Networker: Do technologies converge?
The information technology world is awash with talk of "convergence". This means different things to different people, but its simplest meaning is: television, telephones and personal computers are all merging into one device. When football clubs start negotiating to transmit a club-oriented coverage of their games on their Internet site, you know something is happening.
From the point of view of major capitalist corporations, this is a big issue. It means, for example, that telecommunications giants could fight their way into the television business (and vice versa). Current federal government discussion about scrapping cross-media ownership restrictions is part of the preparation for the new market battle.
"Old fashioned" ideas like stopping one person from owning every newspaper, radio station and television station in Australia are being superceded by technology. That's the hype. In practice, there are a number of problems on the path of convergence.
There are two types of convergence: technological and functional.
Technological convergence is an engineering view that over time various technologies will converge on an optimum approach to similar functions. The reason many engineers believe this is because the alternative is inadmissible: that capitalist market forces actively prevent rational use of technology.
Take the case of which side of the road to drive on. A large part of the world drives on the right. Another large part drives on the left. You may wonder why it is so difficult to exit some multi-storey Australian car parks. The reason is probably that the architect used a US car park (left-hand drive) design with minor modifications. Today we are further away from convergence on this issue than 50 years ago.
Measurement systems are another case. The largest industrial power in the world (the US) tenaciously clings to an archaic imperial measurement system in the face of near universal support for the revolutionary French metric system. Just a few weeks ago, the US$125 million Mars Climate Orbiter crashed into Mars after confusion over imperial and metric measurements led it 100 kilometres off course.
Functional convergence is sometimes useful and sometimes not. Even if most kitchens have both a toaster and a jug, no one has yet proposed a smaller multipurpose device than a stove to both heat water and toast bread. Taking that into the information technology environment, what is the first thing a user normally does when their personal computer stops working? Pick up a phone to get help.
Telstra tried selling a combination of the phone and PC in the early 1980s. Now, "voice over the Internet" is the catch-cry on every Internet equipment vendor's lips: not because it makes sense, but because information technology manufacturers want to grab a slice of the telephone equipment manufacturers' pie.
When it comes to television and the Internet, the proposal is more sinister. Television broadcasters would love to churn out masses of mindless programming interspersed with mindless advertising to Internet users. Telstra has boasted of an interactive television feature which will remind viewers when they are missing their favourite programs. Will this be the "killer application" that convinces Internet users to return to being couch potatoes? Hardly.
The failures of both technological and functional convergence are illustrated in the example of the "smart card". For more than half a decade a technology has existed which would allow the storage of personal and emergency medical information, along with credit, electronic cash and other information, on a single plastic card. Yet take up has been virtually zero. Companies almost universally oppose the idea of any specific implementation, because it could provide market advantage to their competition.
It would all be very funny if it wasn't such a waste.
@columnauth = By Ian Peters