Video, Computer-Generated Environments and the Future of the Web

Video, Computer-Generated Environmentsand the Future of the InternetBy Ian Lamont(For graduate credit)HUMA E-105: Survey of Publishing, from Text to HypertextHarvard University Extension SchoolJanuary 16, 2008

Almost since the first stuttering video clips appeared on the World Wide Web,observers have predicted that video will come to dominate the Internet. MitchellStephens, writing in the mid-1990s, foresaw the rise of sophisticated video productionand narrative techniques derived in part from the “merger” of computers and video.

1

Healso believed the Web would play an important role for video, primarily as an on-demanddistribution platform that would allow viewers to be finally freed from televisionschedules.

2

Another commentator, writing more recently about the future of the Internet, proclaimed video as “king,” thanks in large part to the popularity of amateur videos andfan websites, and the rush of advertising dollars to online video content.

3

Google,Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Verizon, and many other technology companies apparentlyagree with these sentiments, spending billions of dollars on fiber-optic networks, massivedata centers, and robust hardware and software platforms to deliver video over theInternet. While their technologies and business models are often in direct competition,there seems to be widespread consensus that the Internet will evolve into some sort of universal cable channel that showcases all kinds of video — from brief amateur videoclips to Hollywood films — to potentially everyone with broadband Internet access,whenever and nearly wherever they choose. In such an environment, goes the reasoning,text, audio, still images, and everything else will play secondary roles.

1

Mitchell Stephens,

The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word

(New York:Oxford University Press, 1998), 164.

2

Stephens, 171.

3

Bambi Francisco, “Net Sense: The Future of the Internet,” MarketWatch.Available from http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/net-sense-future-internet-video/story.aspx?guid=%7B6115530A-15F3-4FDC-B7F6-55FB493D356E%7D.

I would like to offer an alternative to this video-centric vision outlined byStephens and others. While video is a compelling medium that may one day rival text- based websites in popularity, it will not dominate the Internet for long. I will argue thatanother type of content — one that shares video’s visual appeal, yet currently falls intothe “everything else” category — will eventually overshadow video. That content willconsist of sophisticated computer-generated environments, delivered in a variety of formats and serving many different types of customer needs, including entertainment,news, and community. These formats will use advanced computer graphics to deliver photorealistic, three-dimensional representations of real and imagined spaces to a vast,online audience, and allow audience members to interact with these environments andeach other in ways that are not possible with video.Video — which I define as television, film, home movies, and any other movingimages derived from the movements of lit subjects and scenery in front of a camera lens — was the dominant visual mass medium of the 20th century. It has had a profoundimpact on society and world history, as evidenced by the power of moving images toeducate, propagate, agitate, inform and entertain. Stephens called video humankind’s“third major revolution,” after writing and print.

4

Indeed, many of the major events and societal trends of the last century wereshaped by this mass medium. Charlie Chaplin, Al Jolson, and Lillian Gish can beconsidered among the first international superstars, beloved by tens of millions across allsocial classes and in many countries all over the world, thanks to their leading roles inHollywood films in the teens and 20s. Stardom was not unknown before film, but pre-

4

Stephens, 11.