*** NewsSnip
brought to you with the Snippy Predictability of
STEVE
Editorial Director,
STEVENET NEWS CENTRAL G-rrrrrrOUCHdesk ***
Isn't the drooling and panting over "push" technology truly amazing?
"At last! I can go back to being a couch potato! The burdon of real
choice was wearing me down! Please! Give me the false sense of choice
I get from *subscribing* to something, then shower me in constant numbing
stimulus! I want to believe in 'news' again!"
Yeah, having my computer be more like a TV is it, man, that's *IT*!
Oh, orgasms, orgasms! My heart's desire!
Although I admit I've been entertained by the zip-zip-zip, here-it-is,
there-it-is attract-mode style of PointCast, I can hardly believe the
articles I'm seeing are written by people thinking seriously of themselves
as--what, users? victims? beneficiaries? subjects? recipients?--of this
technology. Instead I get the feeling they either just love to "predict"
the next obvious market success, or else they are seeing things from the
point of view (and with the desperate hopes) of the dying-but-don't-
realize-it-yet broadcast and serial print media.
> from
> http://www5.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_761.html
> Jesse Berst, Editorial Director, ZDNet AnchorDesk
> [...]
> Content will be king, dethroning technology. [...]
Meaning, basically, "Content Providers" will be king, not
those nerds who make technology. Us media types will wrest back Control,
instead of the world falling into that horrible, unfamiliar anarchy of
individual choice and exploration that was threatening to happen.
The whole media-business idea of "content" as this mass-produceable
stuff, that you squeeze out of difficult "talent" and "newsmakers", or
synthesize with the help of press secretaries, homogenize, and mix with
ads and press releases, to be funnelled through channels to the public,
fits *so* much more nicely with push technology, don't you think? Now,
finally things are starting to make *sense*...
...to brains with incurable Hollywood syndrome. It's as if the sharks
in suits are getting into such a frenzy that they're forgetting their
human masks. It's embarrassing and yet strangely fascinating the way it
confirms the old suspicions. I mean, there really *are* aliens in our
midst! They Live while We Sleep.
Sure, the idea that something outside should be able to initiate a transaction
with, or even sustain a flow of information to my computer makes sense in a
totally boring technical way. Like, yawn, oh, you mean Netscape didn't
already have that? Huh, yawn, that's interesting. Hey, and besides,
*technically*, there's no reason operating systems *shouldn't* be able to
handle the security and stability issues involved, instead of crashing
the way they currently always do under the burdon of One More System
Extension, or reporting your personal life--by accident, of course--to
Prodigy or Microsoft central, right? (Of course watching a computer
crashed by PointCast was full half the entertainment value, I admit,
I admit--The Tragic Fall! Poom!)
But when has my tongue itched so with the cliche, "Get real!"?
(oh god tell me it's not Them that's real.)
Tuning out,
--Steve
*click*, hissssssssssssss
--
sw@tiac.net Steve Witham
___ ___ ___ ___
| | | ___ | | | ___ | | | ___ | | | ___ --"meme" pattern ine heater grills
| | | ___ | | | ___ | | | ___ | | | ___ of Boston Red Line subway cars