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The art of Don E. Knuth
Computing's philosopher king argues for elegance in programming -- and a Pulitzer Prize for the best written.
By Mark Wallace
[09/16/99]

Silicon Follies
Silicon Follies
Chapter 53: Paul flames out; Liz and Laurel cash in.
By Thomas Scoville
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"Weaving the Web" holds the promise of a facinating tell-all book about how Tim Berners-Lee created the Web -- but it just doesn't tell all that much.
By Scott Kirsner
[09/15/99]

Review
Dreaming of Dreamcast
Stunning graphics make the gaming console a delight to play -- but it'd be even better if Sega got the Net component working.
By Janelle Brown
[09/14/99]

Technology: View from the top
Broadband warrior
Tom Jermoluk takes on everyone from America Online to the local phone company in his bid to connect with the consumer.
By Mark Gimein
[09/13/99]

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The moral of this story? As Geirland and Sonesh-Kedar put it, "Media is always a crapshoot." There's a lot of truth to this statement; compared to the utility-based Web sites currently favored by the stock market, the Hollywood-style content companies have a much harder sell, appealing to imaginations instead of needs. But there's another important lesson for Hollywood here: Unlike movies and TV, the Net is not a passive medium. People don't go online to be spoon-fed; they aren't inclined to "tune in" once a week or once a day to follow the plot line of a serial show. Most surf with a purpose, but even when that purpose is entertainment, most people aren't actively seeking a simulation of bad TV online. Before such lessons were learned, even well-funded endeavors created by veteran industry players, like the entertainment networks that were produced by AOL and MSN, fell victim to such mistakes. Content, after all, is appallingly expensive to produce -- lagging "viewership" in a medium that as yet has no profitable business model for these kinds of endeavors was, and still is, a recipe for disaster.

"Digital Babylon" does dig deeper for analysis of these failures than simply pointing out that media is a tough sell. Geirland and Sonesh-Kedar pose the demise of these projects as the result of an untenable conflict between three groups: "the suits" (business executives and investors), "the geeks" (techies and engineers) and "the ponytails" (Hollywood creatives). The three couldn't agree on a way to make profits, content and cutting-edge technology work together in a way that newbie consumers on a 28.8 modem would find engaging and easy to consume.

Although "Digital Babylon" isn't the most engaging book -- the story of the rise and fall of "The Spot" lacks any inherent drama, and the insights offered by the authors are often self-evident -- it is a worthwhile case study for anyone who cares deeply about where online entertainment is going. "The Spot" may now be a footnote in the history of the Net, but you can still see its ghost (or, at least, similar inspirations) in the second wave of entertainment networks now emerging. With high-speed broadband and cable Internet access increasingly likely in the near future, more and more companies are eager to create entertainment to flow down those pipes.

But one point that "Digital Babylon" doesn't really make in 250 pages of microscopically detailed entries about the early entertainment projects is that most weren't at all entertaining. "The Spot," despite its moment in the sun, was a badly written melodrama, interesting more for its novelty at the time than its plot; AOL's expensive Entertainment Asylum project, a "personality driven" entertainment portal, was boring, patronizing and tried too hard to be funny. With all the fun, odd home pages out there -- created not by slick Hollywood types, but by quirky and independent individuals -- why would surfers want to return day after day to the planned and trite soap operas that so many content networks were producing? No wonder these projects found that their traffic petered out after the initial spike of curiosity-seekers.

Next page | Can't Hollywood learn from old mistakes?