SoundMaster Edison on Office Dictation

Joel Tucker \| Web Communicator \| 561/845-5417

SoundMaster Edison on Office Dictation

Dance was to film what music was to records.

Cathode ray tubes seem to fascinate humans. Like the campfires of old, those flickering screens give the brain a rest. They provide something for it to do, some variety in the visual and audio fields even as the body remains at rest. A babbling brook, ocean waves or a colony of monkeys provide a similar diversion.

But you can't strap endorsements on a colony of monkeys or ocean waves. You can't interrupt a babbling brook for a word from our sponsors. You can imitate them at home, as with an aquarium, a garden pond or a cage filled with finches, but you won't find a remote control that changes one to the other. That's why most people prefer television.

Early television was flavored by its first thousand viewers -- their demographics, tastes and religion. As a new generation of producers emerged, the flavor of television began to change. So it will be with the Internet.

The Internet is a glorious proving ground for computer prowess. Look at the millions of interconnected users and all the spiffy search engines that let them find one another's material. Expense and portability notwithstanding, the Internet is a more-than-adequate alternative to traditional publishing (i.e., paper). Today, it thunders toward audio and even video transmission, limited only by the capabilities of its computers and those in consumer homes. But for all its magic and glitz, the Internet is still what its inventors intended, rather than what its audience wants.

The first sound recording was Thomas Alva Edison reciting "Mary Had a Little Lamb" to test his new invention, the phonograph. He expected his invention to become an office dictation device. It didn't bring much money, however, until someone struck on the idea of recording music. After Emile Berliner expanded the market with his flat-disk grammophone, Edison returned to his invention with still further refinements -- required for music, not for office dictation. In a circular fashion, recorded music helped to popularize the use of broadcast radio, which helped to sell records.

When records met music, the burst of content created an industry. The "record" industry is now the "music" industry -- largely because recorded music became convenient content for radio. All of which inspired more people to become musicians and create more content.

Another Edison invention, the Kinetiscope, became the motion picture industry when it met dance and slapstick. The industry has spawned many thousands of actors who would otherwise have had little interest in the stage, and has resulted in such new art forms as production and cinematography. Then, television did for these arts what radio did for music.

Like Edison's phonograph, the Internet was not invented to provide entertainment. The Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) sponsored development of a nationwide computer network to ensure our ability to launch a nuclear counter-attack, no matter which half of the nation the enemy had vaporized. Next, universities were connected to the 'Net, bringing the lofty ideals of free information, academic content and a mega-reference library. All the while, programmers tested and refined the system by sending messages to one another.

The Internet was a prolific text transmission system long before the advent of the World Wide Web -- that graphical interface that makes the Internet user-friendly. Like radio and television, the Web is a broadcast medium, offering content to an audience of potentially millions, each of whom decides whether to stick with this channel or move on to the next.

Newcomers to the Web will still stumble across the echoes of its earliest broadcasts -- militaristic, academic, libertarian and computer-related. The first Web pages were about how to build Web pages. Many of them are still on-line. This broadcast began with computer pros writing for computer pros. Today, it's largely computer pros providing content to computer users. What will it be tomorrow?

The answer is written on the wall of history. Almost anyone can create a simple Web page and place it online -- but most people won't. Anyone can talk on the phone or write a letter, but stagefright is a factor in broadcast communications. And, some of us have nothing to say. At last, the Web has more readers than writers. That difference will grow even as both become more numerous. Consumers will be drawn to the flicker of new ideas, images and tricks that the Web can provide as the content improves. Some viewers already settle back, remote in hand, to watch the embers crackle as the Web joins other media in the entertainment industry.

Computer professionals can learn from Edison, who made a fortune on his inventions and still had time to perfect the light bulb. His fortune was built on the scores of other people who defined his media -- not on his own ability to use those media for self-expression. If that first record had been Edison singing, we might all be staring at the fireplace, waiting for someone to stir the coals.

Joel Tucker \| Web Communicator \| 561/845-5417