1989 videotex stone age

8/6/2019 1989 Videotex Stone Age

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VIDEOTEX: STONE AGE TELEMATICS?

Ian Miles, May 1990

[note: this was prepared as a chapter for a book concerning an International

Videotex Study, to be edited by Volcker Schneider, Graham Thomas, andThierry Vedel. I dont know why the book was never published the authors

did manage to get several papers in print. I do recall a well-known UKacademic of the SCOT persuasion refereeing this paper and judging it

technologically determinist. Dont you just hate that? Judge for yourself, Ihave not rewritten anything, bad grammar and all. IM)

1. Introduction

In thinking about the future of videotex, it is important to remember that this isa technology whose main features were designed in the 1970s. In otherwords, these design features stem from an era before themicroelectronic/Information Technology revolution had really begun to takeoff. Videotex systems today continue to reflect this in profound ways: andincreasingly, these design features look like imitations rather than virtues.This means that even if communications systems of the future have lineage incurrent videotex systems, they are likely to look decreasingly like what wenow know as videotex as we move further into the future.

Videotex was a pioneer product. (who was it said pioneers get scalped?)When the first public videotex systems were launched, personal computers

(PCs) were bulky devices for vanguard professionals, and home computerswere hobbyist devices catering to small markets. When the first videotexsystems were being designed, the huge IT markets based on these productswere hardly dreamed of.

We might think of this as the Stone Age of IT. Its monuments and monolithswere mainframe computers, its flint tools were punch cards. Such is the paceof IT development that we have already moved out of this era. IT devices areeverywhere in domestic appliances as well as professional equipment, ininformation products like audio-visual goods as well as embedded computerdevices like in white goods and motor cars.

Videotex is far from extinct, of course. Systems are continuing to develop andeven continuing to find new markets1. But it is not uncommon forobsolescent technologies to thrive. Users may find it more cost-efficient tostay with familiar systems than to have to learn new skills and write newsoftware. Considerable human effort may also have gone into creating socialand technical infrastructures which support established products. This is astrue in the IT world as anywhere else. Thus in 1990 DEC launched a newversion of its PDP11 computer twenty years old, and vastly less capablethan more recent products, but with stone tools survived into the iron age, inparticular niches (eg mortar and pestle) or where access to the means of

1 While writing this I have learned of the planned large-scale launch of the Irish andNorwegian systems.

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production of new technology was not available. Houses were built of stonefor many centuries. The design of metal products bore the imprint of theearlier technologies for a long time. In a more recent technological resolution,the railway has survived in the age of the car and train indeed it iscontinuing to be the focus of considerable innovation and investment (high-

speed trains, etc).

So even though videotex was initially constructed in what may seem likeprehistory, and videotex systems have many features that strike experiencedIT users as primitive or archaic, in itself this is no basis for concluding it willwither away. Recall that fax was supposed to be displaced by thetechnologically superior electronic mail by 1990 and then consider the faxexplosion of the late 80s 9Miles and Thomas, 1990). In the UK, fax salesdoubled annually from 1985 to 1988, reaching a (temporary?) plateau in 1989.

Nevertheless, I am going to argue that a number of ongoing developments put

the future of videotex into considerable uncertainty. The telematics systemsof the future are liable to be indebted to it, but to resemble it as little asSalisbury Cathedral resembles Stonehenge, or a power tool a flint one.

2. The Key to the Wired Society

The notion of mass access to databases the public information utility wasan imaginative idea that moved from the realm of science fiction to that ofengineering in the 1960s and 70s. The information society, the socialapplication of IT, was seen as a matter of access to large-scale informationresources.

A key assumption in the early design of videotex was that its users in themass public were going to be unsophisticated. Computer use was restrictedto a small priesthood. Computers were large and remote recall Multivac inAsimovs stories. (The only portable computer in science fiction was notcarried around: rather, the robot whose user interface was speech, andwhose image was alternately humorous or threatening carried itself around.)Videotex was first envisioned as an adjunct to the TV. The computer wouldremain remote as remote as the newscasters and soap opera stars who

services the TV system. The living room TV was widely diffused anddomesticated communication technology. The main problem from atechnocratic standpoint was that people children especially were not usingit for more than passive leisure. But people were used to deriving informationfrom its screen news and current affairs as well as trivia. The informationwas provided by powerful central broadcasting authorities (authoritativeinformation guaranteed): the model of TV is one where the user simply selectsamong preordained channels to find the programme best fitting her/hisrequirements. The video recorder, allowing people to time shift and replaybroadcasts, and to shop for programmes (often of a kind that the authoritiesdecidedly would not broadcast) in rental outlets, was only to widely diffuse in

the mid 1980s. Likewise for the remote control, which made it much easier forpeople to zap between TV channels rendering another limited form of

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interactivity into everyday experience. The remote control was eventuallycombined with teletext, to give access to large volumes of up-to-date data viathe TV, without the need to tie up the telephone line.

The interactivity designed in the 1970s into the first videotex systems was

more powerful that teletext could provide, of course. And videotex systemscarried several orders of magnitude more pages of information than teletext.But both were limited: the user could access large volumes of material, butonly through (often highly repetitive) use of a few primitive commands. Theformats of both systems had deliberately been made the same but only asmall amount of information could be displayed on screens at any time. TVscreens were not suited to displaying dense text in readable form. Anyway,people were not used to reading much more than programme titles andcredits, and perhaps subtitles, from the TV. Accordingly, videotex informationwas presented in pages, modelled on other print media, and in attractivelycoloured and large, easy to read characters.

In the 1980s, videotex and teletext both provided access to large volumes ofinformation, for consumers equipped with relatively basic terminals suitableequipped TV sets in the teletext case. But for videotex the TV model (seen asthe solution in early Prestel design) tended to be displaced by the specialisedterminal or a PC of home computer-based solution. Where videotex did provesuccessful, furthermore, it emerged that access to information was rather lesspopular than messaging and related activities. This is true for consumervideotex, with the messagerie on Minitel and the computer hobbyist sectionsof Prestel. But it also seems to be the norm for business applications: theinteractive information systems (as opposed to displays in railway stations,etc) tend to run on non-videotex formats2, with videotex being used intransactional applications.

In the early 1990s a number of developments make it likely that we willcontinue to see rapid technical development, rather less rapid successfulproduct innovation and diffusion, and novel twists in consumer informationtechnology. These developments may well lead us to look back with nostalgiaon videotex by the first decades of the twenty-first century. New consumerinformation access and messaging services will have gained very substantialmarkets, and they will take a large number of forms.

A set of technological developments and product concepts which lead us tothese conclusions. All of these innovations are based upon the long-termtrends in the heartland IT of microelectronics. Even if there were to be littleadvance in this core technology in the future and this is extremely unlikely the development of software and applications around current chip generations(and related achievements in liquid crystal, optronics, and other technologies)are bound to result in the proliferation of new enhanced products.

3. Proliferation of Potentials

2 Though some instances persist, even in the high-tech financial world.

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Whatever the specific form that it takes, we can expect to see considerableapplication of microelectronics to consumer products as appliance controlsand displays, as systems for more realistic entertainment (HDTV and otheraudio-visual products), at least (Miles, 1988). The big question is the extentto which we will see computer power manifested as computer and

communications equipment, rather than merely as embedded computing ineveryday appliances. Three developments are particularly worth watching.

1. First consider developments in Telecommunications. The conventionaltelephone system is changing dramatically in the 1990s. Already we haveseen the rapid take-off of cellular telephone as a business service: newand cheaper portable communications will almost certainly put telephonesinto many more peoples pockets in the next few years. This would meanfewer black holes in communications. Telephony is mainly restricted tomessaging, but audiotext has been a growth area and people on themove may have more requirements for weather and traffic forecasts, for

information about train and opening times.

Will such new mobile systems be restricted to voice communications?Possibly not especially if consumer fax also diffuses in the 1990s. In-car faxsystems are emerging: hand-held fax is more of a problem, unless and untilways of displaying text information without a paper printer are developed. Aswell as screens, it is conceivable that voice synthesis systems could be usedto read text. It is worth stressing that fax is not necessarily only a messagingmedium. Already some fax databases have proved successful tough lessflexible and interactive than standard online information services, they havefound audiences for specialised new functions (eg boat races); and orderingof take-away food by fax is now widely offered in the UK.

Other important developments are underway in telecommunications. We arewitnessing the long-awaited installation of ISDN systems, providing newcapacity for extra voice and data lines to users. Simultaneously, theintelligent network systems which are being implemented, using computercontrol of switches (via databases detailing customer requirements), offermany new facilities. Taken together with two-way cable TV networks, and thespread of direct broadcast satellite communications, it will be apparent that arapid expansion of telecommunications options is in hand. Opportunities grow

to deliver more messages, in more formats, over more media, in morecircumstances.

These facilities cannot but provide new scope for telematics services. Ifsuppliers exploit these opportunities, there are liable to be new rivals tovideotex for example, direct broadcast teletext to hand held receivers, orbroadcast fax (which is already emerging as an in-house business service).Suppliers are known to be actively exploring such possibilities.

2. Second, the combination of distinct technological developments isparticularly significant. IT is promoting developments in many application

areas, and a too-narrow focus may lead to premature conclusions about

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the design features of new systems. Alongside new telecommunicationsservice are also major steps in data storage and retrieval.

Two data storage systems are particularly significant: optical media andsmart cards. New storage media based on compact disc technology (CD) is

rapidly emerging. CD-ROM is a computer medium used mainly fordatabases, though CD-ROM games for PCs are available. Though themedium is clearly best suited to information that does not rapidly date,sufficiently large-scale use can lead to regular reprinting (as in GeneralMotors regular optical catalogue for its US dealers). And then there is thebucket and drip option, used in the UK by one firm which supplies an opticalguide to magazines and newspapers (for use by Public Relations firms etc),but provides online/floppy disc updates which the system software uses tooverrule the optical data.

Sonys Dataman, the first hand held CD-ROM player can be seen as a

primitive electronic book (or library, rather, since one disc can hold manybooks, and discs are interchangeable). It was released onto the market in1990. But a range of consumer- oriented developments is being pursued.

Philips (together with Sony) is pursuing a strategy of promoting CD-I9interactive CD, carrying text, audio, graphic and video data) as a consumermedium. The idea is to market this as a new audio-visual product (associatedwith the TV again) rather than as a computer peripheral. However, portableversions of CD-I are also to be released, some looking rather more like laptopcomputers, others like more conventional portable audio-visual goods across between a personal stereo, a remote control and a portable TV. CD-I isexpected to have applications in education (eg language tuition), culture(music with text and pictures, computer art galleries, and systems enablingmusic and art composition), entertainment (better games), and domesticplanning (optimising car journeys), among others.

If the efforts to achieve large markets for such products succeed, we will seea new range of interactive media entering the home and quite possible, inportable forms, the car, briefcase, and pocket. They will accustom users tointeractive multimedia display, with sophisticated abilities to more between, orto combine, high quality test, audio, graphics, etc. The main obstacle to

success would seem to be the emerging conflict of competing and confusingstandards: CD-I is rivalled by DVI (with a lot of computer industry support),CD-ROMMXA (ditto), CDTV (Commodore) and others. It remains to be seenwhether this confusion deters consumers and software suppliers, and whetherone standard comes rapidly to dominate. It seems highly likely that publicawareness of such systems will be quite high by the end of the 90s.

The interface and quality of output of CD-I and related systems makesvideotex look positively antediluvian. There are moving video and hi-fi audiofeatures, together with photographic stills up to the quality of the display unit.

The user interfaces (trackerball/pop-down menus, etc) are likewise muchmore a product of the 80s than of the 70s. The information content of

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storage media depends upon how frequently the media can be refreshed: (re)writeable CD systems are coming, but more slowly and expensively. But onecould imagine combinations of large CD archives (including formattinginformation) with time-urgent data (prices and product availability inteleshopping systems, for example) held in RAM on chips or electronic media

more drip and bucket solutions.

As for smart cards, these are particularly important as lightweight and high-capacity rewriteable media. By the end of the 90s, a smart card will be ableto carry more data than an entry-model hard disc drive does now 20megabytes. The use of these credit card-sized devices for carrying financialand health data is being widely explored. Significantly, the Keyline terminal(on which more below) incorporates a smart card reader this allows fortelebetting to evade regulations restricting the use of credit for betting andMinitel-related smart cards are being used for electronic funds transfer. Onecan imagine the telecommunications (even from public kiosks) or other means

into smart cards for subsequent perusal.

Assuming wide availability of cheap smart cards, two uses for consumerinformation services spring to mind. First is use of the card itself to store data as thousands of videotex or teletex pages, possibly, but quite conceivablyother formats. Why not something much more like a conventionalnewspaper? Why not audio (eg the most recent radio broadcast)? Second isits use as an intelligent interface, selecting from broadcast or other mediaaccording to user preferences either consciously input or learned fromanalysis of past behaviour.

Cheap, high-power data storage, then, will be increasingly available over the90s. This can be used for supplying new types of bulk information product.The utility of such products will be increased by adding higher levels ofinteractivity to them probably with multimedia and hypermedia components and storage can further help to realise more personalised forms ofinteractivity. Telecommunications will be challenged as a delivery mediumboth by storage and broadcast alternatives, and the perceived quality ofvideotex-type systems is likely to decline as experience grows with higherlevels of interactivity and with more realistic and/or sophisticated use ofgraphics, images, and audio.

3. A third area of rapid IT-based development involves displays and (giventhe development of flat, light screens) portable equipment. New screentechniques (eg liquid crystal colour displays) mean that slim andlightweight screens can achieve displays of sufficient quality that readingtext from them may no longer prove a major problem. Videotexs use oflarge text, limiting the quantity available on each page may be inconsequence less necessary.

Probably the most dramatic change in display technology, however, is highdefinition TV, HDTV. This is another a potential mass consumer good of the

late 90s which is the site of intense standard wars at the beginning of thedecade (in this instance, with American and European firms vying with the

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Japanese who were first to announce a standard). HDTV promises muchcrisper (photograph-quality) images with a higher aspect ration (ie more likecinema screens). Some efforts are underway to side-step the complexrestructuring of broadcast technology needed to fully implement HDTV, forexample by simply getting smart TVs to interpolate extra lines in an existing

broadcast signal. The move to HDTV in one or other form looks unstoppable,and one big question is how far it will impact upon computer system displays.Since mass HDTV production should drive down equipment prices, since PCusers may be expected to become more demanding of their professionalequipment (and home computer users of their game devices), and, last butnot least, since US PC manufacturers see video as a way of gaining an edgeover low-cost south Asian competitors, it is likely that computer output toHDTV-type displays will be a trend. (See the next computers displays, forexample.)

This raises more questions for videotex. The formats appropriate for HDTV

will be different from those for traditional systems (unless only windows inpart of the screen are used). Again the restrictions on the quantity and qualityof text would seem to be lifted. Remaining captures within these limitingstandards will probably be seen as archaic.

The development of portable equipment takes us in another direction.Alongside mobile communications, and following the success of laptopcomputers, notebook and pocket computers began to appear at the beginningof the 1990si.

A large number of competing products are now appearing on the market.These range from electronic diaries and organisers to unusually small andlight laptops (notebook computers) including at least one that can accepthand-written input on a touch-sensitive screen, and convert this into text forsubsequent word processing, or data base retrieval. The main problemsseem to be associated with small keyboard size, ie a user input problem.

The portable devices depend crucially upon user input. One frequent reasonfor disillusion with the home computer as other than a games machine wasthe users discovery that to be useful for hobbies (eg organising collections),domestic work (eg accounts management), or similar functions, it required

laborious input of data. Telecommunications systems like videotex were seenas one way of providing data inputs without the work. But the data on thesesystems were generally far from relevant to these consumer applications.While home users developed interactive communications linking theirsystems to videotex or bulletin boards many more limited computer use toeither exploring the machine (programming, graphics, music, etc) or evenmore playful computer games. Only professionals working at home, and arelatively few particularly enthusiastic hobbyist, engaged in large-scale textand data input.

This suggests that we should look at the scope for new portable IT devices as

deliverers of information services rather than as simply portable homecomputers. And in this light, a particularly interesting factor is the intensified

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discussion of prospects for product loosely described as the electronic bookor electronic newspaper.

A large number of suppliers from information industries (eg publishing), aswell as computers, telecommunications and electronics, are currently

exploring the product space which stems from the notion of using book-sizeddisplays as portable electronic media. The Dataman is a pioneer producthere, but many others are known to be under development. There seems tobe little agreement as to standards and interfaces, nor as to whether theinformation content will be more-or-less archival, news versus entertainment,etc. Modes of delivery are again in competition with each other. One canimagine videotex-like media, but equally portable CD-I, and perhapselectronic equivalents of newspapers and magazines -even with displayformats modelled on conventional press layouts are conceivable.

Finally, it is also important to note that the last few years have seen the side

diffusion of personal stereos (Walkman), and that pocket TVs and evenportable video recorder/TV systems (Watchman) have begun to take off inseveral countries. Whether the use is to catch up with morning business newbroadcasts on the way to work, to have complete control over the in-flightvideo, or as portable TVs are reported as being used in some countries tosurreptitiously follow afternoon soap operas while at work we cannot yet say.With appropriate equipment and software it might be possible to downloadvideotex or teletext pages into such portable TVs, but with heavy restrictionson interactivity.

4. New Media Futures

Computing, telecommunications, and broadcasting have long beenrecognised to be converging; or perhaps a better term is overlapping, sincethere is considerable stress and strain involved in integrating the businesses,skills, and cultures of the three domains. The archetypal forms of informationassociated with each medium are increasingly being manipulated as digitaldata by new IT systems which can be based in any of the three areas.Videotex, an early effort to integrate text and (primitive) still images, anddeliver them to basic computer terminals down the mainly voice-oriented

telecommunications network, is now joined by a host of new media audiotext, multimedia, computer video, and so on.

Some of the traditional boundaries between text, video images, and speechmay be eroding, in any case. Recordings with fast-forward-backward facilitiesallow linear media to be scanned and searched like text. Hypermediasystems are intended to add to the scope for moving between media in thisway. However, the traditional advantages of different types of information arelikely to persist. Video may offer graphic realism, audio may allow fornuances of tone, but reading is likely to remain a valued way of accessinginformation for a long time. Our educational practice, if nothing else, renders

text an intuitive medium from scan-and-search, for developing lists and forworking in specialised languages like mathematics, for engaging in

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introspection and reasoning, etc. (Is it too early to begin mobilising for thepolitical defence of literacy in the information age?)

However, if electronic book predictions come true, text is likely to beincreasing made available in electronic and optical media. (It is already being

produced and stored in these media for conventional publishing.) Textretrieval from such sources offers new search facilities, new opportunities ofmodifying the material, etc.

One forecast, then, is that the assembly of material is likely to be morepersonalised and the selection of material will probably be semi-automated.Rather than a standard page for all users, the look and content of materialmay be tailored to individual requirements. Pages themselves may beredundant as users learn non-page-based systems. The scope for deliveringpackages or package-creating software systems may be considerable. Andthe same material may be combined together with other material and with

various IT facilities to yield very different presentational formats frompersonalised layouts to personalised use of multimedia.

There are many speculations that can be derived from the as to the social andeconomic use and meaning of new media and their information products. Butthis is beyond the scope of the present essay. We have suggested that weare entering into an explosion of possibilities for information delivery andpresentation, for media and for messaging. The main problem withcommercialising these possibilities may simply be their dazzling profusion.There may well be limits as to how much our living rooms, pockets, andwallets can take and to how much time we can or want to, spend accessinginformation or remote contacts.

Videotex will have to find its place among these proliferating opportunities. Itis likely to be forced to respond to increasingly sophisticated forms ofinteractivity and visual display, and to the challenge of multimedia and newmodes of information delivery, by more or less fundamental changes in how itoperates and how it presents itself to users. If there still are systems in thefuture, these are unlikely to look much like videotex does at the beginning ofthe 90s. As to what these future systems will be like some hybrid withqualities (variably) like those of traditional print media, traditional broadcast

media, and contemporary hypermedia systems is my best bet. Or rather,videotex systems will be a small component of these future integratedsystems, which will use broadcast and stored data alongside massivecomputer power and telecommunications. Full integration may be a long timecoming, it may even be an endlessly-receding vision as more options tointegrate become available). But we are bound to see systems that bringtogether much more material than videotex ever did. Videotex itself may besimple a display format used for certain specialised applications: some sortsof public display, teaching device, and, perhaps, nostalgia.

And then there are new auditory, visual and tactile interfaces, and Virtual

Reality to consider3

but that too is for another book.3 For a series of interesting essays on these, see the July 1990 issue of Byte magazine.

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References

I Miles, 1988, Home Informatics, London, Pinter

I Miles & G Thomas, 1990, The Development of Telematics Services, STIReview, Summer 1990.

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i The first draft of this essay, several thousand words long, was composed on a hand held PC the size of ascientific pocket calculator. With 156k of RAM to write text into, this has more than five times the RAM of myfirst home computer, bought 9 years ago. It has standard software word processor, spreadsheet, etc installed on ROM. It is far from perfect for writing more than notes, with a minute keyboard and only 6 linesof text displayed. However, its portability (and ease of use even in crowded trains, where almost all of thiswas prepared) makes it more attractive than a conventional laptop. The low cost less than half that of myfirst system, ignoring inflation was also a significant factor. Despite my view that I had written a reasonable

first draft, I have still engaged in a round of reformatting and rewriting on a hard-copy version.

1989 videotex stone age

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