviously nobody wants it.

  Digital data is easy to reproduce, but it still has no archival format. There is no permanent way to store digital data. This is a great and terrifying scandal. There are problems in the hardware, problems in the coding schemes, problems in the formats. It would be a simple matter for our civilization to create digital archives of tremendous, unparalleled scope: if we had the money and the political will. We have money. We have no political will.

  My great fear for the “future of memory” is that history will become part of the culture industry. Culture as we have understood it since the Renaissance could dissolve into the stream of media, like salt in water. All memories will be for sale. Any memory without a commercial value will not be supported or sustained. This is a nightmare vision, but nightmares can be useful things.

  One imagines a version of Orwell’s 1984 where Winston Smith is not a political ideologue, but a software salesman.

  No return on investment? Into the memory hole.

  What does this nightmare look like in detail? It looks like this. Our heritage is no longer the heritage of mankind, but a commercial part of the heritage business. An old castle is no longer an old castle, but a painted simulacrum for the tourist trade.

  Universities become non-governmental organizations, or, even scarier, post-governmental organizations. We no longer sympathize with the thinking of the past, but merely try to retail its commercially attractive aspects.

  Memory becomes a commodity. Cultural identity becomes a consumer choice. Bad archives are deliberately favored by the market, because they are the culture-industry’s version of planned obsolescence.

  A computer that swiftly breaks and decays can be sold to us again. We will buy the same music again and again, in different formats, on tape, vinyl, CD and DVD.

  In this media-saturated world, the archives of the twentieth century might still be visible, like scratch marks on old bone. But the motivation behind them would be lost, no longer understood.

  There would be no past and no future, just the flow of data and the rise and fall of the market. In that imaginary society, in that dystopia of commodity totalitarianism, the media of liberal democracy would have no meaning.

  Just as we ourselves see no meaning in the long-lost media devices of Athenian democracy, such as the kleroterion, the ostraka, and the clepsydra.

  Would history end? No. History does not end.

  But speeches must end. This speech has ended. Thank you for your attention.

  Dead UK Video Formats

  From Trevor Black

  My dad’s announcement, in the early 80s, that he had signed up for the Open University was a truly joyous event - because it meant our house got a video recorder.

  The time he spent at the kitchen table doing sums was fully exploited by his kids - showcasing our newly-rented video to the world. Friends gaped in wonder as we knowingly pushed massive buttons on its ‘remote’ control, nonchalantly stepping over the yards of flex attaching it to the machine.

  The excitement of being able to make screen people walk backwards and forwards at high speed was of the Christmas morning variety. A short time later, being allowed to take possession of the video rental club card to hire a film was the height of playground sophistication.

  The burning question on everyone’s lips was: ‘Have you got VHS or Betamax?’ Already, ownership of one or the other was a test of cool. The garage, after all, had five or six shelves of VHS tapes - and only one of Betamax.

  A couple of years earlier, they might also have asked about the third format to chance its arm in the home video market.

  Philips’ Video 2000 uniquely required the user to turn the tape over half way through its eight hour play time, just like an audio cassette. But despite its innovation and high quality, the V2000 was the first casualty of the Format Wars.

  The battle for video recording machine supremacy is as synonymous with the early 80s as cerise lipstick and Miami Vice. Nick Thomas of Philips, says: “It is often said that VHS won the day because of its software, but that’s rubbish.

  “I lived through it all, and what really happened was that some Japanese manufacturers could produce far greater quantities of video recorders.

  “The dealers were desperate to get their hands on video recorders, and so took them from anyone who could supply them.

  “What people like
JVC then did was to say, yes we’ve got 80 video recorders, but you’ll have to take 100 of our TVs as well. It also represented a sea change in the high street electrical industry.

  “At the time, names like Pye and Bush were still well-known and respected, but the Japanese grip on the electronics market came off the back of video recorders.”

  The video recording adventure had in fact kicked off a couple of decades before the height of the format wars. In 1956, the American company Ampex produced a machine called the Quadraplex. Standing at 6ft tall, the Quadraplex was intended for the professional market, but it represented a revolution in recording - its tape could be recorded over again and again.

  It was another 10 years before manufacturers attempted to market machines for the home - Sony had a model called the CV2000 for sale in 1965 - but they were expensive and complex and they flopped. A couple of years before that, even, a small valve company in Nottingham produced a reel-to-reel system called the Telecan, which could manage to tape 10 minutes of low-resolution black and white TV. It never went on sale, although a similar system later did.

  By the end of the decade, however, the push was on. TV manufacturers could see the possibility of the bottom falling out of their market, and needed to be able to produce new consumer items.

  Philips is generally regarded by enthusiasts as the producer of the first true home video recorder. Other video recorders had been made for use in colleges and institutions - but were complicated and hugely expensive. But Philips’ N1500 model, complete with an analogue clock like a cooker timer, was relatively small and had its tape enclosed in cassettes.

  At £750-£800 - at the time, roughly the price of a new Mini - they were far from cheap, however, and did not sell in any great volume. Laser disc recorders put in an appearance. Sony, meanwhile, were marketing the ultimately doomed Betamax machines.

  Lauded by enthusiasts for their quality, their manufacturers are thought to have spent too much time thinking about perfecting their product, and not enough about making a lot of them. Joint curator of the virtual video recorder museum, Total Rewind, David Browne, explains: “As the Japanese formats arrived in this country, the Thorn-EMI group backed VHS and flooded their many high-street TV rental shops with low-cost VHS machines.

  “Sony, meanwhile, were concentrating on quality, and so Beta became a format to buy while VHS was the format to rent. Unfortunately, most people preferred to rent, particularly when the simplest machine cost around ÔøΩ700.

  “This process was then self-reinforcing, because the presence of two formats made people reluctant to commit to one and risk picking the eventual loser - and so they rented and waited to see what would happen.

  “By 1980, out of an estimated 100,000 homes with VCRs, 70% were rented.” From all camps, model followed model - until VCRs became the video victors in the late 80s. The old machines are now becoming collectible - and the video adventure looks set to continue. Mr Thomas said: “We are working on VCRs which will be able to understand spoken commands.

  “And they will be able to work in an anecdotal way as well, so you will be able to say to the video recorder - ‘you know that film with Charlton Heston and chariots, can you record it please?’ and the machine will be able to work out that you mean Ben Hur.

  “It could talk back to you. But we have to be led by what people want, and people want to be in control, they don’t want machines bossing them around, which is fair enough.

  “That is one of the main thing video achieved for people - it put them in control of television for the first time.

  “We are approaching a point where people will be able to have My TV, a completely personalised video recording system which will learn what the individual likes to watch. Consumers may not see anything in real time ever again.” So a video/TV combo which uniquely records Open University programmes could be just around the corner.

  Source: BBC News, Friday, April 16, 1999 Published at 11:21 GMT 12:21 UK

  DIVX: Stillborn Media

  From Bruce Sterling

  DIGITAL VIDEO EXPRESS, LP TO DISCONTINUE OPERATIONS Herndon, Va., June 16, 1999 -- Digital Video Express, LP announced today that it will cease marketing of the Divx home video system and discontinue operations...

  The museum of failed consumer products is filled with exhibits such as the Betamax videocassette player, the eight-track tape and New Coke. And now there’s Divx video-rental technology. Circuit City Stores Inc. and its partner conceded yesterday that their plan to replace videocassette rentals with video disks that don’t have to be returned was a resounding failure. From the start, Divx has been mired in problems. In a battle much like the one in the 1970s and early 1980s between the Betamax and VHS formats for VCRs, Divx competed with the standard DVD format for consumers looking to play digital video disks.

  Although Divx, unlike Betamax, was able to play videos encoded in its rival’s format, it met the same fate.

  The Divx format was designed to be a solution to the hassle of returning videos to the store. A Divx disk, which looks like a CD and whose quality of picture and sound is superior to that of a videocassette, costs $4.50 for unlimited viewings during a 48-hour period. After that, the disk won’t play unless it is “recharged” for another two days at the cost of $3.25. Billing is done through the phone line that connects to the Divx player. And that, as it turned out, was a major consumer complaint.

  “That was the main thing: I did not want someone keeping track of what I watched and when,” said Christopher Blount, an Air Force electronics technician who lives in San Antonio. The Divx technology ran into resistence from movie studios, even though Richmond-based Circuit City’s partner—the Los Angeles law firm Ziffren Brittenham Branca & Fischer—specialized in the entertainment industry. Retailers also balked.

  “Despite the significant consumer enthusiasm, we cannot create a viable business without support in these essential areas,” said Richard Sharp, chief executive of Circuit City. But attempts to woo retailers were doomed even before they started, said analyst Kenneth M. Gassman Jr. of Davenport & Co. in Richmond.

  “Why didn’t more retailers carry it, especially Best Buy?” Gassman said.

  “The answer is: Would you put profits in the pockets of your arch competitor?” In the spring, rumors that Divx had inked a deal with Viacom Inc.’s Blockbuster video unit in which the movie-rental firm would rent its disks sent shares of Circuit City stock soaring.

  A company official familiar with the discussions said the agreement was quashed at the last minute. Blockbuster, he said, wanted to purchase the entire Divx business. But two movie studios, whose approval was required to seal any deal, nixed the idea. They “said no because they thought Blockbuster was already too powerful,” he said. Industry observers expressed skepticism about a possible deal between the two retailers.

  “It’s like mixing oil and water,” said Mark Mandel, a retail analyst with the brokerage ABN Amro in New York.

  “The Divx technology was really an affront to the rental model.”

  The intense emotional response to Divx has surprised many industry observers.

  Over the past two years, the video format has inspired jeers, intense hostility and a host of Divx-bashing Web sites. Consumers who bought the first DVD players were upset because the standard players do not play Divx disks.

  “The reaction has been consistent from the start, and it was consistently negative and visceral,” said Mark Fleischmann, senior writer with Etown.com, an Internet site that follows consumer electronics issues.

  “I have never seen such a negative to any new consumer electronics product since I began writing about this in 1980.” Consumers just didn’t like Divx as much as the competition. Often, DVD offers extra goodies such as director commentary, mini- documentaries about the film’s creation and wide-screen format, customers said.

  “If you’re going to market this new concept, at least make it competitive,” said Tom Longo, a retired Foreign S
ervice officer who lives in Ocean City. Longo and other consumers who purchased Divx players won’t entirely lose out, because the machines were built to also accommodate DVD disks, Divx officials said. Additionally, Circuit City is offering $100 rebates to consumers who have recently purchased Divx players.

  Source: Washington Post

  The acoustic telephone

  THE ACOUSTIC TELEPHONE. The Willard acoustic telephone was an instrument invented and patented by Henderson Willard, and in November, 1880, The American Private Line Telephone Company was organized in this city for its manufacture and sale. It is not electric; is used only in short, independent lines, and depends upon molecular vibration for the transmission of sound. Thomas W. Peck was President, E. F. Harrington Vice President, and M. S. Crosby Secretary and Treasurer of the Company. It has not been pushed. The management was afterward placed in the hands of C. R. Brown, of St. Ignace. “

  Damaged, obsolete undersea cables

  Old Phone Cables Open Sea Bed to Science

  Making use of thousands of miles of discarded telephone cables, scientists have begun to wire remote regions of deep ocean floor to create an undersea network of geological observatories.

  The old cables will serve as deep-sea extension cords running thousands of miles from land-based power stations to sensors, some of which are already sending back continuous flows of data from the ocean floor.

  One such line is a coaxial cable (similar to the cable that carries television programs into private homes) that was laid across the deep Pacific Ocean floor by AT&T in 1964 from San Luis Obispo, Calif., to Makaha, Hawaii—a distance of nearly 3,000 miles.

  At the time, it was among the most advanced phone lines in the world, equipped with powered vacuum-tube repeaters every 20 miles to refresh the telephone signals as they traveled along it.