The Information Technology Paradox

Better technology for the production of information should make for better information products. Increasingly however, technology is acting as a barrier, by causing users to focus on knowing how to use the technology and then on making the technology work, not on getting and using the information, and processing it for knowledge.

Part of the mandate of the Media Futures Institute is to investigate and understand the information needs of target audiences, and to deliver a product that speaks to them. Raw information has to be packaged, produced and delivered for consumption in order to be useful. Otherwise it's just data.

Go!Tools is a set of 12 software packages that contained detailed instructions, toolsets, and utilities for Internet connectivity, email, newsgroup, and discussion lists, webpage production, graphics, and reference.

To that end, the Media Futures Institute creates, produces and delivers information products using the most appropriate technology or combination of technologies. In other words, the Media Futures Institute is in the business of solving the technology paradox. We believe that the user should not have to worry where the information is, or about how to use technology to get it. The user should only have to worry about what the information is useful for. The technology, except for a pleasing and intuitive user interface, should be invisible. Just like you don't have to know how electricity is produced to make toast, or how gas makes your car operate.

Re-Engineering the Media Marketplace

The job of media producers and publishers is to go out into the world, collect information, package and distribute it to specific target audiences for consumption. The Media Futures Institute has developed a toolset of processes and products it calls an Information Utility, which combines the publishing business model with the low cost, fast, interactive production and distribution systems of the Internet.

Go!Study is a set of 16 subject specific software packages for college and university students, that contain detailed instructions, toolsets, and utilities to assist their study and research tasks with Internet resources.

Like the Oil, Gas, Hydro utilities before it, the Information Utility, delivering information products and services to consumer and business markets, has enormous potential piece of that market.

The Media Futures Institute is extending the work started by the Virtual Vacations (1994-6), and the Knowledge Kits, an innovative series of digital media products, produced under a number of imprints and labels, most notably the Point & Click Internet Kits (1995-6), Go!Guides, Go!Tools, and Go!Study (1996-7).

Since their launch in early 1995, at the dawn of the commercial internet, more than half a million copies of these targetted information toolkits have been sold at retail in Canada, the United States, and Europe, making them one of the best selling computer software products. In addition, OEM versions have been sold to scores of Internet Service Providers and computer makers, including Apple and Compaq. A total of forty titles were developed over three years.

The Media Futures Institute believes that the number of projects that can be developed using the Information Utility technology is primarily a function of capital, not content, that there is an increasing demand for high multiple-value knowledge media products.

The Internet is not 'just another medium', it is fundamentally innovative and this is why businesses have to adapt new practices. The Internet is best understood as a 'meta' medium, which means that it integrates the different media existing before it in a new unity in which the 'whole' is more than the sum of its constituent parts.

The Internet is the first global mass multi-directional medium in the history of mankind. Quite a mouthful, but what it means is that it is the first medium which integrates both the qualities of traditional mass media, which allowed the 'broadcasting' of one particular message (or stream of messages) to many people at the same time (newspapers, radio, television) and the personal media, which allowed the communication of very specific messages from one individual to another (the postal letter and the the telephone).

The Internet allows both kinds of communications. One consequence of this is that every node on the Internet can be both a 'receiver' and a sender at the same time, which leads to an enormous increase in the number of actors which can communicate, both to individuals, and to groups. By radically bringing down the cost both of producing, distributing and consuming information, the Internet will radically the communications landscape. It also leads to an enormous versatility in the types of communication that it allows.

Consider this:

One-alone: the Internet allows man-machine communication in which an individual can obtain information from a machine (independent of its physical location) or send or store information on that machine. The Internet can therefore be used to create deposities of information such as for example product catalogs.

One-to-one: any individual can communicate to any other individual, outside of any control by mass media. The Internet allows all kinds of personal communication through text (email), voice (Internet telephony) and image (video-phone or conference). The Internet can be used for 'mass customisation', i.e. a common pool of information can be tailored to the particular needs not only of one individual but to the community of consumers to which a company addresses itself.

One-to-many: this is the traditional mode of mass communication, i.e. sending a message to many people at the same time. What the Internet offers is to make that process global and cheap, at least in comparison to any alternative, an important point to which we will return. The Internet introduces a twist in this model because it introduces a 'invitational' aspect, i.e. it allows the creation of vast depositories of information which can be used by masses of people at will.

Many-to-one: often forgotten, this is the mode of communication which allows 'reporting' or the collecting of intelligence from many different people (the staff of salesmen, or the consumers) to one central point.

Many-to-many: apart from small physical spaces where people could be face-to-face, before the Internet, it was not possible to hold global conversations between people sharings similar interests or facing common challenges.

The Internet has become essentially a space for self-organisation of what is now commonly called virtual communities. Seen from a commercial point of view, this means that the Internet is not an enormous mass media with millions of people, but a collection of hundreds of thousands of niches or micro-communities which can be either permanent or transient (i.e. gathering for a certain moment). As we will see, businesses can use this facet and stimulate the gathering of these communities around forums that they initiate themselves. Such a community-based form of marketing is a powerful new tool, and one of the central themes of this book.

Notice that the preceding paragraph introduced a notion of time and this is another meta aspect of the Internet.

Previous media where either real-time such as TV and radio (synchronous), or permanently available (i.e. suspended time, asynchronous) like paper-based media.

The Internet allows both. It can allow both simultaneous communication (chat, various forms of 'broadcasting' in real-time such as video-conferencing), sequential communication (one message after another, like in electronic mail), or the availability of archives. And also notice that such archives or catalogs, unlike their print counterpart, can be permanently accessed and updated.

Which brings us to another meta-aspect: the Internet can be used both in an 'invitational mode', , in which the user decides himself to 'pull' the information at the time of need, or in 'broadcasting' mode, in which information is 'pushed' to the user, through electronic mail, and increasingly, through other innovative 'push media'.

The Internet carry written text, graphics, drawings and photographs, streaming audio and video, which makes it a true 'multi-medium', but also a 'hyper-medium'. Why a 'hyper-medium'? Because of its 'hyperlink' feature, essentially the ability to link each piece of information, to any other piece of information, independent of its physical or 'virtual' location. We will later see how this works, but it is important to see its consequences: that you are no longer confined to your 'personal' computer, but that the Internet is becoming one great super-computer in which all the different hard drives and files are interlinked in one big and permanently growing information organism. This is not only true in terms of 'storing' information and having access to it, but also in terms of processing, i.e. the ability of 'working' on any computer, using the resources of the network and all its constituent parts. The vehicle of this is a new kind of software program, called Java, which turns any computer on the Internet in a 'virtual machine' that will execute its programs, independent of the hardware and software program that you use. This also means that increasingly you may not need to store information and programs locally, but that you will receive the software that you need from the network, at the moment that you need it. Thus many commentators see the personal computer era ending, to be replaced by the era of the 'whole computer paradigm' in which the 'network is the computer'.

Let us add two important meta-aspects which are also commercially important. One is called interactivity, i.e. the ability of users to affect remote machines and to enter in a dialogue with them, affecting the outcome of the communication and transaction. This was previously not possible: you could not change the content of a radio, TV program or newspaper article, just merely zap or use the 'on-off' switch. The Internet on the other hand gives a large measure of control to the user which can for example pick and choose amongst many offerings.

The second is 'transactionality'. Previously, if a consumer wanted to conduct a commercial transaction while not being physically present in a store, he had to use at least two media. One to find information (a newspaper, a television commercial, a catalog), and another to transact (the telephone, an order form). This is no longer necessary because a consumer on the Internet can both search for the information or product, and once found, he can quickly buy it through a simple click on the mouse. This is a great promise for the business world, because it means the whole pre-sales, sales, and post-sales process can be integrated and automated, thereby tremendously reducing communication and transaction costs.

This meta-aspect of the Internet means that we are entering a new terrain, and that business will have to learn many things anew, or at least adapt many of its traditional practices. The Web, together with electronic mail the most important 'technology' associated with the Internet, is on the surface merely a collection of interlinked pages which can be consulted from anywhere in the world, but in fact, it is nothing less than the breakthrough of the information age, and the essential tool of the 'information economy'.

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