New Media, New Contents Saturday, May 10, 1997

Moderator: Roger Hurwitz is a research scientist at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and a developer of systems for electronic publication, intelligent routing and wide area collaboration. His publications include Communications Flows, a study of media development in the US and Japan, co-authored with Ithiel de Sola Pool and Hiroshi Inose. Last year he organized the First International Workshop on Online Survey Methodology and Web Demographics.

David Plotz is Associate Editor of Slate, Microsoft's on-line magazine.

Stuart Moulthrop is a writer, teacher and hypermedia designer. Co-editor of the on-line journal Postmodern Culture, his own essays have appeared in humanities journals and in Wired. His hypertext fictions include Victory Garden, Hegirascope, and The Color of Television.

Harvey Blume is a writer and critic with a special interest in new technologies. He is a contributing editor of the Boston Book Review and co-author of Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo. The full text of Blume's paper is avaliable.

Roger Hurwitz began his opening remarks, by noting that previous generations had also looked at changes in communications technologies as opportunities for new and more collective ways of thinking. He cited Ralph Waldo Emerson, who stated that telegraphy had turned the world into one brain, and that technology and the philosophy of transcendentalism were not in opposition, but "agree well". Today's technology offers new ways of looking at our ways of communicating and the texts we create; do these new media need new content or can "we afford to pour old wine into new bottles?" How do we define the audience of this new media? If the newspaper of the nineteenth century created a nation of citizens, as claimed by Jock Gill yesterday, can the audience of the new media remain anonymous.?

David Plotz said that since Slate drew on traditional forms of writing and journalism, it could not necessarily serve as an example of all on-line publications. According to Plotz, corporations are making substantial investments in multimedia ventures. Microsoft alone is prepared to "lose" $400 million on Slate.. This raises a critical question: Are all forms of traditional media destined to disappear? Will all future publication take place on-line? Is the newspaper fated to become a "mastodon?" Absolutely not, and primarily for two reasons: economic costs and the technological limitations of the new media. On the economic side, on-line magazines, or "webzines," have almost no paid subscribers, receive little paid advertising, and reach only a small percentage of readers. The poor quality of audio, video, and such features as interactive games also present technological shortcomings that hinder their growth. Plotz then speculated on the future direction of on-line publication, and the form it would take. Would it resemble what is called a "utopian" view--a hypertext featuring new content and nonlinear forms of writing? Would old forms of writing and content be seen as "degrading" the Web, just as television once had to free itself of the limitations of radio? Or, according to what he calls the "traditionalist" view, does the new form degrade "literature"? Does it threaten to kill off print media?

Neither view is accurate, Plotz says. Webzines are chimeras that we need not totally embrace or deny. They have certain limitations: a hypertext with links in the margins makes reading awkward. Such links can prove to be a disaster for business, since hypertext links may pull the reader away from the site. Despite their innovations, webzines can't abandon certain traditions of print: articles with headlines and a beginning, middle, and end. They will address the same subjects, if with a twist: shorter articles with headlines and tighter arguments, written in a casual, conversational style to accommodate a reader looking at a monitor. However, what will be lost are long-form feature articles like those appearing in Harper's or Vanity Fair. What the new webzines, like Slate, can offer, are dialogue and diary sections that can keep them popular. Published debates can offer the immediacy of television programs like Crossfire without lag time in publication that would lead to loss of interest. Following the week in the life of a Wall Street investor or various artists and celebrities, like the playwright Wendy Wasserstein (features which Slate ran), can reproduce daily life for readers. Also, an ad-service column and poetry "readings" are features that the on-line publications can uniquely offer. Plotz sees the debate over the future of print media as resembling the speculations surrounding the advent of MTV. Contrary to common fears, MTV did not replace traditional television, publications, and print venues also on the Web.

Stuart Moulthrop offered a more visionary and utopian account of new media. In the future we could face a "megalomedia," a proliferation of Web channels that would pose a problem for advertisers used to the more traditional hierarchy of advertising. Would technology, then, to borrow from the Catholic philosopher de Chardin, bring us to an "omega point" of development, creating what Moulthrop called a world of "omega media"? At that point, Moulthrop speculated, would this leap into a new consciousness render humanity and "normal" human concerns "a bore"? Moulthrop sees the new media as no different from cable television, with its wide assortment of channels able to accommodate various forms of advertising. The hypertext that characterizes some of these forms appeals to only a few. In response to the question of whether the new media requires new content, he answers with a resounding no. The medium is not the message. Media are forms of expression, the content of which is defined by what he terms our "social space"--our communities. Consequently the virtual communities, which will be an outgrowth of Web development, still need to consider how the content of the media is relevant to the audience. A compromise is needed: There will be a market for Web television without long narratives, but the content of the texts should still have broad appeal. A "reader" will want more control, the ability to interpret the "flow" of information. The content will integrate the traditional longer-form narrative with newer hypertext. The experience of "surfing" and reading will lead to new narratives, but these will not necessarily be more complicated than those we are used to. Moulthrop foresees an abundance of visualization in which browsers/readers participate as co-producers. Finally, what cannot be avoided, in Moulthorp's view, is a community to pay for these services. Information may want to be free, but in the realities of the consumer world it is not entirely "free."

Harvey Blume stated that at this point in history, we are losing a sense of distance from the machine. This distance is not so different from others that humans have experienced. Darwin erased the gap between the human and the animal, and Freud bridged the conscious and the unconscious, representing both as parts of ourselves. According to Blume, recent insights into our psychology can be applied to our relationship to the technological world. The "Sybil" story introduced us to the notion of multiple personality disorders, and today, using the Internet, we can log in under different names, in essence, creating different identities for ourselves. This illustrates that multiple personality disorder is not a pathological condition, but a "paradigmatic symptom" of human beings--an integral part of our makeup. Autism, in which a savant can perform impressive calculations intuitively, can be seen as another such symptom linking the human to the machine. This view is reinforced by many current discoveries in psychology, in which neurology, our human "wiring," is seen to determine psychological (i.e., human) states, such as depression. Contrary to popular belief, autistics do not live in their own worlds, but in a continuum with the environment around them, though it is an environment they are unprotected from; consequently their minds "slide" in different directions, much as the users of the World Wide Web "surf" from site to site. For those with such a tendency, the Internet provides a vehicle for connection, a way of communicating that allows them to speak in their own "voice." Autism can become the "state bird of the computer culture."

Discussion: David Plotz was asked if editors would still be needed for the new webzines. Yes, he responded, someone was still needed to give order to the publications, and, Stuart Moulthrop added, serve as "gatekeepers." Jock Gill asked if a new method to charge Web users was needed. Stuart Moulthrop said that a "micro-payment" process was already in use, but because of the minimum requirements for credit charges, it wasn't proving satisfactory. Charges for subscriptions, Plotz added, needed to be fluid and somewhat automatic, like the payment of a utility bill. Tim Race of the New York Times pointedly asked Plotz, "if Slate is not profitable, what are you doing?" Microsoft had canceled sites that were not getting sufficient traffic, Plotz responded, but Microsoft was willing to lose money on Slate because of its popularity and prestige. It was observed that the shortening of both magazine features and radio time allotted to stories had been going on for fifty years. Regarding the character of the new webzines, a comment was made that those which succeed will probably have a recognizable ideology, like traditional print publications. Lloyd Etheredge asked what would happen to the creative ferment that produced innovative programming like "The Civil War" on public television. Lloyd Morrisett of the Markle Foundation foresees a decline in public broadcasting, as it faces competition from cable networks and new media.