Boxed in beyond 2000?
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Searching the horizon
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It seems only yesterday that most of my Internet searches ended with
zilch. Nowadays it's quite the opposite! The name of a certain oil-
rich Gulf State always used to produce zero hits; but when I tried
again the other day it had jumped to 115,320. I can remember tossing
in words like asda, tesco, and jsainsbury, and thinking of Noah
sending out the dove in search of land. Then watching as one
organisation after another began to establish a website, rather like
seeing the stars come out one by one on a crisp winter night. What a
wonderful privilege to observe the creation of this brand new cyber-
world!
What will the next few years bring? Come with me to a year that's
just past 2000. I'm not sure exactly how far beyond, but certainly
far enough to see a decline in the popularity of PCs, which have
finally yielded to STBs. These are Set-Top Boxes, which can display
information on your television set (or monitor screen) and also link
up with your hi-fi and your personal audio/video/data disc-cutting
machine. The information highway is "an-isochronous": a relatively
slow uplink using conventional connections, twinned with a superfast
multiplex downlink that utilises electricity or gas or water pipes,
or maybe a dedicated digital TV channel.
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The global village with three corners
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So far, so good. But the problem is, there are in my imagination
three types of STB. Call them reds, blues, and yellows. Effectively
they divide us into three tribes worldwide. Suppose that I belong to
the reds: this means that I rent my STB from RedCom, the new brand
for a well-established communications company which threw off a more
cumbersome name around the turn of the century.
The software that RedCom provide for their STB contains all the
browser and search facilities that I might ever need. Word
processing, database and spreadsheet are there as well, along with
web publishing, intelligent telephone facilities and home banking.
The STB helps me choose my television viewing and guides my web
browsing. Gently but firmly it steers me certain directions.
Although it can be child-locked against undesirable destinations,
it cannot actually prevent me from accessing any website, because
the government regulator insists upon complete interconnection. But
whatever type of site I am looking for, the software in that little
black box will nudge me in the direction of those companies who
have entered into trading alliances with RedCom.
RedCom have invested a lot of money into perfecting a secure
financial transaction system for the Internet. Buying on-line is so
easy - imagine listening to twelve snippets of Eine Kleine
Nachtmusik before making one's choice - then slip a blank disc into
the machine and as soon as you've authorised payment, the disc is
cut and ready to enjoy. It's all so easy! I almost forgot to
mention that you were not told about the other twenty-seven versions
of Mozart's K.525 - ten of them are stocked by suppliers linked to
the blue boxes, and the other seventeen are with the yellows.
The three STB consortia have each developed their own operating
software - and the three systems are mutually incompatible. Each
has a different way of encrypting data to protect transactions.
This means that I inevitably shop at online retailers whose sites
support the "RediCommerce" software infrastructure, and I find that
very few shops can afford to be linked to more than one system. I
suspect that this is more a matter of contracts and alliances rather
than simple expense. If you throw in the influence of loyalty
schemes, you will find that I have become locked in to a
predetermined range of choices. I am a blood-brother of the red
tribe! You thought that changing your bank was difficult - but it
pales into insignificance when compared with the hassle of leaving
the reds in order to join the yellows.
At the heart of all this is a new way of banking. The capital is
held within the RedCom group, and I have become tied to them by
imaginative new mortgage products, tailored investment packages,
cherry-picked insurance products, long-term energy supply contracts,
and so on. Even the "RedBrick Card" that downloads units from my
multi-function account is designed for use only on red buses, in red
vending machines, and at red parking bays.
Need I go on? I think you get the idea. The massive sums currently
held by the clearing banks as a result of the three-day clearing
cycle have now passed out to the three conglomerates and their web
of associated organisations. What we are looking at is a vertical
polarisation of the sales path. A single organisation and its
approved partners has secured ownership of an entire supply chain.
Purchases can be made instantly from home or office or on the move,
and the transaction is a paper transfer of the benefit from
interest payments on a capital sum that is always working strongly
and silently for the red conglomerate. The expression I have coined
for all this is "capitalisation", which sees society as a series of
columns each with a stack of "approved partners" bonded to one
another through a set of web connections, and offering direct
delivery of products funded by a common financial base.
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Come buy with me
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Now perhaps you will see why I am not really troubled by Mr Gates
and Microsoft. They are a paper tiger, since the PC is now entering
its final phase of existence. Nor am I concerned at the cost of
becoming a member of the wired society. If you look at the issues
in the newspaper world today, they certainly do not centre on the
ridiculously high cost of buying a daily paper. Quite the reverse,
in fact. I believe there will be no shortage of offers to get
everyone onto the Internet, in just the same way as you are now
wanted to read the tabloid press and view the pulp television
channels. The real challenge, I believe, is this telescoping of the
market, tying us to a single supplier who holds our purse and
guides our hand to the "buy now" button.
So here is my final question: where do you see the Christian
community in all of this? Would you be interested in a rainbow STB,
if I could get you one, which would plug you into yet another
network, this time one of true believers? "We have assembled an
awesome team of celestial entrepreneurs and inspirational
undertakers, always at your disposal." Perhaps you would prefer to
continue fighting things out among the three tribes of red, blue,
and yellow - but which one will you join? Or maybe these thoughts
seem far too fanciful for you! The debate is now open...