Hard Sell Hits Cyberspace: Renegade Advertisers Steamroll Internet Users
In the future, advertisers may also spread the word by subsidizing people’s Net usage. They may say, “Look at our ads in e-mail and we’ll give you an hour’s free online time.”
In the future, advertisers may also spread the word by subsidizing people’s Net usage. They may say, “Look at our ads in e-mail and we’ll give you an hour’s free online time.”
Soon, digital video servers will transmit “on-demand” television programming.
New Media is likely to be both more profound than the headlines would indicate and less familiar than the facile business strategies of today can easily comprehend.
Users should be able to add to the library themselves … With this new suite of capabilities, the Internet would become something else altogether – a space of connected information instead of a collection of machines. Schatz calls it the “Interspace.” Others may offer other names, but certainly no one will call it a used book store.
If past is prologue, the predominant uses will differ considerably from those being hyped today – the 500 channels of entertainment, virtual vacations and electronic newspapers.
We have the tools and technology to create a new learning system based on content-based education, high-touch and high-tech delivery systems, learning integrated with the total community – not just in school buildings – and personalized learning based on the interests and learning style preferences of the learner.
With almost $400 billion being spent on education at all levels, private industry sees the delivery of learning as the largest untapped, or under-utilized marketplace in America.
We will pay children to teach other children, adults to teach adults, and children to teach adults as well. A system of royalties will be created on information-server networks, like America Online, Prodigy, etc. As material is used, the provider earns money, and as they consume other’s ideas they pay out. An electronic economic marketplace for ideas and knowledge will be created. Schools may well begin this, or perhaps be replaced by it.
Do newspapers have a future in the new information world? Why not, if they embrace the notions of interactivity and convivial media and begin to give their users a real say in the editorial production of the paper or broadcast – putting e-mail addresses at the end of every story or editorial, for example.
We think there is sufficient likelihood that the new technologies are going to change the way that consumers receive and consume information to begin taking what we consider to be the baby steps.