Customer Reviews

The Internet Challenge to Television

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Bruce M. Owen makes too many assumptions and doesn't do enough research in this book. Owen's focus is the future, but he speaks about the Internet as a group of technologies that will not change in the future, that are somehow stuck in time and will never improve.

He doesn't understand the technology (like Packet Switching, the very breakthrough that made TCP/IP and thus the Internet possible). Throughout the first part of the book, he claims that the Internet doesn't have the ability to transmit high quality video. We might not have the bandwidth now, but why is this _never_ going to be possible? The technology is there, just not there for everybody yet. He cites "Moore's Law," but does he think for some reason that the Internet is immune to this Law and that it won't continue to improve?

Owen also doesn't understand the history and development of the Internet, especially not the idea of open standards. As chaotic as the Internet is, it works because groups have already gotten together and handled many of the standards issues or came up with the technologies to deal with the incompatabilities. He even asserts that it might be to the Internet's advantage if "Silicon Valley" (as if they own the Internet) invites some regulators in to help with standards issues. Anyone who knows how the Net works knows that such ideas are not only improbably, they're impossible. The Internet is not a singular, private entitiy like a TV network.

Indeed, Owen seems to have a large bias against the Internet for some unknown reason. He believes that the Internet is an elite audience and makes every attempt to minimize the number of people participating. He even asserts, with no facts to back it up, that the number of households buying computers is "leveling off."

Owen hasn't done his homework. This is a work that turns out to simply a platform for the author to try to back up his biases, including not only an anti-Internet bias but an strong anti-Regulation bias. If you are looking for clear insight into the history and growth of media, get a good survey textbook; Owen's book will simply muddy the waters more for you...

It's worth balancing the previous reviews a little. In the first chapter, Prof. Owen describes a model for thinking about bandwidth-storage-compression tradeoffs and their influence on industry devlopment. I have not often revisited the parts of the book that deal with history or no-longer-up-to-date technical descriptions, but it's been well worth owning for the number of times I've gone back to that analysis in Chapter 1.