Have
We Got What it Takes to Produce Cyberspace?
Before
we bake a cake, we need to check we’ve got the necessary ingredients:
1) A global network
2) Add computers to taste
3)
A database engine and plenty of hard disk space
4) 3D scene modeler and a
decent graphics card
5) A few software engineers
6) Time and money
We
need a network – billions of computers each with tons of storage. That’s
about what we’ve got, but latency could be a tad better. Well, maybe
one day it’ll approach light-speed at around 100ms per transaction.
We just have to design our system to do the best it can whatever the
prevailing circumstances.
Do
some searches on “Next Generation Internet” if you want the low down
on the future of the Internet. Here’s one interesting find to give you
a start: http://fox.rollins.edu/~tlairson/ecom/next.htm
What
would improve the circumstances is if we evangelized against the wasteful
use of the Internet, e.g. sending video across it. Thankfully there
are companies aware of the merits of greater efficiencies in such things.
Check out Obvious Technologies’ (www.obvioustech.com)
approach for an example of a better way of distributing video – in effect
passing it ‘by reference’.
Anyway,
I think we’ve got everything we need to get started. Oh no, I almost
forgot: Money! No one can do anything these days without money. You
always have to keep an eye on the financial aspects, or so I’ve heard.
However, these days for e-Ventures it seems venture capital is a broken
fire hydrant. Perhaps I should finish up with a little waffle about
the difficulties of making money in digital media…
Will
Money Still Make the World Go Round?
Money
was supposed to be a convenient means of exchanging labor and its products.
Perhaps, as in the Star Trek universe, civilization will elevate itself
to a position where money becomes superfluous and everyone puts their
potential into society and gets as much out of it as they want. I think
some might think the Internet will facilitate this, perhaps it will,
but it’s pretty likely we’ll have to go via a transitionary phase where
there is a form of cyber-cash. This’ll help migrate the old way of doing
business into its more direct, electronic equivalent.
But,
more and more, I think we’re seeing information become the key commodity.
Whether it’s the right share to invest in, the most economic way to
build a bridge, a DVD, or even the color of Sigourney Weaver’s toothbrush:
information is in demand and people are willing to pay for it. Trouble
is, they rarely have to. Information is getting easier to distribute
and duplicate. It only takes one altruistic (some might use a less benevolent
term) person to spill the beans on a web page and the whole world gets
it for nothing.
It’s
not a problem to ensure that communication is secure, from vendor to
purchaser, but how do you prevent the purchaser from passing on that
information for nothing and thus devaluing it?
The
problem that the Internet now presents us with is that the vendor can
no longer hope to maintain their monopoly over information once they’ve
sold it. It used to be that purchase of mass produced information (newspapers,
books, records) was a much better experience overall (price, quality,
convenience) than illicit duplication was for the potential customer
or pirate. But, now a digital copy is free, perfect, and more convenient.
Of
course it’s unfair, but what can you do?
Even
in the digital realm, software producers have still been clinging to
the hope that transmission costs dissuade people from illegitimate downloading.
Sure, even with digital technology, there are still always costs in
transmission, and these are in proportion to the quantity of information
– whether it’s downloading a file or throwing a DVD across the room.
But, these transmission costs are rarely proportional to the production
costs.
It
seems one idea Microsoft’s trying out to address this problem, is to
not let the software out of its factory in the first place. The user
only has the presentation layer on their local machine, but must pay
a subscription to obtain the use of the back-end on a secure server
somewhere.. I suppose this is an understandable approach if as some
pundits predict, there will soon be vastly more web browsers around
than installations of Windows alone.
But
software isn’t the only information based product around. What about
works of art? Why should anyone produce a movie, album, or other easily
duplicated work of art if only a single sale can be obtained?
Well,
it’s difficult to swallow, but the answer has to be that the single
sale must cover the cost, even in spite of the fact that the work is
unlikely to have a resale value.
This
means getting millions of punters to stump up cash in advance before
the artist hands over their work. So say Sting produces a new album.
First, he’ll keep it under strict security. He then releases a low grade
recording that gives a hint of how good it is. The near perfect, 5.1
channel, digital encoding of it is then put up for a kind of reverse
auction. The marketplace is invited to make limited pledges for it,
e.g. up to $1, up to $5, up to $15, etc. Sting can then, at a favorable
point in time, select which price point he wishes to sell it at, and
then it is delivered to all those whose pledge covered that price. After
this point it is a free for all and anyone may give it away or sell
it on – including Sting who may still be able to sell the original recording
at a premium price (given its packaging).
The
key thing in this scheme is that the product is not released until the
artist feels they have arrived at the best return they can get, which
may well be at least the production cost. Sometimes they may declare
that the current pledges are insufficient and the work will be withheld
until such time as the pledges increase. Conversely, the market may
gradually reduce its offers for the work and the artist may take the
best price while they can.
Of
course, you can only practically do this kind of deal where the market
can be addressed as though it were a single unit – something greatly
facilitated by the Internet.
Similar
types of deals can be done in advance of the work, for example, where
the audience is presented with a movie script, and invited to stump
up the funding necessary to produce the movie. I can see it now – “Star
Wars: Episode IX – we need between $5 and $7 billion to complete
this movie. The current optimum pledge only amounts to $3 billion. Please
increase your pledge and/or encourage your friends, and remember that
you get merchandising shares!”.
Do
I hear five thousand broadcasters laughing their heads off?
Yeah,
go ahead and laugh. You can still continue with the old ways of doing
things if you want. However, even with the public subscription type
approach I’ve just outlined, broadcasters could still do the big deals
you’re familiar with (perhaps as a cartel), but once transmission has
occurred it should be a free for all. The thing is, it will be a free
for all anyway, and you can’t really stop it. So copyright becomes redundant
for art in digital form. This should apply to software too.
Anyway,
these are just hints as to how the Internet is going to force a revolution
in the marketplace. There will be other ways of working and buying and
selling, but even with a totally derestricted market, I hope you can
see that there are still mechanisms that will continue to support the
development of films, music, and other works of digitally reproducible
art. It’s not as bleak as the big companies would have you think. They’ll
just have to forget about region coded DVDs and secure DVD-Audio…
Coming
Next
In
my next installment, I’ll be getting technical – very technical. So
less of this futurism and let’s let the cat out of the bag: how on earth
do we build cyberspace?
Jump
into to the deep end of distributed systems programming with me next
month and find out!
Until
then, if you’re going to the Game Developer’s Conference be sure to
check out Proksim Software (http://www.proksim.com)
as one of the few companies sharing this road to enlightenment.
Crosbie Fitch is currently the Senior Systems
Engineer at Pepper's Ghost Productions, which he joined in 1997 to develop
a network games engine, reluctantly leaving special effects house Cinesite.
In a deft twist of fate, PGP shortly decided that a radical change of
direction away from games, toward an animated TV series was in order,
and so Crosbie found himself writing plug-ins for Discreet Max - plus
ça change... He can be reached at [email protected]