Do you remember when the blockbuster and now, cult movie; 2001: A Space Odyssey, came out in 1968? Maybe not, especially if you weren’t born or were very young, but those who do will tell you 2001 seemed so far away that they never really considered that one day they would be living there.

Well here we are in 2010 and even writing it, it somehow still looks futuristic.

I came across an interesting blog post today about a book written in 1972 titled: 2010: Living in the Future written by Geoffrey Hoyle (the son of the famous astronomer, Fred Hoyle, with whom he co-authored a number of books)

The post was by Daniel Sinker who teaches journalism at Columbia College Chicago. It’s interesting because he has recreated the book so readers can see what their parents and grandparents were told to expect about life today.

It is also interesting in an unintended way because of the juxtaposition of the content and the medium. The blog is on Tumblr, one of the 21^st century’s Web 2 phenomenon social media web sites.

A quick look at the way we live (according to our grandparents)

I’ve no argument with the fact that I am still making beds, it was a nice thought.

But I wonder what he was smoking when he wrote “Your home is very carefully planned”

Kids have been creating havoc at home since the year dot and he forgot to mention what drugs they (sorry, we) are feeding to the kids to make this particular prediction come true.

There are many other predictions that you will recognize today probably by another name, e.g. Vision Phone aka Skype / Internet / Intranet, which makes the book prophetic enough to be worth some consideration again. In fact enough people thought so to start up a Facebook group to find the writer (Geoffrey Hoyle) and ask him about his visions.  Maybe they wanted to know why he didn’t think of Facebook and invite them to be shareholders?

Your Chance to be a Fly on the Wall

I think you will find it interesting to read about yourself from the prospective of being able to listen in on someone postulating what you are going to be like today (in 2010) when you were a baby or possibly before you were born.

Even weirder, if you read the book back then or in the early ‘80s did you get a déjà vu feeling as you read about “you” in the future and do you now get a reverse déjà vu when you read it again?

My problem with the whole genre of “going back to the future” literature is that it tends to concentrate on the hardware i.e. what will we be using, the flying cars, computers, wrist phones paraphernalia of life but it never looks at the software, the morals, ethics, compassion and humanity aspects. The “How do we change or evolve as human beings” perspective.

The Decline of the West – Mark 1

I recently finished reading a great little history book called Medieval Cities by Henri Pirenne written in 1925. It describes the rise and fall of cities, mainly in Europe, but in doing so it really addresses the economic structure of the world economy from the period of the Roman Empire to the 14^th century.

It was an eye opener to read about the economic decline of the West which was all over by the beginning of the 5^th century and how that led to centuries of stagnation during which time the cities were practically emptied of dwellers other than people working in or for the church.

Most interesting to read was, how money lost its value because there was practically nothing to buy and in any case, people had lost faith in the state that backed the currency.

Pirenne talked about how the great land owners took to melting their gold coins down to create beautiful relics which they donated to the church to buy favors in heaven. You only had to read the news during the depths of the financial crisis and for many things haven’t changed much yet, to see that favors in heaven is once again looking more enticing than what’s ahead on earth for many of the disadvantaged or disassociated.

It was hard not to relate the situation described in the book to the economic problems we were facing at the time (the GFC was in full swing while I was reading it) and realize how similar some of the problems were to those our ancestors faced.

If the banking crisis had got worse instead of being held at the last hurdle by some swift and possibly temporary financial strategies, our own money system could have collapsed and I don’t believe I am being alarmist in saying that.

So, to end this post but not the topic, because I intend to return to it again either here or on my philosophy blog “Shadow in the Flame”, I would like to ask you what do you foresee in the next 50 or 100 years?

Not from a technological point of view but rather how do you feel man will evolve “sociologically” over the next 50 to 100 years?  Will all the problems we face today; economic, global warming, population and environmental, change us for the better or worse or not at all? Will we still be here in a hundred years?

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Ric Vatner publisher of eSTV an online TV style magazine

I think in respect of the long term future for eSTV, the biggest news this week revolves around one topic, Video and more specifically, Pay per View.

Pay per View Video coming to eSTV

eSTV have now secured new technology that was developed here in Australia and it will have a huge impact on us going forward.

We can now offer producers and video content owners the opportunity to put their films, for example:

• Short films,
• Movies,
• Documentaries,
• Training programmes (e.g. language lessons) or
• How To videos etc

on eSTV our TV style online magazine  on a pay per view basis. Putting them on eSTV will of course open them up to a larger audience

The owner of the content (i.e. of the video) will get paid every time someone watches the video because every video has a set fee to watch it. Another great feature is every video can have a different fee. So one film might cost $1.99 to watch and another $2.50 – each film can have its own price tag.

Of course the videos will be available to viewers world wide so the potential audience is huge.

Monetize your Videos

Imagine how many good to excellent movies there are out there that have never been able to tie up a distribution deal and have either earned their owners very little or nothing. Well that is about to change.

eSTV has already added a shopping mall to our magazine (which will open soon) and we recently “built” an office tower over that to cater for service businesses (see our Best Deals Australia information video) – well I can now see us adding a movie theatre so our visitors can watch movies as well.

This technology will enable video content owners to monetise their production be it a movie, a documentary or information video and it will also make it worthwhile for producers to create new content.

Web Sites can now sell Pay per View Video

Even better, we can also enable any web site (world wide) to add our video player to their web pages and serve the same pay per view content from their web site – and get paid every time someone watches the video. They can also add their own original pay per view content and get paid when people watch that.

Finally, web sites that add their own original content to the video player can also make their content available through our system to other web sites who will earn money every time it is viewed on their web site and so will the content owner.

Imagine you can now create training videos and make them available to your team world wide. Why would you go to the expense of producing DVDs and posting them when you can now use our video player and sell the video as pay per view.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any enquiries ric at eSTV dot com dot au.

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I ducked out yesterday to buy some milk for the office and when I got to the cash register you can imagine my surprise when I was directed to a self serve register. Or maybe you can’t, I’m not a regular shopper so this was very new to me.

At first I was told I had a choice, I could use the self serve register or I could go to a regular check out with a much more experienced cashier than me. But when I looked at the long line of registers that are normally manned by cashiers I noticed that 75% of them were empty and the queue to use those that were left was rather long.

I found myself staring at a blinking screen that suddenly said swipe your articles and place them in the bag. I was seriously considering the same thing. How would they know if I swiped one and bagged four. Would the machine scream THIEF! And sprout a pair of handcuffs?

I swiped the first carton to the right but my bag was on the left so as I passed it across the screen it got swiped again. Danger this could turn out to be the exact opposite of what I was thinking.

I bought four cartons and had six on my bill. I obviously got it right twice but shouldn’t they be paying me to do this not the other way round?

The overseer saw that I was taking too long and after considering the whip (that may have been my imagination) came over to see why I was taking so long. I showed her my bag and she could count to four pretty quick but when I showed her the bill it took a while to comprehend that I was being charged for six cartons. Maybe she thought that was a fair deal considering the experience I was getting.

As I walked away (after paying for four cartons) I wondered who benefits from this technology. I don’t think the price was any cheaper than the last time we bought milk but there were certainly 75% less staff on the cash registers. It reminded me of the days when ATMs were introduced by banks. At first they were free to use because they saved the bank wages. But today my bank charges are higher than ever but there is no longer a bank manager to complain to.

If I were a Coles manager I would start looking for a new job now – it is already too late for that pretty check out chick I was hoping would serve me. Oh and the machine didn’t smile at me or say “Missing you already” as I walked away. I wonder where my nearest corner shop is located, maybe a smile and a “How’s your father” are worth the extra after all.

Afterthought: Can you imagine your local grocer telling you to use his cash register while he sits out the back counting his profit?

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After eyeing each other off for the last two years and fighting little skirmishes like the one to become Facebook’s best friend (won by Microsoft) Google has finally weighed up its opponent and decided it is ready to declare war.

Well what Google actually declared is that it will declare war, next year. We have officially entered the pre fight period like before a fight in the playground when two bullies push and shove each other and beat their chest spruking what they are going to do to the other party.

Google has been nibbling away at Microsoft’s profit centers for the last two years by launching free programmes that do much the same as Microsoft’s paid product such as Google docs that potentially could eat away at Microsoft’s lucrative Office products range.

Microsoft has retaliated by beefing up its search engine offering and frustrating Google’s overtures to potential partners like Facebook.

But neither company has been successful in its move into the other company’s prime markets nor they would do well to remember Bertrand Russell’s adage “War does not determine who is right – only who is left.”

Google upped the stakes by announcing on Tuesday (7th July) it will launch its own operating system in the second half of next year, finally launching a direct assault on Microsoft’s crown jewel.

The Google operating system will initially be targeted to netbooks, then broadened to all PCs.  It will be a combination of a Google Chrome browser and a Linux kernel.  It is a separate project to Android (a complete set of software for mobile devices including an operating system, middleware and key mobile applications). It will be designed to be simple and fast.  It will also, presumably, be free.

So why is Google telegraphing its strategy so far in advance?

A year is a long time in computer land but this announcement bears all the hallmarks of a similar successful strategy employed by IBM in the halcyon days when it was caught napping by the take off of personal computers in the mid 80’s. IBM became notorious for announcing new models that were often still on the drawing board but the threat that a cheap IBM PC was on the way deterred many buyers from purchasing a computer until the IBM model was released and thereby deprived many up and coming PC manufacturers of the oxygen they needed to survive (and threaten IBM) – sales.

Secondly, developing a new operating system is complex and this announcement shows how much Google needs help from partners in this endeavor to be successful. It is in effect a clarion call to companies that feel threatened by Microsoft to ally themselves to Google.

An operating system that is distributed only by downloads won’t work, it needs to come loaded on the computer when it is purchased.  This has been the big problem with Chrome so far, and Google knows it needs to address it.

Assuming Google provide their full operating system free to both users and OEM PC makers as they have done with almost all of their non-search products to date, Microsoft will need to revise its plans for the free version of its own Windows 7 OS for netbooks. Up until now Microsoft has planned to provide a free lite version of 7(read free of bells and whistles) and try to get users to upgrade.

If Google’s free full version gains traction Microsoft may be excused a little panic time (you can imagine the salesman, “would Sir like to have the full version of this OS for free with life time free updates or pay for this buggy one).

This is a classic IBM disruption strategy. First, Google puts the market on notice that there is an alternative to upgrading to Microsoft 7 a full year before it will be ready but if you are a small business or even a large company potentially up for hundreds of thousands of dollars in upgrade costs in the middle of a financial crisis, wouldn’t you welcome an excuse to put the buying decision off for 12 months? Starving you know who of early sales and first mover advantage.

Second, Google’s strategy is to gain market share at the low end where traditionally the market leader won’t fight too hard to retain it because it’s low-margin.  But then… as the product gets better and more fully featured they begin to migrate up the ladder to the desk top.  Soon the market leader is retreating to defend the high-margin high-end but eventually, the upstart (free) product becomes mass market and the incumbent looks like a punch card operator that nobody needs anymore.

We have all seen industrial giants of the 20^th century crumble like cheese cake but I doubt anyone expected to see the digital giants of the computer age rise and fall so quickly but ask IBM or AOL if it can happen (although IBM has successfully reinvented itself and AOL is in the process of doing the same).

However as slick as the plan may be Google has not impressed us with its successes outside its core business of search and search advertising. You Tube is reputed to be losing over $400 million a year and other purchases by Google have been closed down or converted to open source (e.g. Jaiku). Success is not guaranteed but Microsoft needs to start working out how to defend its crown jewels against this assault.  It won’t be easy.

But like all wars there will be collateral damage and companies such as Apple could become non combatant casualties. Apple sells integrated hardware and software devices and if free software begins to take over the world their computer and phone products will look even more expensive when compared to their competitors. Sooner or later this will cause its market share or its profit margins to come down and its share price with it.

To read Google’s full press release go to our press release section here

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