Peter Hirshberg on TV and the web(TED)
美國知名媒體人Peter Hirschberg，從電視與網路的歷史變革談起，並分析兩者的互動關係。
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Well, good morning. You know, the computer and television both recently turned 60, and today I'd like to talk about their relationship. Despite their middle age, if you've been following the themes of this conference or the entertainment industry, it's pretty clear that one has been picking on the other. So it's about time that we talked about how the computer ambushed television, or why the invention of the atomic bomb unleashed forces that lead to the writers' strike. And it's not just what these are doing to each other,but it's what the audience thinks that really frames this matter.
To get a sense of this, and it's been a theme we've talked about all week, I recently talked to a bunch of tweeners. I wrote on cards: "television," "radio," "MySpace," "Internet," "PC."And I said, just arrange these, from what's important to you and what's not, and then tell me why. Let's listen to what happens when they get to the portion of the discussion on television.
(Video) Girl 1: Well, I think it's important but, like, not necessary because you can do a lot of other stuff with your free time than watch programs.
Girls: Internet. Girl 2: I think we -- the reasons, one of the reasons we put computer before TV is because nowadays, like, we have TV shows on the computer. (Girl 3: Oh, yeah.) Girl 2: And then you can download onto your iPod.
Girl 5: Because they're going to lose all their money eventually. Girl 3: Like the stock market, it goes up and down and stuff. I think right now the computers will be at the topand everything will be kind of going down and stuff.
PH: There's been an uneasy relationship between the TV business and the tech business, really ever since they both turned about 30. We go through periods of enthrallment, followed by reactions in boardrooms, in the finance community best characterized as, what's the finance term? Ick pooey.
Let me give you an example of this. The year is 1976, and Warner buys Atari because video games are on the rise. The next year they march forward and they introduce Qube,the first interactive cable TV system, and the New York Times heralds this as telecommunications moving to the home, convergence, great things are happening.Everybody in the East Coast gets in the pictures -- Citicorp, Penney, RCA -- all getting into this big vision. By the way, this is about when I enter the picture. I'm going to do a summer internship at Time Warner. That summer I'm all -- I'm at Warner that summer -- I'm all excited to work on convergence, and then the bottom falls out. Doesn't work out too well for them, they lose money. And I had a happy brush with convergence until, kind of, Warner basically has to liquidate the whole thing.
That's when I leave graduate school, and I can't work in New York on kind of entertainment and technology because I have to be exiled to California, where the remaining jobs are,almost to the sea, to go to work for Apple Computer. Warner, of course, writes off more than 400 million dollars. Four hundred million dollars, which was real money back in the '70s. But they were onto something and they got better at it. By the year 2000, the process was perfected. They merged with AOL, and in just four years, managed to shed about 200 billion dollars of market capitalization, showing that they'd actually mastered the art of applying Moore's law of successive miniaturization to their balance sheet.
Now, I think that one reason that the media and the entertainment communities, or the media community, is driven so crazy by the tech community is that tech folks talk differently. You know, for 50 years, we've talked about changing the world, about total transformation. For 50 years, it's been about hopes and fears and promises of a better world. And I got to thinking, you know, who else talks that way? And the answer is pretty clearly -- it's people in religion and in politics.
And so I realized that actually the tech world is best understood, not as a business cycle, but as a messianic movement. We promise something great, we evangelize it, we're going to change the world. It doesn't work out too well, and so we actually go back to the well and start all over again, as the people in New York and L.A. look on in absolute, morbid astonishment. But it's this irrational view of things that drives us on to the next thing.
So, what I'd like to ask is, if the computer is becoming a principal tool of media and entertainment, how did we get here? I mean, how did a machine that was built for accounting and artillery morph into media?
Of course, the first computer was built just after World War II to solve military problems, but things got really interesting just a couple of years later -- 1949 with Whirlwind, built at MIT's Lincoln Lab. Jay Forrester was building this for the Navy, but you can't help but see that the creator of this machine had in mind a machine that might actually be a potential media star. So take a look at what happens when the foremost journalist of early television meets one of the foremost computer pioneers, and the computer begins to express itself.
(Video) Journalist: It's a Whirlwind electronic computer. With considerable trepidation, we undertake to interview this new machine.
Jay Forrester: Hello New York, this is Cambridge. And this is the oscilloscope of the Whirlwind electronic computer. Would you like if I used the machine?
Journalist: Yes, of course. But I have an idea, Mr. Forrester. Since this computer was made in conjunction with the Office of Naval Research, why don't we switch down to the Pentagon in Washington and let the Navy's research chief, Admiral Bolster, give Whirlwind the workout?
Calvin Bolster: Well, Ed, this problem concerns the Navy's Viking rocket. This rocket goes up 135 miles into the sky. Now, at the standard rate of fuel consumption, I would like to see the computer trace the flight path of this rocket and see how it can determine, at any instant, say at the end of 40 seconds, the amount of fuel remaining, and the velocity at that set instant. JF: Over on the left-hand side, you will notice fuel consumption decreasing as the rocket takes off. And on the right-hand side, there's a scale that shows the rocket's velocity. The rocket's position is shown by the trajectory that we're now looking at. And as it reaches the peak of its trajectory, the velocity, you will notice, has dropped off to a minimum. Then, as the rocket dives down, velocity picks up again toward a maximum velocity and the rocket hits the ground.
JF: And before leaving, we would like to show you another kind of mathematical problem that some of the boys have worked out in their spare time, in a less serious vein, for a Sunday afternoon. (Music)
PH: You know, so much was worked out: the first real-time interaction, the video display, pointing a gun. It lead to the microcomputer, but unfortunately, it was too pricey for the Navy, and all of this would have been lost if it weren't for a happy coincidence.
Enter the atomic bomb. We're threatened by the greatest weapon ever, and knowing a good thing when it sees it, the Air Force decides it needs the biggest computer ever to protect us. They adapt Whirlwind to a massive air defense system, deploy it all across the frozen north, and spend nearly three times as much on this computer as was spent on the Manhattan Project building the A-Bomb in the first place. Talk about a shot in the arm for the computer industry. And you can imagine that the Air Force became a pretty good salesman. Here's their marketing video.
(Video) Narrator: In a mass raid, high-speed bombers could be in on us before we could determine their tracks. And then it would be too late to act. We cannot afford to take that chance. It is to meet this threat that the Air Force has been developing SAGE, the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment system, to strengthen our air defenses. This new computer, built to become the nerve center of a defense network, is able to perform all the complex mathematical problems involved in countering a mass enemy raid. It is provided with its own powerhouse containing large diesel-driven generators, air-conditioning equipment, and cooling towers required to cool the thousands of vacuum tubes in the computer.
PH: You know, that one computer was huge. There's an interesting marketing lesson from it, which is basically, when you market a product, you can either say, this is going to be wonderful, it will make you feel better and enliven you. Or there's one other marketing proposition: if you don't use our product, you'll die. This is a really good example of that.
This had the first pointing device. It was distributed, so it worked out -- distributed computing and modems -- so all these things could talk to each other. About 20 percent of all the nation's programmers were wrapped up in this thing, and it led to an awful lot of what we have today. It also used vacuum tubes. You saw how huge it was, and to give you a sense for this -- because we've talked a lot about Moore's law and making things smallat this conference, so let's talk about making things large. If we took Whirlwind and put it in a place that you all know, say, Century City, it would fit beautifully. You'd kind of have to take Century City out, but it could fit in there.
But like, let's imagine we took the latest Pentium processor, the latest Core 2 Extreme, which is a four-core processor that Intel's working on, it will be our laptop tomorrow. To build that, what we'd do with Whirlwind technology is we'd have to take up roughly from the 10 to Mulholland, and from the 405 to La Cienega just with those Whirlwinds. And then, the 92 nuclear power plants that it would take to provide the power would fill up the rest of Los Angeles. That's roughly a third more nuclear power than all of France creates. So, the next time they tell you they're on to something, clearly they're not. So -- and we haven't even worked out the cooling needs. But it gives you the kind of power that people have, that the audience has, and the reasons these transformations are happening.
All of this stuff starts moving into industry. DEC kind of reduces all this and makes the first mini-computer. It shows up at places like MIT, and then a mutation happens. Spacewar! is built, the first computer game, and all of a sudden, interactivity and involvement and passion is worked out. Actually, many MIT students stayed up all night long working on this thing, and many of the principles of gaming today were worked out. DEC knew a good thing about wasting time. It shipped every one of its computers with that game.
Meanwhile, as all of this is happening, by the mid-'50s, the business model of traditional broadcasting and cinema has been busted completely. A new technology has confounded radio men and movie moguls and they're quite certain that television is about to do them in. In fact, despair is in the air. And a quote that sounds largely reminiscentfrom everything I've been reading all week. RCA had David Sarnoff, who basically commercialized radio, said this, "I don't say that radio networks must die. Every effort has been made and will continue to be made to find a new pattern, new selling arrangementsand new types of programs that may arrest the declining revenues. It may yet be possible to eke out a poor existence for radio, but I don't know how." And of course, as the computer industry develops interactively, producers in the emerging TV business actually hit on the same idea. And they fake it.
(Video) Jack Berry: Boys and girls, I think you all know how to get your magic windows up on the set, you just get them out. First of all, get your Winky Dink kits out. Put out your Magic Window and your erasing glove, and rub it like this. That's the way we get some of the magic into it, boys and girls. Then take it and put it right up against the screen of your own television set, and rub it out from the center to the corners, like this. Make sure you keep your magic crayons handy, your Winky Dink crayons and your erasing glove,because you'll be using them during the show to draw like that. You all set? OK, let's get right to the first story about Dusty Man. Come on into the secret lab.
PH: It was the dawn of interactive TV, and you may have noticed they wanted to sell you the Winky Dink kits. Those are the Winky Dink crayons. I know what you're saying. "Pete, I could use any ordinary open-source crayon, why do I have to buy theirs?" I assure you, that's not the case. Turns out they told us directly that these are the only crayons you should ever use with your Winky Dink Magic Window, other crayons may discolor or hurt the window. This proprietary principle of vendor lock-in would go on to be perfected with great success as one of the enduring principles of windowing systems everywhere. It led to lawsuits --
But we will discuss this scandal, because this man, Jack Berry, the host of "Winky Dink,"went on to become the host of "Twenty One," one of the most important quiz shows ever.And it was rigged, and it became unraveled when this man, Charles van Doren, was outed after an unnatural winning streak, ending Berry's career. And actually, ending the career of a lot of people at CBS. It turns out there was a lot to learn about how this new medium worked.
And 50 years ago, if you'd been at a meeting like this and were trying to understand the media, there was one prophet and only but one you wanted to hear from, Professor Marshall McLuhan. He actually understood something about a theme that we've been discussing all week. It's the role of the audience in an era of pervasive electronic communications. Here he is talking from the 1960s.
(Video) Marshall McLuhan: If the audience can become involved in the actual process of making the ad, then it's happy. It's like the old quiz shows. They were great TV because it gave the audience a role, something to do. They were horrified when they discoveredthey'd really been left out all the time because the shows were rigged. Now, then, this was a horrible misunderstanding of TV on the part of the programmers.
PH: You know, McLuhan talked about the global village. If you substitute the word blogosphere, of the Internet today, it is very true that his understanding is probably very enlightening now. Let's listen in to him.
(Video) MM: The global village is a world in which you don't necessarily have harmony.You have extreme concern with everybody else's business and much involvement in everybody else's life. It's a sort of Ann Landers' column writ large. And it doesn't necessarily mean harmony and peace and quiet, but it does mean huge involvement in everybody else's affairs. And so the global village is as big as a planet, and as small as a village post office.
PH: We'll talk a little bit more about him later. We're now right into the 1960s. It's the era of big business and data centers for computing. But all that was about to change. You know, the expression of technology reflects the people and the time of the culture it was built in.And when I say that code expresses our hopes and aspirations, it's not just a joke about messianism, it's actually what we do. But for this part of the story, I'd actually like to throw itto America's leading technology correspondent, John Markoff.
(Video) John Markoff: Do you want to know what the counterculture in drugs, sex, rock 'n' roll and the anti-war movement had to do with computing? Everything. It all happened within five miles of where I'm standing, at Stanford University, between 1960 and 1975. In the midst of revolution in the streets and rock and roll concerts in the parks, a group of researchers led by people like John McCarthy, a computer scientist at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab, and Doug Engelbart, a computer scientist at SRI, changed the world. Engelbart came out of a pretty dry engineering culture, but while he was beginning to do his work, all of this stuff was bubbling on the mid-peninsula. There was LSD leaking out of Kesey's Veterans' Hospital experiments and other areas around the campus, and there was music literally in the streets. The Grateful Dead was playing in the pizza parlors.People were leaving to go back to the land. There was the Vietnam War. There was black liberation. There was women's liberation. This was a remarkable place, at a remarkable time. And into that ferment came the microprocessor.
I think it was that interaction that led to personal computing. They saw these tools that were controlled by the establishment as ones that could actually be liberated and put to use by these communities that they were trying to build. And most importantly, they had this ethos of sharing information. I think these ideas are difficult to understand, because when you're trapped in one paradigm, the next paradigm is always like a science fiction universe -- it makes no sense. The stories were so compelling that I decided to write a book about them. The title of the book is, "What the Dormouse Said: How the '60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry." The title was taken from the lyrics to a Jefferson Airplane song. The lyrics go, "Remember what the dormouse said.Feed your head, feed your head, feed your head." (Music)
PH: By this time, computing had kind of leapt into media territory, and in short order much of what we're doing today was imagined in Cambridge and Silicon Valley. Here's the Architecture Machine Group, the predecessor of the Media Lab, in 1981. Meanwhile, in California, we were trying to commercialize a lot of this stuff. HyperCard was the first program to introduce the public to hyperlinks, where you could randomly hook to any kind of picture, or piece of text, or data across a file system, and we had no way of explaining it.There was no metaphor. Was it a database? A prototyping tool? A scripted language?Heck, it was everything. So we ended up writing a marketing brochure.
We asked a question about how the mind works, and we let our customers play the role of so many blind men filling out the elephant. A few years later, we then hit on the idea of explaining to people the secret of, how do you get the content you want, the way you want it and the easy way? Here's the Apple marketing video.
(Video) James Burke: You'll be pleased to know, I'm sure, that there are several ways to create a HyperCard interactive video. The most involved method is to go ahead and produce your own videodisc as well as build your own HyperCard stacks. By far the simplest method is to buy a pre-made videodisc and HyperCard stacks from a commercial supplier. The method we illustrate in this video uses a pre-made videodisc but creates custom HyperCard stacks. This method allows you to use existing videodisc materials in ways which suit your specific needs and interests.
PH: I hope you realize how subversive that is. That's like a Dick Cheney speech. You think he's a nice balding guy, but he's just declared war on the content business. Find the commercial stuff, mash it up, tell the story your way. Now, as long as we confine this to the education market, and a personal matter between the computer and the file system, that's fine, but as you can see, it was about to leap out and upset Jack Valenti and a lot of other people.
By the way, speaking of the filing system, it never occurred to us that these hyperlinks could go beyond the local area network. A few years later, Tim Berners-Lee worked that out. It became a killer app of links, and today, of course, we call that the World Wide Web.Now, not only was I instrumental in helping Apple miss the Internet, but a couple of years later, I helped Bill Gates do the same thing. The year is 1993 and he was working on a book and I was working on a video to help him kind of explain where we were all heading and how to popularize all this. We were plenty aware that we were messing with media,and on the surface, it looks like we predicted a lot of the right things, but we also missed an awful lot. Let's take a look.
(Video) Narrator: The pyramids, the Colosseum, the New York subway system and TV dinners, ancient and modern wonders of the man-made world all. Yet each pales to insignificance with the completion of that magnificent accomplishment of twenty-first-century technology, the Digital Superhighway. Once it was only a dream of technoids and a few long-forgotten politicians. The Digital Highway arrived in America's living rooms late in the twentieth century. Let us recall the pioneers who made this technical marvel possible. The Digital Highway would follow the rutted trail first blazed by Alexander Graham Bell. Though some were incredulous ... Man 1: The phone company! Narrator: Stirred by the prospects of mass communication and making big bucks on advertising,David Sarnoff commercializes radio. Man 2: Never had scientists been put under such pressure and demand. Narrator: The medium introduced America to new products. Voice 1: Say, mom, Windows for Radio means more enjoyment and greater ease of use for the whole family. Be sure to enjoy Windows for Radio at home and at work. Narrator: In 1939, the Radio Corporation of America introduced television. Man 2: Never had scientists been put under such pressure and demand.
Narrator: Eventually, the race to the future took on added momentum with the breakup of the telephone company. And further stimulus came with the deregulation of the cable television industry, and the re-regulation of the cable television industry. Ted Turner: We did the work to build this, this cable industry, now the broadcasters want some of our money. I mean, it's ridiculous. Narrator: Computers, once the unwieldy tools of accountants and other geeks, escaped the backrooms to enter the media fracas. The world and all its culture reduced to bits, the lingua franca of all media. And the forces of convergence exploded.
Finally, four great industrial sectors combined. Telecommunications, entertainment, computing and everything else. Man 3: We'll see channels for the gourmet and we'll see channels for the pet lover. Voice 2: Next on the gourmet pet channel, decorating birthday cakes for your schnauzer. Narrator: All of industry was in play, as investors flocked to place their bets. At stake: the battle for you, the consumer, and the right to spend billions to send a lot of information into the parlors of America. (Music)
PH: We missed a lot. You know, you missed, we missed the Internet, the long tail, the role of the audience, open systems, social networks. It just goes to show how tough it is to come up with the right uses of media. Thomas Edison had the same problem. He wrote a list of what the phonograph might be good for when he invented it, and kind of only one of his ideas turned out to have been the right early idea. Well, you know where we're going on from here. We come into the era of the dotcom, the World Wide Web, and I don't need to tell you about that because we all went through that bubble together. But when we emerge from this and what we call Web 2.0, things actually are quite different. And I think it's the reason that TV's so challenged. If Internet one was about pages, now it's about people. It's a customer, it's an audience, it's a person who's participating. It's the formidable thing that is changing entertainment now.
PH: In my own company, Technorati, we see something like 67,000 blog posts an hour come in. That's about 2,700 fresh, connective links across about 112 million blogs that are out there. And it's no wonder that as we head into the writers' strike, odd things happen. You know, it reminds me of that old saw in Hollywood, that a producer is anyone who knows a writer. I now think a network boss is anyone who has a cable modem. But it's not a joke. This is a real headline. "Websites attract striking writers: operators of sites like MyDamnChannel.com could benefit from labor disputes." Meanwhile, you have the TV bloggers going out on strike, in sympathy with the television writers. And then you have TV Guide, a Fox property, which is about to sponsor the online video awards -- but cancels it out of sympathy with traditional television, not appearing to gloat. To show you how schizophrenic this all is, here's the head of MySpace, or Fox Interactive, a News Corp company, being asked, well, with the writers' strike, isn't this going to hurt News Corp and help you online?
(Video) Man: But I, yeah, I think there's an opportunity. As the strike continues, there's an opportunity for more people to experience video on places like MySpace TV.
(Video) Man: Yes, well, first, you know, I'm part of News Corporation as part of Fox Entertainment Group. Obviously, we hope that the strike is -- that the issues are resolved as quickly as possible.
PH: One of the great things that's going on here is the globalization of content really is happening. Here is a clip from a video, from a piece of animation that was written by a writer in Hollywood, animation worked out in Israel, farmed out to Croatia and India, and it's now an international series.
(Video) Narrator: The following takes place between the minutes of 2:15 p.m. and 2:18 p.m., in the months preceding the presidential primaries.
Voice 2: You mean we'll have to live here, together? Voices 2, 3 and 4: With her? Voice 2: Well, there goes the neighborhood.
PH: The company that created this, Aniboom, is an interesting example of where this is headed. Traditional TV animation costs, say, between 80,000 and 10,000 dollars a minute. They're producing things for between 1,500 and 800 dollars a minute. And they're offering their creators 30 percent of the back end, in a much more entrepreneurial manner. So, it's a different model. What the entertainment business is struggling with, the world of brands is figuring out.
For example, Nike now understands that Nike Plus is not just a device in its shoe, it's a network to hook its customers together. And the head of marketing at Nike says, "People are coming to our site an average of three times a week. We don't have to go to them."Which means television advertising is down 57 percent for Nike. Or, as Nike's head of marketing says, "We're not in the business of keeping media companies alive. We're in the business of connecting with consumers."
And media companies realize the audience is important also. Here's a man announcing the new Market Watch from Dow Jones, powered 100 percent by the user experience on the home page -- user-generated content married up with traditional content. It turns out you have a bigger audience and more interest if you hook up with them. Or, as Geoffrey Moore once told me, it's intellectual curiosity that's the trade that brands need in the age of the blogosphere. And I think this is beginning to happen in the entertainment business.
One of my heroes is songwriter, Ally Willis, who just wrote "The Color Purple" and has been an R and -- rhythm and blues writer, and this is what she said about where songwriting's going.
Ally Willis: Where millions of collaborators wanted the song, because to look at them strictly as spam is missing what this medium is about.
PH: So, to wrap up, I'd love to throw it back to Marshall McLuhan, who, 40 years ago, was dealing with audiences that were going through just as much change, and I think that, today, traditional Hollywood and the writers are framing this perhaps in the way that it was being framed before. But I don't need to tell you this, let's throw it back to him.
(Video) Narrator: We are in the middle of a tremendous clash between the old and the new. MM: The medium does things to people and they are always completely unaware of this. They don't really notice the new medium that is wrapping them up. They think of the old medium, because the old medium is always the content of the new medium, as movies tend to be the content of TV, and as books used to be the content, novels used to be the content of movies. And so every time a new medium arrives, the old medium is the content, and it is highly observable, highly noticeable, but the real, real roughing up and massaging is done by the new medium, and it is ignored.
PH: I think it's a great time of enthrallment. There's been more raw DNA of communications and media thrown out there. Content is moving from shows to particlesthat are batted back and forth, and part of social communications, and I think this is going to be a time of great renaissance and opportunity. And whereas television may have gotten beat up, what's getting built is a really exciting new form of communication, and we kind of have the merger of the two industries and a new way of thinking to look at it.
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早安 你們知道，電腦和電視最近雙雙步入60歲， 而今天我想跟大家談一下他們之間的關係。撇開它們正面臨中年（危機），如果你一直都在關注 本次大會或者娛樂產業 你顯然很清楚，它們一直以來都跟彼此過不去。 現在該來談一下究竟電腦是如何襲擊電視的。 或者，為什麼原子彈的發明 居然助長了娛樂業編劇的罷工 這不僅是他們互相之間對對方做了些什麼， 而是觀眾們在想要什麼，才是真正的徵結
為了理解這一點， 這個星期以來我們一直在談論這個話題， 最近，我跟一幫少年朋友們聊了一下。 我把要討論的話題放在了卡片、電視、電臺、MySpace和網路電腦上。 接著我說，從你認為對你最重要的東西開始排序 到最不重要的，然後告訴我為什麼。 現在讓我們聽一下，當進入到 有關電視的討論環節時，他們都說了些什麼。
彼得·赫什伯格：有一種緊繃的關係在電視工業 和科技工業之間蔓延。這其實從它們一步入30歲的時候就開始了。 我們經歷過沉淪的階段， 接踵而來的是金融界各董事會上的一系列反應。 最恰當的形容是，金融學的名詞叫什麼來著？啊呸~。
我舉個例子，早在1976年， 華納收購了雅達利，因為電玩遊戲行業正剛剛抬頭 第二年，他們更進一步推出了Qube (方塊遊戲）， 第一個互動式有線電視系統， 紐約時報將此預言為家用遠程通訊時代的開啟 媒體融合，好事來臨。 東海岸的所有人都被納入發展宏圖， 花旗集團、潘尼、美國無線電公司都高瞻遠矚。 順便說一下，這會兒也正是我出場的時候。 我既將成為時代華納的暑期實習生。 那個暑假，整個暑假我在華納 興高采烈地為媒體趨同化工作。接著，一跌到底，全線崩潰。 事情進行地並不順利，華納損失慘重。 我跟媒體趨同化有一個美麗而又短暫的接觸 直到，差不多，華納基本上必須清算所有的資產。
那正值我研究所畢業之際，但我無法在紐約 的娛樂或科技企業工作 因為我必須被流放到工作機會尚存的加州， 幾乎到了海邊，任職於蘋果電腦。 當然，華納有四億多美元都打了水漂。四億美元在七十年代是一個相當大的數目。 但他們當時覺察到一些事情，也比以前有進步。2000年的時候，整個程序圓滿完成。華納跟美國在線合併了， 而僅僅在四年間，他們就很有本事地虧損了大約兩千億美元 的市值。這表明，他們很精通於 運用摩爾定律的遞減法 於他們的資產負債表上。
現在，我認為娛樂媒體界 或者是媒體界被科技界折騰到瘋掉的原因 是這些玩科技的傢伙說的話與眾不同。 你知道，過去50年來，他們一直說要改變世界， 徹底地改頭換面。 50年來，這裏面夾雜著對於一個更美好世界的希望、恐懼 以及承諾。於是，我不得不考慮， 還有誰會這麼大言不慚？ 答案一目了然， 那就是那些搞宗教和政治的人。
而且我還意識到，事實上科技世界可以被理解成， 一個救世運動而不只是單純的商業活動 我們許下重諾，並四處宣揚 我們要改變世界，但結果並不理想， 所以我們被打回原形，重整旗鼓， 而此時紐約和洛杉磯的人們正帶著一種絕對不懷好意的驚訝表情袖手旁觀。 不過，這種非理性看待事物的觀點驅使我們更進一步。
當然，第一台電腦是在二戰之後研製的， 用於解決軍事問題。但幾年之後， 也就是1949年，旋風電腦使得很多事情變得非常有趣。 這台電腦誕生在麻省理工學院的林肯實驗室裏，是傑伊·福雷斯特專為美國海軍研製的。 但是你不得不看到，這台機器的發明者在當初已經想到 將這台機器發展成明日的媒體之星。 讓我們看一下，當早期最著名的電視記者 和其中一個最著名的電腦先驅相遇之後發生了什麼事， 電腦開始了表現自我 。
哦，愛德，這個問題關係到海軍的維京火箭。 該火箭升空至一百三十五英哩高。 現在，在標準燃料消耗的情況下， 我想讓電腦追蹤該火箭的飛行軌跡， 以及看它如何做出判斷，在任何情況下 比如說，在最後的40秒時，燃料的剩餘量， 以及在那一設定瞬間的速度。 在我的左手邊， 你可以注意到燃料消耗在火箭升空時呈現下降。 在我的右手邊有一個刻度 顯示火箭的速度。 火箭的位置則顯示在 我們現在看到的軌跡上。 當它接近軌跡的最高點時， 你可以看到，其速度下降到了最低點。 而當火箭俯沖時，其速度再次上升 到了一個最高點，然後火箭落地。
彼得：你看，一下子解決了這麼多問題。這是第一次即時互動、 視頻顯示、還能瞄准好槍。這為微型電腦的發明奠定了基礎。 但很遺憾，它對於海軍來說太昂貴了， 所有這些本來都會消失 如果不是因為一個美妙的巧合的話
原子彈登場了。（蘇聯宣佈一個核武器爆炸測試） 我們從未被如此強大的武器威脅過, 我們可以理解為一件好事， 當空軍決定需要一個史上最大的電腦來保護我們時。 他們將旋風電腦運用於一個龐大的空中防禦系統 佈署在整個天寒地凍的北方地區 而且，在這台電腦上所花費的支出 是曼哈頓工程的三倍之多 那工程旨在第一時間製造出原子彈。 這一舉動尤如為電腦工程業注入了強心針。 你可以想像空軍變儼如很出色的銷售人員。 這裏是他們的電視宣傳廣告。
影片：在大規模的襲擊中，高速的炸彈可能會在 我們判斷出它的軌跡之前就已經跟蹤上了我們。 讓你猝不及防。 我們絕不能冒這樣的風險。 為了應付這一威脅，空軍部門研發了SAGE ﹣ 半自動化地面防空系統， 來加強我們的空中防禦能力。 這部新型超級電腦，將要成為防禦系統的神經中樞， 它可以承擔跟抵抗敵方大規模襲擊有關的 各種複雜的數學演算。 它配備了專用的發電機房 裏面有大型的柴油發電機、 空調設備和冷卻塔， 用來降低電腦中數以千計的電子管的溫度。
彼得：你知道，這台電腦非常龐大。 從中可以看出一個很有趣的行銷課程， 基本來說，當你想推廣一種產品時， 你可以這麼說，這將會是一個非常棒的產品， 它能讓你感覺更好，更有活力， 或者你可以從另一個行銷角度出發說，如果你不用我們的產品，你就玩完了。 這是一個絕佳的例證。
這台電腦擁有第一個導向裝置。它是分布式的， 它分散運算和數據交換的運行。 而且所有的這些東西之間可以相互交流。 全美有大約百分之二十的程式工程師都參與了該電腦系統的研發。 今天我們能擁有這如此輝煌成果完全得益於此。這台電腦還使用了電子管。 你可以看到它有多巨大。為了讓你更清楚地了解這一點， 因為我們在此次大會上已經談了很多有關摩爾定律方面的知識，如何把東西變小。 所以，現在我們來談談如何讓東西變大。 如果我們把旋風電腦放在一個我們都知道的地方， 比如說，世紀商城，那再適合不過了。 你可能需要先把世紀商城騰空，但它肯定能放進去。
想像一下，我們使用最新的奔騰處理器， 就是英特爾正在研發的酷睿2至尊版四核處理器，它將會是我們明日的手提電腦。 把這個應用在旋風電腦的技術上， 我們大概必須佔據從10號高速公路到穆赫蘭大道， 以及從405號高速公路到拉辛尼倫吉大道的全部空間來擺放這些旋風電腦。 還要九十二座核能發電廠 用來提供電源 正好把洛杉磯剩餘的地區全部填滿。 這大概比法國全國核電廠的發電量還多三分之一。 所以，下次他們告訴你他們正在籌劃什麼事情，他們其實並沒有。 另外，我們還沒有解決冷卻的問題。 但至少讓你見識一下人們和觀眾所受到的影響。 以及這些翻天覆地的變化正在發生的原因。
所有東西都開始邁向工業化。 迪吉多（DEC）化繁為簡，製造出第一台微型電腦 它出現在類似麻省理工學院等地方，之後就發生了變異。 第一個電腦遊戲的太空大戰誕生了。突然之間,互動、參與和激情同時體現了出來。 實際上，許多麻省理工的學生夜以繼日地改進這個遊戲， 而且今天許多的遊戲規則在那會兒就已經制訂出來了。 迪吉多想出一個消磨時間的好方法。 他們在每一台售出的電腦中都附帶了這個遊戲。
在這些變化產生的同時，在50年代中期， 廣播和電影院的傳統商業模式， 已經徹底地崩潰了。 一個嶄新的技術讓廣播業者和電影大亨們不知所措。 而且，他們非常肯定電視已經快搞垮他們了。 實際上，絕望的情緒已經開始蔓延。 我想引用一段讓人非常容易聯想到過去的話， 這段話出自過去一個星期我讀到的所有東西， 將廣播商業化的美國無線電公司的大衛·沙諾夫(美國商業無線電和電視的先驅)說過， “我不會說廣播網絡一定會滅亡， 曾經付出的每一分努力都將繼續 並致力於尋找新的模式，新的營銷整合 和新型的節目以期能夠挽救收入下跌的營收 這有也許能夠挽救廣播業的糟糕現狀， 但我不知道如何去做。” 當然，在電腦業發展互動模式之際， 新興電視產業的制片人們也產生了同樣的相法。 但他們不過只是照貓畫虎。
影片：孩子們，我想你們都知道如何把你們的魔術屏幕 安裝上去，只需要把它們拿出來。 首先，把你們的亮閃閃（Winky Dink）工具包拿出來， 再把你的魔術屏幕和手套擦拿出來，就象我這樣來回擦。 這就是我們讓它產生魔術效果的方法，孩子們。 然後再把它拿起來，貼在你的自己的電視螢幕上， 並且從中間部分向四邊擦出去，就象我這樣。 記得把你的魔術蠟筆放在手邊，你的亮閃閃蠟筆 和你的手套擦也是， 因為你將在節目中用它們畫圖畫。 準備好了嗎？好，讓我們開始第一個故事—達斯提人。 跟我到密室裏來吧。
彼得：那時是互動電視曙光乍現的時後。你應該已經注意到了， 他們就是想把亮閃閃工具包推銷給你。 這些就是Winky Dink蠟筆。我知道你在想什麼。 “彼得，我可以用任何一般的、市面流通的蠟筆， 我們為什麼一定要買他們的產品？” 我可以向你保證，事情絕非如你所想。 結果是，他們會直接告訴我們，這是唯一可以 用在亮閃閃魔術屏幕上的蠟筆。 其它的蠟筆可能會造成褪色或損害到你的屏幕。 這種獨家經銷的銷售祕方 將會日臻完美並取得巨大的成功 這就是無處不在的視窗操作系統的其中一個永久準則。 當然也導致了官司訴訟。（以上例子影射微軟公司）
但我們要談一下另一件醜聞，因為這個人，傑克·巴瑞，《亮閃閃》節目的主持人， 後來成為了電視節目《21》的主持人，這是有史以來最重要的競猜節目之一。 該節目由人為操縱造假，當這個男人， 查爾斯·尤·朵仁非自然性地連贏數次而被出局之後，一切才真相大白， 由此也結束了巴瑞的職業生涯。 事實上，這結束哥倫比業廣播公司很多人的職業生涯。 結果證明，要想了解這個新媒體的運作， 實在是有很多東西需要學習。
50年前，如果你在這樣一個會議當中， 試著去理解媒體， 會有這麼一個預言家，也是唯一一個你想聽聽他說什麼的人， 它就是馬歇爾·麥克盧漢教授。 事實上，他的見解正是過去一個星期以來 我們一直討論的一個主題。那就是觀眾 在電子通信技術滲透時代所扮演的角色。 這是他在1960年代的講話。
影片：如果觀眾能夠真正參與到廣告實際的 製作過程中，那就再好不過了。這就好像過去的競猜節目 他們是很好的電視節目，因為它給觀眾安排了一個角色，一個差事。 但他們很快就會被震驚，因為他們發現了 節目被人為操縱，而他們從一開始就被排除在遊戲之外。 好啦，這是對電視 某些節目程序一個可怕的誤解。
影片：地球村是一個世界， 在這裏不必有和諧， 你極度關注其它人的個人私事 並且很深地介入每個人的生活中。 就如同把安·蘭德絲的專欄放大一樣。 這不必意味著和諧、和平和安寧，但它卻意味著全方位地介入每一個人的私人事務。 所以，地球村既如一個星球般龐大， 又如一個鄉村郵電局那樣渺小。
彼得：等會兒我們將會更多地談到他。 現在，我們開始進入60年代。 這是大工業和計算機數據中心的時代。 但這些很快就要被改變。 你知道，科技的表現 反映了人類和其文化引領的時代。 當我說計算機編碼表達了我們的希望和進取時 這並非關於彌塞亞主義的笑話，而是我們實實在在做的事情。 關於這部分的故事，我想交給 美國科技新聞工作者的先驅約翰·馬克夫來給大家講述。
影片：你想知道反主流文化的 毒品、性、搖滾和反戰運動 對電腦工業的影響嗎？所有的一切。 一切都發生在我目前所在的5英哩之內， 就在斯坦福大學裏，在1960到1975年之間。就在街頭革命運動 以及公園搖滾音樂會如火如荼地進行時， 由諸如斯坦福大學人工智能實驗室的 電腦科學家約翰·麥卡錫以及斯坦福研究學院的電腦科學家 道格·安傑巴特領導的一個研究小組改變了整個世界。 安傑巴特是從一個非常枯燥的工程師文化圈裏走出來的。 但當他開始他的研究工作時， 所有的事情都在半島中部（借指舊金山地區）熱火朝天地進行著。 麥角酸二乙基醯胺（一種致幻劑）從卡西退伍軍人醫院的實驗室洩漏到了外界， 還有校園裏的其它地方， 那時音樂充斥著街頭。 死之華樂團在比薩店裏演唱。 人們紛紛離開好回歸家鄉土地。 那時有越戰、黑人解放運動、 和婦女解放運動。 這是一個出現在不同尋常年代的一個不同尋常的地方。 微型處理器就在這個動亂年代誕生了。
我認為，所有這些運動的相互影響最終導致了個人電腦的產生。 他們看到這些工具被保守的當權派所把持， 有些東西可以被解放出來 由那些他們正在試圖建設的社區來使用。 更重要的是，他們具有這種信息共享的精神。 我認為這些想法是很難去理解的， 因為當你被禁錮在某種模式裏時， 另一種模式總是會象一個科幻小說世界一樣，毫無道理。 這些故事太引人入勝了，以至於我決定把它們寫成一本書。 書名就叫做：“睡鼠宣言： 60年代的非主流文化運動如何左右了個人電腦工業的發展。”（臺灣版書名：《PC迷幻紀事》） 書名源自於傑斐遜飛機 一首歌的歌詞。歌詞是這樣的， “還記得睡鼠說過的話嗎， 喂飽你的腦袋，喂飽你的腦袋，喂飽你的腦袋。”
彼得：到這個時候，計算機工業已經有點邁進媒體領域的意思了。 而且轉眼之間，今天我們的很多所做所為 當時在劍橋和矽谷就已經想像到了。 這裏是結構體系機器小組， 它是媒體實驗室的前身，成立於1981年。 同時，在加州，我們正在試圖將很多東西商業化。 超卡是當時的第一個 將超連結介紹給公眾的程序。 你可以任意連結到整個文件系統中的任何照片， 或一段文本及數據， 而且我們無法對此做出解釋。 也沒有什麼可以用來做比喻。這是數據庫，原型工具，還是指令碼語言嗎？ 天哪，什麼都是。最後我們策劃了一個市場宣傳手冊。
我們問了一個問題，即這個想法是如何形成產生的。 我們讓我們的客戶來玩盲人摸象的遊戲。 幾年以後，我們又想出了一個主意 來向人們解釋這個秘密，那就是你怎樣才能得到你想要的內容， 以你所希望的方式和最容易的方式？ 這裏是蘋果公司的市場推廣視頻。
視頻：你將很樂意了解，我確信，這裏有幾種方法 來製作一個超卡互動視頻。 最複雜的方法是直接 製作你自己的視頻光碟 還有就是建立你自己的超卡卡堆。 目前為止最簡單的方法是從供應商手裏買一個事先做好的視頻光碟 和超卡卡堆。 我們在這個視頻裏展示的方法是 使用一個事先做好的視頻光碟，但特別定做一個超卡卡堆。 這個方法可以讓你使用現有的視頻光碟材料， 來滿足你的特殊需求和興趣。
彼得：我希望你能意識到這是多麼地具有顛覆性。 它聽起來象迪克·錢尼的講話。 你覺得他是一個很和藹的禿頭佬，結果他剛剛向 內容服務商宣戰。找出一堆商業化的東西， 混搭組合在一起，然後隨心所欲地演繹。 現在，只要我們把這個界定在教育市場的範圍， 以及界定為電腦和檔案系統之間私人恩怨 就沒有問題。不過，你可以看到，它即將跳出來把傑克·華倫提 和很多人惹火了。
順便提一句，說到檔案系統，我們從來沒有想過 這些超連結可以超越區域網路。 幾年以後，提姆·柏納李（全球資訊網的發明者）解決了這個問題。 它變成了一個極具殺傷力的連結應用軟件。今天，當然 我們稱它為全球資訊網。 現在，不僅我導致蘋果跟網際網路失之交臂， 幾年之後，我讓比爾·蓋茨也做了同樣的事。 那是1993年。 他當時正在忙著寫書，而我在忙著製作一個視頻 幫助他來解釋我們的發展方向以及如何普及這一切。 我們非常清楚我們正跟媒體過不去， 表面上看來，我們預見到的很多事情是正確的， 但是我們也忽略了很多東西。讓我們一起來看看以下這個片段。
視頻：金字塔、羅馬競技場、紐約地鐵系統 和冷凍快餐，古代和現代人造奇跡的世界。 雖然每一個都顯得微不足道， 跟二十一世紀的偉大科技成就— 數位高速公路比起來。 它曾經僅僅是計算機狂和幾個早已被遺忘的政治家的一個夢想。 數位高速公路於二十世紀末出現在美國人民的客廳裏。 讓我們一起來回憶一下那些使這一科技奇跡成為可能的先輩們。 數位高速公路是步 前輩亞歷山大·格拉漢姆·貝爾的後塵。 雖然有些人對此表示懷疑。（畫中音：電話公司！） 被大眾傳播的前景攪得很不安 並利用廣告賺了大把錢， 大衛·沙諾夫把廣播商業化了。 科學家從來沒有過面臨這麼大的壓力和需求。 媒體向美國推廣最新的產品。 我說，媽媽們，視窗廣播對全家人來說，意味著更多的愉悅 和更簡便的使用。 記得在家和公司都要享受視窗廣播。 1939年，美國無線電公司推出了電視機。 科學家從來沒有過面臨這麼大的壓力和需求。
最終這場關於未來的競賽隨著 電話公司的解體得到了新的動力。 隨著對有線電視工業 的管制放鬆 工業的重新管制，更進一步的激勵產生了 這個有線電視工業是由我們建設起來， 現在，廣播業者想從我們這裏分一杯羹。我認為這很荒謬。 電腦曾經是會計人員和其它天才怪胎用來 逃離小黑屋，在媒體爭辯中插一嘴的笨重工具。 世界和它的所有文化都縮小成至位元， 所有媒體的口舌之爭。 集聚已久的力量終於爆發了。
最終，四大工業版塊合併了。 通訊業、娛樂業、計算機工業和其它的所有行業。 我們將會看到美食頻道 我們還將看到寵物頻道。 下一個將會是美食寵物頻道， 為你的雪納瑞裝飾生日蛋糕。 所有的行業都加入到遊戲當中，當投資者一窩蜂地下賭注的時候。 在危急關頭，這是你，一個消費者的戰爭， 以及揮霍上億美元，將各種信息送至每家每戶的權力。
彼得：我們忽略了很多。你知道，你忽略了，我們忽略了網際網路、 長尾效應、觀眾的角色、開放式系統、社交網路。 這表明想出一個正確使用媒體的方法有多麼不容易。 湯瑪斯·愛迪生面臨同樣的問題。 當他發明留聲機的時候，他寫了一個長長單子來列舉留聲機的好處。但只有他其中的一個想法 最後證明當初的想法是正確的。 你知道，我們從此要走向哪裏。 我走進了.com (網頁）和全球資訊網路的時代， 這無需贅言。 因為我們一起經歷了那場泡沫風波。 但當我們掙脫出來時，我們稱做Web 2.0 的東西其實完全不同。 我認為，這正是電視面臨巨大挑戰的原因。 網路一是有關網頁的，現在則是關於人的。 它是客戶、是觀眾，也是參與者。 這是一件正在令娱樂業改頭換面的令人歎為觀止的事情。
彼得：在我自已的公司裏，Technorati （部落格搜尋引擎）, 我們看到每小時有大約六萬七千個部落格的網誌上傳。 這是大概是貫穿網路上1.12億個部落格的 兩千七百個全新連結。 怪不得當我們趕往编劇罷工現場的時候，奇怪的事情會發生了。 你知道，這讓我想起了好萊塢的一句老話： 製片人是任何一個認識编劇的人。 現在我想，網路老板是任何一個擁有纜線數據機的人。 這可不是開玩笑。這是一個真正的新聞標題， “網頁吸引罷工影視編劇。” “象MyDamnChannel.com這樣網頁的運營者 可以從勞資糾紛中獲益。” 同時，你可以讓電視部落格作家舉行罷工 以此給予影視编劇們精神上的安慰。 電視指南，福克斯公司的下屬公司，本來將贊助網路視頻獎的， 但因為同情傳統電視業，所以取消了， 而不是幸災樂祸。 為了給你證明這一切是多麼地變態， 這裏是聚友網，也可稱作福克斯互動媒體，新聞集團下屬公司的老板, 在被問及，呃，影視編劇罷工， 問這會不會傷害到新聞集團，但卻有助於你在網路上的發展？
彼得：這裏正在發生的一件偉大的事情是 全球化的內容服務真正到來了。 這裏是一個視頻片段，出自 由好萊塢編劇編寫的一段卡通動畫。 動畫是在以色列製作的，然後外包給克羅埃西亞和印度， 現在是一個國際化的系列劇。
彼得：這個動畫的製作者，Aniboom, 是一個關於 該行業發展動向的一個很意思的例子。傳統電視動畫的成本，比方說 在每分鐘八萬至十萬美元之間。 他們製作的東西只要每分鐘1500到800美元之間。 而且，他們拿出尾款的百分之三十給予旗下的製作者。 這種作法更具企業家的風範。所以，這是一個不同的模式。 可以清楚地看到，娛樂行業正在跟 世界各大知名品牌抗爭。
例如，耐吉現在明白，耐吉Plus不僅僅是鞋子裏的一個裝置， 而是一個把它的客戶連結在一起的網路。 耐吉市場部的主管說：“人們平均每星期造訪 我們的網頁三次。我們不需要主動去聯絡他們。” 這意味耐吉的電視廣告減少了百分之五十七。 或者，正如耐吉市場部主管說的： “我們的商業職責不是維持媒體公司的生存， 而是跟我們的客戶建立良好的溝通。”
媒體公司也意識到了觀眾的重要性。 這個人正在宣佈道瓊公司的新節目《市場觀察》 百分之百地由用戶在公司主頁上的體驗做為支持， 用戶產生的內容跟傳統內容結合在一起。 其結果是，如果你跟他們聯手，你就擁有了一個更大的觀眾群體和更多利益。 或者，就象傑弗瑞·摩爾曾經告訴我的， 這是求知欲，是品牌在部落格空間時代 所需的交易。 我認為，這在即將要在娛樂業發生。
彼得：今天演講的收尾，我想交回給馬歇爾·麥克盧漢， 40年前，他曾經跟觀眾打交道。 而觀眾們現在也經歷著一系列變革。 我認為，今天傳統意義上的好萊塢和編劇們 勾勒故事框架的方式可能曾經被使用過。 但我不需要告訴你這些，還是讓他來說吧。
視頻：我們正處在一個非常了不起的新舊時代交替的碰撞。 媒體可以為人所用， 但他們總是不能完全意識到這一點。 他們沒有真正注意到新媒體正在對他們形成包圍。 他們惦記的依然是老媒體， 因為老媒體一直是新媒體的內容。 就如同電影正趨向於成為電視的內容， 書籍和小說則是曾經是電影的內容。 每一個新媒體出現， 老媒體就自然成了內容，這是一目了然，顯而易見的。但是真正的磨合和信息傳遞 是由新媒體完成的。這是，這是被忽視的。
彼得：我認為這是一個沉迷的偉大時代。 已經有更多的通訊和媒體的原始DNA 被提煉出來。內容正從節目轉向 可以被反複播放的片斷，以及社會交往的一部分。 這認為，這將是一個偉大的復興時代和契機。 盡管電視有可能深受打擊， 但建立起來的是一個真正讓人興奮的新的通訊模式。 我們可以說是擁用了兩大工業的合併， 和一個審視它的新角度。
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