[8762] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Electronic Cafe (not strictly com-privish)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John [Francis] Stracke)
Fri Dec 3 15:33:06 1993
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 1993 14:27:16 +0500
From: francis@avalle.insoft.com (John [Francis] Stracke)
To: com-priv@psi.com
Just saw something in MacWeek that struck me as a major technology
perversion of the type we've been talking about: a company called
Electronic Cafe International that's set up a network of 60 cafes
around the world, linked by ISDN (or, in one case, T1), where they use
videoconferencing software on huge monitors, so that the entertainment
is artists in various cities collaborating. Now, this is a neat
thing; if it became common, it'd lower the barriers to collaborative
art. This is good. But it's being packaged as broadcast
entertainment, just like TV! Instead of setting up, say, a global
coffeehouse with an open mike, they've opened a bunch of feeding pens
where people come in and get treated like cattle for $10 a pop.
<sigh> Maybe, once the novelty wears off (what do you guess? two
months? once the entertainment isn't live, nobody much cares about the
tech behind it), they'll try a coffeehouse.
/===========================================================================\
|John (Francis) Stracke | My opinions are my own. |
|InSoft, Inc. |==================================================|
|Mechanicsburg, PA | Dave Barry for President! |
|francis@insoft.com | He'll Keep Dan Quayle. (OK, it's old) |
\===========================================================================/
