Being Digital (Nicolas Negroponet's fundamental article on the digital economy for 1995, part 2)
An article that “started” the digital economy.
Message: 20
Date: 1.1.95
From: <nicholas@media.mit.edu>
To: <lr@wired.com>
Topic: Being Digital
Part 1 .
')
When I agreed to write a turnaround page for WIRED, I had no idea what that would entail. I got a lot of surprises. The biggest of them was my discovery, which is that the readers of the magazine included a wide range of people, and not just those who have @ at the heart of the name. When I found out that the children gave their parents WIRED as Christmas gifts, I was shocked. There seems to be a great thirst for understanding computers, electronic content and the network, not only as a technology, but as a culture.
For this reason, with the approval of many readers (even those who usually throw thunder and lightning), I decided to turn my WIRED speakers into a book called The Digital World, which will be published from the first of February. The idea sounded simple in June, but 20 stories are not necessarily easily combined into one book, even if each of them is worth its weight in gold. More importantly, a lot of things have changed so quickly that my old stories, which were trying to predict the future, became just an old, useless hat.
To my surprise, the only thing that remained completely unchanged was that only words were used in the columns - no images. It seems to work. As one of the inventors of multimedia, it seemed to me that I never use illustrations. Moreover, as a person who believes in bits, I had to come to terms with the idea that my publisher, Knopf, would supply simple atoms.
I learned something for myself while modeling my columns for topics that will be affected throughout the book. First, bits are bits, but all bits are not created equal. The entire economic model of telecommunications, based on billing per minute, per mile or per bit, is about to fall apart. As person-to-person communications become increasingly asynchronous, time will be meaningless (five hours of music will be delivered to you in less than five seconds). The distance doesn't matter: from satellite use, the distance from New York to London is only five miles more than the distance from New York to Newark. Of course, a small part of Gone With the Wind cannot be assessed as a small part of an email. In fact, the expression “small part” has a new and huge dual meaning.
In addition, we do not know how to own bats. Copyright law will be disintegrated. In the United States, copyrights and patents are not in the same branch of government. Copyright has very little logic: you can hum the tune of “Happy Birthday To You” in public as much as your heart desires, but if you sing the words, you owe it to the royal authority. Bits are really just bits. But what they are worth, who owns them, and how we interact with them is available to everyone.
You cannot gain experience using only a small part of something. This object must be turned into atoms so that people can enjoy it. While the process of converting bits to atoms has become sensitive to meaning, the opposite direction — turning atoms into bits — is almost abandoned. The human contribution to the machine is Paleolithic and keeps most parents and many of our friends from holding cables.
Acute problems are, speech (long overdue) and vision (usually not considered). What I understood in writing this part of the book is that we have a funny coincidence right in front of our nose (if I may say so). Many companies, especially Intel (which openly and easily express their opinions about many things), promote electronic video conferencing. The result is that sooner rather than later, we will have a growing population of machines with solid-state television cameras at the top of the screen and built-in microphones below.
Although this design was conceived to transfer your voice and image of your face to a remote and similar computer, it could conveniently serve as a direct channel on your computer - not exactly a newsgroup, but rather a local conference with your machine. So please, Intel, make sure that the audio and video are suitable for processor processing, so my car sees my face and hears my voice. Sometimes I really want to be in the company of such a machine.
This is where my optimism may have interfered; Probably, I have too many such genes O (optimistic). But I believe that being digital is good. It can smooth organizations, globalize society, decentralize control and help harmonize people, not knowing whether you are a dog or a person. In fact, there is a parallel between open and closed systems and open and closed societies, which I could not describe in the book. Just as the patented systems led to the downfall of the once great companies, such as Data General, Wang and Prime, overly hierarchical and socially-conscious societies will collapse. The nation state may disappear. And the world wins when people can compete with imagination, and not with official position.
In addition, everything digital will be less interested in race or wealth and will be more worried about age (if specified). First World telecommunications infrastructures are rapidly progressing in developing countries and soon they will become more wired (and wireless). We once lamented the demographics of the world. But now we have to ask ourselves: taking Germany and Mexico with approximately the same population, is it good that less than half of all Germans are younger than 40 years old and is it so bad that more than half of all Mexicans are over 20? Which of these countries will benefit from the "digital" world?
One of the many things that I learned is that publishers will simultaneously release an audio version of the book. I discovered this at the same time when I was told that I would have to voice it. Since I suffer from dyslexia, even when I speak in my own words, I refused. Then I asked Knopf whether Penn Gillett (see the September cover of WIRED) could do it. Penn is one of the coolest people I know, and I felt that he would bring all kinds of magic to this process. At a time when I thought that Knopf had abandoned this wild idea, they really had time to ask Penn before I could contact him. He kindly agreed. All he asked me by email was: "Are there any difficult words?" No, they are not.
To be continued...
Nicholas Negroponte is an American computer scientist of Greek origin.
The brother of the US Undersecretary of State (2007), the former director of US National Intelligence (2005–2007) John Dimitris Negroponte.
In 1985, he founded and headed Media Labs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1993 to 1998 he led the column “Move bits, not atoms” in the journal Wired. In 1995 he formulated the concept of Digital Economics. Since 2005 - the initiator and leader of the educational project "2b1", the forerunner of the One Laptop Per Child program (a laptop for each child). Since February 2006, he has headed the non-profit organization OLPC, formed under the auspices of the UN.
Message: 20
Date: 1.1.95
From: <nicholas@media.mit.edu>
To: <lr@wired.com>
Topic: Being Digital
Part 1 .
')
Paradox books
When I agreed to write a turnaround page for WIRED, I had no idea what that would entail. I got a lot of surprises. The biggest of them was my discovery, which is that the readers of the magazine included a wide range of people, and not just those who have @ at the heart of the name. When I found out that the children gave their parents WIRED as Christmas gifts, I was shocked. There seems to be a great thirst for understanding computers, electronic content and the network, not only as a technology, but as a culture.
For this reason, with the approval of many readers (even those who usually throw thunder and lightning), I decided to turn my WIRED speakers into a book called The Digital World, which will be published from the first of February. The idea sounded simple in June, but 20 stories are not necessarily easily combined into one book, even if each of them is worth its weight in gold. More importantly, a lot of things have changed so quickly that my old stories, which were trying to predict the future, became just an old, useless hat.
To my surprise, the only thing that remained completely unchanged was that only words were used in the columns - no images. It seems to work. As one of the inventors of multimedia, it seemed to me that I never use illustrations. Moreover, as a person who believes in bits, I had to come to terms with the idea that my publisher, Knopf, would supply simple atoms.
Bits are bits
I learned something for myself while modeling my columns for topics that will be affected throughout the book. First, bits are bits, but all bits are not created equal. The entire economic model of telecommunications, based on billing per minute, per mile or per bit, is about to fall apart. As person-to-person communications become increasingly asynchronous, time will be meaningless (five hours of music will be delivered to you in less than five seconds). The distance doesn't matter: from satellite use, the distance from New York to London is only five miles more than the distance from New York to Newark. Of course, a small part of Gone With the Wind cannot be assessed as a small part of an email. In fact, the expression “small part” has a new and huge dual meaning.
In addition, we do not know how to own bats. Copyright law will be disintegrated. In the United States, copyrights and patents are not in the same branch of government. Copyright has very little logic: you can hum the tune of “Happy Birthday To You” in public as much as your heart desires, but if you sing the words, you owe it to the royal authority. Bits are really just bits. But what they are worth, who owns them, and how we interact with them is available to everyone.
The interface is where the bits and people meet
You cannot gain experience using only a small part of something. This object must be turned into atoms so that people can enjoy it. While the process of converting bits to atoms has become sensitive to meaning, the opposite direction — turning atoms into bits — is almost abandoned. The human contribution to the machine is Paleolithic and keeps most parents and many of our friends from holding cables.
Acute problems are, speech (long overdue) and vision (usually not considered). What I understood in writing this part of the book is that we have a funny coincidence right in front of our nose (if I may say so). Many companies, especially Intel (which openly and easily express their opinions about many things), promote electronic video conferencing. The result is that sooner rather than later, we will have a growing population of machines with solid-state television cameras at the top of the screen and built-in microphones below.
Although this design was conceived to transfer your voice and image of your face to a remote and similar computer, it could conveniently serve as a direct channel on your computer - not exactly a newsgroup, but rather a local conference with your machine. So please, Intel, make sure that the audio and video are suitable for processor processing, so my car sees my face and hears my voice. Sometimes I really want to be in the company of such a machine.
Digital life
This is where my optimism may have interfered; Probably, I have too many such genes O (optimistic). But I believe that being digital is good. It can smooth organizations, globalize society, decentralize control and help harmonize people, not knowing whether you are a dog or a person. In fact, there is a parallel between open and closed systems and open and closed societies, which I could not describe in the book. Just as the patented systems led to the downfall of the once great companies, such as Data General, Wang and Prime, overly hierarchical and socially-conscious societies will collapse. The nation state may disappear. And the world wins when people can compete with imagination, and not with official position.
In addition, everything digital will be less interested in race or wealth and will be more worried about age (if specified). First World telecommunications infrastructures are rapidly progressing in developing countries and soon they will become more wired (and wireless). We once lamented the demographics of the world. But now we have to ask ourselves: taking Germany and Mexico with approximately the same population, is it good that less than half of all Germans are younger than 40 years old and is it so bad that more than half of all Mexicans are over 20? Which of these countries will benefit from the "digital" world?
And you don't even need to read them.
One of the many things that I learned is that publishers will simultaneously release an audio version of the book. I discovered this at the same time when I was told that I would have to voice it. Since I suffer from dyslexia, even when I speak in my own words, I refused. Then I asked Knopf whether Penn Gillett (see the September cover of WIRED) could do it. Penn is one of the coolest people I know, and I felt that he would bring all kinds of magic to this process. At a time when I thought that Knopf had abandoned this wild idea, they really had time to ask Penn before I could contact him. He kindly agreed. All he asked me by email was: "Are there any difficult words?" No, they are not.
To be continued...
about the author
Nicholas Negroponte is an American computer scientist of Greek origin.The brother of the US Undersecretary of State (2007), the former director of US National Intelligence (2005–2007) John Dimitris Negroponte.
In 1985, he founded and headed Media Labs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1993 to 1998 he led the column “Move bits, not atoms” in the journal Wired. In 1995 he formulated the concept of Digital Economics. Since 2005 - the initiator and leader of the educational project "2b1", the forerunner of the One Laptop Per Child program (a laptop for each child). Since February 2006, he has headed the non-profit organization OLPC, formed under the auspices of the UN.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/354418/
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