Fritz
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Re:How to talk to a light bulb
« Reply #2 on: 2011-08-14 11:52:29 » |
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Quote from: MoEnzyme on 2011-08-11 17:42:33
I really enjoyed that Fritz. I only wish I had enough time to watch every TED lecture, but this one really opened my eyes to the freely plentiful bandwidth available if we would just double up on the functionality of some of our current technology.
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Hey Mo ... I got a WD media box to sling video around the house and the added bonus was it had an internet media interface with which to get streaming video; TEDtalks being one such service available in HD on to the boob tube or is that boob LED frame hmmmm.
Found this example of history repeating itself ... Cheers Fritz
http://www.audc.org/blue-monday/ethics/wired-wireless-mass-medium
<snip>
The Wired Wireless Mass Medium 1920s
The invention of radio at the beginning of the twentieth century further transformed the individual’s relationship to the collective by providing a system for instantaneous communication across great distances. During the 1920s, commercial radio broadcasts spread across radio waves providing regular, dependable media experiences that large numbers of individuals could share simultaneously, even while apart. Once purchased, radios assembled these individuals into a mass audience regardless of their literacy or social status, creating the first true mass media. Through the addition of the tuning dial, radio listeners gained the effortless experience of surfing for information across different channels. Listening to the radio was less a private experience enjoyed by an autonomous individual and more a series of individual or small group experiences in which people saw themselves as part of a regionally dispersed body made up of content producers, transmitters, radio signals, receivers, and other listeners whom they never meet personally.
Radio, however, still faced many real limitations: it required large and expensive signal towers; its relatively weak transmissions were easily interrupted by local terrain and would often degrade in poor weather conditions; its signals would drop off due to distance. In 1911, General George Owen Squier, then Chief Signal Officer of the US Army Signal Corps, discovered a solution to these problems, finding an effective means of audio transmission over electrical power lines using the signal multiplexing he developed to carry multiple channels over one wire. In contrast to wireless radio, transmitting music through the system Squier named “wired wireless”ť ensured higher signal quality regardless of atmospheric or solar conditions. Weary of the privatization that had marred the early development of the telephone industry, Squier patented his discovery in the name of the American public, making the technology available for free use and development across the nation.
Engineers adapted the new technology to create the first countrywide communications network, allowing the simultaneous delivery of programs through utility lines to remote radio transmitting stations. Squier, however, was not satisfied with the commercial structure of radio, in which programs were funded by intrusive commercials. He envisioned a new network supported by a toll that would also make unnecessary the commercials and program interruptions that sponsored, and for Squier, corrupted radio. Squier approached the North American Company, then the nation’s largest utility company, to transmit music over their lines. North American responded positively and formed Wired Radio, Incorporated. To avoid problems with broadcast rights to music, North American purchased Breitkopf Publications, Inc., a European music-publishing house, and renamed it Associated Music Publishers.
In 1934, North American formed the Muzak Corporation to transmit music directly to homes in Cleveland. Muzak’s name was derived from a merger of the word “music”ť with “Kodak,”ť a highly technological and reputable company. Squier died later that year, never to see the success of his invention.
Success was not, in any case, immediate. The project in Cleveland fell victim to technological troubles and the development of superheterodyne circuits, vacuum tubes, and volume controls gave radios a technological boost while the ongoing Depression encouraged consumers to stick with a one-time radio purchase over the expense of a long-term lease. For their part, radio companies opposed the idea of Muzak competing for their listeners. In 1938, the Federal Communications Commission severely restricted Muzak’s market in radio’s favor by forbidding the company from using electrical power lines for broadcast directly into the home. Although Squier’s inventions of wired wireless and signal multiplexing would later be widely adopted by cable television broadcasters, Muzak would initially be restricted to commercial venues.
Far from limiting the company, forcing the Muzak Corporation to target commercial venues instead offered the company a clearer mission that would give it an advantage over radio in commercial settings. Recorded music is sold with limited rights of use, generally not including public performance. Recorded media was an enormous source of income for the young record industry, but created new difficulties in tracking the number and locations of its playback. In 1914, the American Society of Composers, Artists, and Publishers (ASCAP) was founded, serving as a member-owned organization to fight for fair compensation when recorded work was publicly performed. The first successful lawsuit pursued by ASCAP, against Shanley’s Restaurant in New York City, was heard by the United States Supreme Court. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes explained his judgment in favor of ASCAP by saying “If music did not pay, it would be given up. Whether it pays or not, the purpose of employing it is profit and that is enough.”<snip>
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