FREE ESSAY ON COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY

COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY

Computer technology: That's entertainment, 2000
VIDEO 
CNN NewsStand's James Hattori finds out what entertainment might look like in the year
2010 
December 31, 1999
Web posted at: 4:00 p.m. EST (2100 GMT)
(CNN) -- As we reach the year 2000 and the next phase of the Information Age, it's easy
to forget that just 10 years ago, the Information Age was stuck on its launching pad. 
The Internet was unknown to nearly everyone except university researchers; TV was still
patting itself on the back over cable success; films were searching for the next big
thing; music was sold at record stores. 
Now, television and computers are colliding and millions of channels are on the horizon;
films are bigger, clearer and cheaper to make; and music, more than any other industry,
is using the Internet to market itself
HDTV will soon be rolling into homes, delivering a wider screen and digital picture 
Lucy, where are you? 
Television is on the brink of major changes that may forever alter the way we live. 
It should all happen with the inevitable switch from analog to digital technology. Right
now, most homes are equipped with analog, the design of which has remained largely
unchanged since the invention of television. The new kid on the block is HD, or
high-definition television, with more than three times the resolution of a standard
analog set. 
Unfortunately, you can't see HDTV's higher quality on regular TV. And for now, HDTV does
come with high price tags and scarce programming. But there's little doubt that
television signals are going digital. 
I think the world of television and entertainment is poised for explosion, and that
explosion comes about because television becomes digital, says Andy Lippman, associate
director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Media Lab. It's one of the
premiere technology think tanks in the world. 
When television becomes digital, it becomes a lot more like the Internet, and that means
that instead of a hundred or 500 or 1,000 channels, you have to think of television in
terms of 243 million channels and accessing channels from all around the world. 
With a laser-pointer-like device, users can click on images on a interactive TV to
purchase clothing and objects used by the actors on screen 
That new type of TV becomes interactive, too. For instance, you should be able to watch a
favorite sitcom, and shop at the same time. This, through innovations like hypersoap.
With underwriting by the JCPenney company, MIT professor Michael Bove along with a team
of MIT students created the idea. Using a clicker like a remote control, hypersoap
viewers can shop by highlighting any clothing or objects they see on the screen, allowing
viewers of to buy the outfits worn by their favorite actors -- if not quite the shirts
off their Friends' backs. 
And shopping is just one possibility. Interactive TV is also expected to allow viewers to
gather additional relevant information on programs. For example, if you're watching a
cooking program featuring chicken, you'll be able to click one part of the screen and get
the recipe. If you're watching a newscast on a Balkan uprising, you can click the remote
and learn the history of the conflict, along with latest headlines and video. 
Your favorite TV show may soon follow you... from your living room, to your car radio, to
your office computer 
Save that VCR 
There are also ideas in the works that can keep us from missing TV, even without using
the VCR. 
It's always annoying when one is watching a television program, says Bove, and the
telephone rings or one has to get into the car and go drive to work. And it would be
possible, using almost the infrastructure we have right now, to make a television program
that when I'm watching, if I go out in the car, maybe it follows me by means of my pager
and then my car, and when I get to work, it follows me up the steps and on to the screen
of my PC. In fact, it would be very nice to be able to follow your program that way. 
And save that VCR. It'll be like the phonograph one day. Your grandkids will laugh at it
as they flip on their DVD players -- if DVD players aren't outdated by then. 
George Lucas helped usher in the digital projection film with Star Wars, Episode 1: The
Phantom Menace 
Big changes on big screen 
Movie makers are riding the digital wave, too. George Lucas says he plans to lead the
charge of high-budget filmmaking into digital land, shooting the next Star Wars
installment digitally on video, not film. As a way of spurring the development of digital
projectors, he had a month-long showing of a special digital version of 1999's Star Wars,
Episode I: The Phantom Menace.
Along with better quality, films are getting bigger, too. IMAX and its grand-scale films
that make the viewer feel a part of the action could foreshadow a day when moviegoers
enjoy a truly virtual experience. 
And filmmakers are relying more on not just digital film, but also digital animation to
fill their screens. Titanic and The Phantom Menace are two recent blockbusters that
implemented this with tremendous results. Although Jar-Jar Binks, in all his digital
green glory, wasn't the most popular character, there's talk that one day many films will
include digital actors, presumably because they won't ask for $20 million per picture. 
Edna McCoy's Festival was an all-digitally produced film that was shown at the 1999
Austin Film Festival 
Low-budget filmmakers are feeling the effects of all this technology, too. Digital tapes
are much cheaper than traditional film stock, but yield better quality and can be edited
on a home computer. It's an independent filmmaker's dream come true. At the 1999 Austin
Film Festival, in fact, a group of low-budget auteurs shot a short film using digital
tapes in the span of a week on a $200 budget. 
Perhaps even more alluring for independent filmmakers is the idea that they'll always
have a place to screen their films, thanks to the Internet. Some say they foresee a day
when filmmakers will simply e-mail their work to theaters with digital projectors, at
least for a time probably throwing the economy of film distribution into disarray. 
The new music 
Music, of course, has enjoyed the most change so far in these digital times. MP3, the
technology that allows Web surfers to download CD-quality music, has been written up in
most major publications and has caused old-guard record companies to at once curse and
embrace the technology. 
MP3 audio will help change the way we buy and listen to music 
But new musicians, like young filmmakers, see the digital technology as a way to sidestep
traditional avenues to success and use the Internet to distribute their art. 
The future of music content should be interesting to monitor, too. The last decade of the
century has seen a broad mix of styles flooding radio stations, including early-century
jazz and swing, Latin pop, folk, rap, folk-rap, hip-hop, dance, Celtic, new world music,
and that old-fashioned, guitar-driven rock 'n' roll. 
It seems music artists are continually searching for new ways to communicate, so perhaps
the 2000s will witness the invention of a new instrument -- like the origination of the
electric guitar in the mid-1900s -- that will sail us to new sound horizons. 
'Faster and bigger' 
Another force that can no longer be ignored is the electronic $6.3 million gaming
industry. It keeps millions of Americans, mostly teens, entertained. Eye-popping graphics
and battling heroes have pushed sales of electronic games past what's spent by moviegoers
every year. 
Ultima has evolved as video game technology has been improved 
And what will games you play in 10 years be like? 
The interaction you will have will be much more like interacting with real people versus
what it is right now, says Richard Garriot, who created the highly popular Ultima
adventure games. You're going to see some very compelling experiences that are presented
in ways which are, you know, well beyond today's movies and television. 
Or course, all this is merely educated speculation, and it's likely that many predictions
will miss their mark. But it's safe to say the Internet and its technologies should have
vast effects on all that's entertainment. 
We will see a billion users of the Internet before the end of the year 2000, says
Nicholas Negroponte, founder and director of MIT's Media Lab. That is basically 20
percent of the planet. 
And what's really frightening, or interesting, depending on your perspective, is that the
change from now will even be faster and bigger than we're expecting. 
NOTE ----MP3's
The only problem with MP3, however, is that it is a lossy compression scheme -- that is,
one that must throw out musical data from the high and low ends of our hearing in order
to achieve its small size. When you expand those files to put on an audio CD, they will
not sound as good as the original tracks, because the information just isn't there. 
Enter SHN, a file format gaining popularity with fans of live music. 
SHN (or shortened) files only offer about 2:1 compression (unlike the 10:1 ratio common
with MP3), but SHN files are lossless -- in every way the same as the source files from
which they were made. Of course, with less compression, the files are also much larger --
a full shortened disc can take up about 400MB -- so they're not exactly quick downloads.
But with high-speed DSL and cable modems at home (and those blessed high-speed lines
we've got at work), waiting several hours for a download while you sleep is much quicker
-- and often more reliable -- than setting up and completing a CD trade by mail. 
It's also a great way for a single source (or seed) to get out to hundreds of people in a
hurry. Often, a show will be transferred from DAT and encoding in SHN format just days
after taking place -- perfect for us music junkies who can't wait to hear Phish's
*http://www.phish.com/* latest version of Chalkdust Torture or You Enjoy Myself. As any
music collector knows, you can never have too much of the same thing. 
The software you'll need to take advantage of this great-sounding technology is called
Shorten for Macintosh, which can expand SHN files to either AIFF or WAV formats, but only
compresses WAV files. The free download is still in an early stage of development, but is
very stable--not to mention that it's currently the only choice for Mac users when it
comes to SHN. Remember, however, that you can't play an SHN file like you would an MP3 --
it must be expanded for listening or recording onto a CD.