Next Wave of the Web
December 26, 2000
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Welcome to the Next Wave of the Web. This monthly column will
discuss the Internet's ongoing transformation into the universal
medium. The Web is rapidly becoming fully audio-video capable,
and once it does, it will gobble up all the audio and video media
(radio, TV, recordings), just as the computer gobbled up the
typewriter.
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But who will be gobbled and who will be doing the gobbling? Are
record companies doomed? What about radio stations and video
rental chains? Who will be the big winners from this media gold
rush?
At this point, a typical article of this kind would lament the
difficulty of predicting how it will all "shake out". However, I
believe that the eventual shape of the universal medium is pretty
clear and easy to predict. All media, from books to newspapers to
music to movies to live shows, will be available anywhere in the
Solar System, through a high-bandwidth wireless Internet.
A harder question to answer is: What technologies will be most
important along the way? This answer, of course, is just what Web
developers need to know in order to make the most of new
opportunities.
This month, we'll look at some potential winners and losers from
the next few years' upheavals, and discuss the technologies that
Web developers need to stay on top of, with suggestions on where
to get the latest information.
Many would-be crystal-gazers are led into error because they
confuse technological details with larger economic motivators.
For example, the term "MP3" has become almost synonymous with the
devolution of power away from the major media companies, but in
fact MP3 is just a file format that caught on. Other formats are
also possible. In fact, the trend now is for media players to
recognize all major formats, so which format a particular piece
of audio or video is stored in is now almost irrelevant.
Contents:
Winners and Losers
Meanwhile, the Pick and Shovel Sellers Cash In!
Winners and Losers - Page 2
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