Yesterday I mentioned in passing the lack of spectacular results for the Eureka 147 digital radio transmission system. Part of this is the lack of newness - I mean: It's just radio, right? Yes, the quality is a bit better, you don't ever have to retune when you travel and you can get the name of the song you're listening to, reading out on your receiver. According to some critics that isn't enough (see the essay by Giles Tanner I linked in this post). However, I've been pointed to this old Wired article (1993 to be precise) by Mitchell Kapor. Along with examining the machinations of the various tech players of the time as market-regulations were being rolled back, it examines, here, the idea of open vs. closed networks.
Openness is either present or absent in every aspect of the network. A network is either open or closed with respect to who may have access to it, who determines its specific uses, who may supply content, who can provide the equipment used, how interfaces and standards are determined, and whether the technical details are public or private.
In its fundamental architecture and, increasingly, in its policies, the Internet is an ideal example of an open network. It is an interactive medium based on two-way communications, where people can fluidly shift from position of listener to that of speaker, from role of consumer to that of provider.
It is from this openness in design that such a notion as 'gift economies' can arise. I was a little cynical at first, but this is really true, isn't it? By the very design of the internet it is difficult to take away the possibility of its use in this manner. Take that you capitalists.
However, as Kapor goes on to say "[w]e should be paying attention to issues of openness today because while it is easy to build openness into networks, it is difficult to add it after the fact..." Although Kapor does not directly refer to it, radio exemplifies a closed network & one that didn't have to be. For more on the foreclosing of these possibilities for analogue radio (public access in the 20s, low power, miniature broadcasting in the late 90s, or the very idea of communicating forth
and back) see the first three chapters of "Communities of the air" (it's in the
SS&H stack). The point is that radio never had to be a 'one broadcasting to many' network but all alternatives have (been) disappeared.
Old ways of thinking die hard, particularly when they were weaned by legally enforced monopolies. Content will be supplied only by a carefully chosen set of providers, barriers to entry will be created for everyone else. Programming will still seek the least common denominator, and the population will be divided by income into information haves and have-nots.
I note that Foxtel digital (TV) is promoting 'design-your-own' sports programming, but doesn't really mean it in any strong sense. There is every reason to believe that, as bandwidth increases, consumers fortunate enough to live on an off-ramp of the info-supa-hiway will be able to choose their own schedule of TV programming and customise many stylistic features. That's nice - but still a world away from the egalitarianism of the internet.
That could be built into a digital radio network, by, for instance, a government dedicating part of the broadcast spectrum to interactive, community use and commissioning the software and hardware for it. So far I haven't heard any mention of this - well I mean, really, was I gonna?
Is that the future for digital radio then? I wonder if not only the excitement that's been missing for digital radio but a future that's heartwarminly leftwing as well, is down another avenue that appears to be soon, foreclosed.
