Interactive TV has turned into the electronic media version of Samuel Beckett's tragicomedy, Waiting for Godot. Baris Karadogan writes perceptively about why the big media players have never been able to bring it off, even while it's happening on a different platform all around them:
... So while we were waiting for interactive TV, a massively interactive device, your PC, has found its way right next to your PC, and it's game over. You can get HD content on your laptop. You can get, or will soon, all kinds of on demand content on your PC, and over time the quality will get better and better and better. ...
Link: AlwaysOn. And be sure to read the comment by Ray Podder appended to Karadogan's piece, which includes the following quotable bit of wisdom that goes far beyond this [emphasis added]:
I don't think there is much use for still thinking in terms of "reach" and "consumers". We are all participants in an increasingly thought-based reality (as opposed to a thing-based reality) who need to express, seek and co-create meaning from our ideas both collectively and individually. We interact with platforms that keep us connected, keep us relevant, and help us build a stronger sense of self where attention competes with our existence. ...
Thanks to Stephen Hill for the link.
Updates, 16 Feb. 2007:
I emailed this article and Podder's comment to David Liroff who pointed out (thanks) the congruence of this with the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and provided a link to a fascinating 1995article on Teilhard de Chardin by Jennifer Cobb Kreisberg, A Globe, Clothing Itself with a Brain. Link: Wired.
This post also has a comment (below) from another old friend, Kim Hodgson, who added a link that's partially obscured in the comment space so I've inserted here. Kim says:
Re video content via the Internet: Better and better, world without end? Maybe not. See this bit in that appeared recently in the Washington Post: Google and cable firms warn of risks from Web TV.
The Post article is by Lucas van Grinsven and is worth reading. --Dennis