This article is based on my personal observations and what I learned at my weekly chat program "Business on the World Wide Web", on September 23, 1999. The complete transcript is available at www.samizdat.com/chat111.html For details about the chat program, the upcoming schedule, and earlier transcripts see www.samizdat.com/chat.html
This article was heard on the radio program "The Computer Report," which is broadcast live on WCAP in Lowell, Mass., and is syndicated on WBNW in Boston and WPLM in Plymouth, Mass, and is also available as RealAudio at www.thereport.com
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Access to the Internet at speeds 10 times or more greater than what you can get with dialup is now inexpensive and readily available for home and small business -- by DSL and cable -- in many communities around Boston, and is spreading rapidly in other cities across the country.
Let's think back a minute. When the Web got started -- with the availability of the first browsers back in the fall of 1993, with few exceptions, people could only connect to the Internet from work or from college. Then, gradually, ISPs set up shop and began offering dialup service in one community after another -- first at 14.4, then 28.8, now 56K. For several years, the only real business on the Internet was business-to-business: companies selling to and working with other companies, linking their corporate networks to one another securely for joint projects, making information available to one another, holding private discussions, and doing secure transactions online. Meanwhile, the measure of success on the public Internet was traffic, not money -- you tried to get as many people as possible to come to your site; but it was like opening day at a new mall -- with curious crowds checking things out and collecting freebies. Sites with the largest audiences got some ad revenue, but very few companies turned a profit directly from what they did online.
Finally, last year, the number of people who could connect from home reached critical mass, and ecommerce and other consumer-oriented for-profit businesses took off. The promise had been there all along, but you needed enough people for the true commercial craziness to begin.
Now we are at the beginning of the second wave. Businesses and colleges already have high speed access to the Internet -- meaning that it is possible to get reasonable quality audio and video. But for the rest of us, the Internet is still largely an experience of text and static graphics. Yes, commercial Web sites have animated images flashing and bouncing and prancing across their pages -- trying to catch your attention, and making it difficult for you to read. Yes, streaming audio and video can deliver multi-media content without you having to wait forever for huge files to download over your modem. But it's like having to crank the engine of your model-T, or develop your own photos in your basement. The experience you get tends to be quirky, jerky, and techie. When you first experience this technology, you are amazed at what you can hear and see at dialup speeds; but you end up using those capabilities rarely. They simply aren't compelling.
You should expect major changes when high-speed access becomes widespread, similar to what happened when dialup access reached critical mass. When we'll reach that point is a matter of guesswork -- probably anywhere from one to three years from now. But we can already see the beginnings of business opportunities that might flourish when that time comes.
The opportunities seem to fall into three categories: direct, indirect, and background. Direct would involve selling audio/video content and experiences over the Web, or selling advertising based on the audience that such content attracts. Indirect would be use of audio/video/3D to help sell products or to improve your online delivery of service (such as training and fix-it services).
By "background" opportunities, I mean the camera is just on -- with no writing, no directing -- it's just part of the experience you expect.
Some background-style applications are viable today at low speed -- like remote monitoring and security. With high-speed acess, they become more compelling for users and become commonplace, changing ordinary business practice.
The beginnings of remote monitoring are already here: security services, even daycare centers are using Web cams. With high speed access, the image becomes clearer and the range of what can be seen becomes greater.
Participants in our recent chat session provided a few practical examples.
One said, "The webcam security device doesn't necessarily have to be high-speed -- we caught a nighttime thief in our facility when one person with a webcam set it to record a still every 10 seconds."
Another mentioned that his company set up a Quickcam near the candy bar and suddenly the pay rate went up. Apparently, the fact that you know the camera is on affects your behavior even if no one is watching the output.
Someone else mentioned that the daughter of a co-worker of his went to Gymnastic Camp in Canada last summer. The camp had about a dozen cameras, and she could regularly see her kid perform and have fun.
Now, I wouldn't like to be monitored by my boss. But I am sure that there are bosses who are very insecure about work-at-home, and don't know how to manage by performance, who would gladly sign up for a service that let them see their workers -- any time, all the time -- and there are probably companies that would use many more work-at-home workers if they had such a mechanism available.
In the not too distant future, imagine a webcam in your car, embedded somewhere. Someone breaks in and the webcam clicks on -- you or the police or a security company sees who's in the car, what's happening, even where the car is...
Doing that with a car requires wireless access. But that too is already here at low-bandwidth, and faster, more flexible, easier to use wireless access is coming soon -- another wave of opportunity and change.
Some video applications don't require high bandwidth, but when the speed is available new opportunities will arise. Today's streaming video over dialup connections provides a small image moving jerkily. At some point the image becomes clear enough and the motion smooth enough that it looks natural and inspires the same kind of trust that comes from looking someone in the eye. This reminds me of Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash -- where the breakthrough in virtual reality arrives when you can reliably read the expressions on the other person's face. Look for that point in video over the Internet. When millions of people can connect simply, easily, and inexpensively at speeds that make it easy to see detail and motion clear enough and smooth enough so you can reliably read what the other person really means -- so you can know when to trust and when to doubt, can see emotion and nervousness and conviction -- then we're in a new ballgame.
I used to say that on the Internet a picture needed to be worth 10,000 words, not just a thousand -- it needed to be good enough to convey that much information because it cost so much in terms of the time to load it and the space to store it. Mere decoration -- that conveyed no meaning -- got in the way of visitors connecting with dialup modems. And it took creativity to make pictures that were good enough to be worth the slowdown.
Well, high speed access will change that equation. Then two-way live video will be able to quickly and simply communicate the full range of human emotion -- more than could ever be conveyed by words. And now is the time to think about how that will change your business or what new businesses you will be able to create.
For details about the weekly chat program, edited transcripts of past sessions, and the schedule of upcoming topics see www.samizdat.com/chat.html.
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