Robert Metcalfe - Week 11 - Video Internet - the Next Big Thing

Note: This video is getting quite "dated" as it was made in 2001 and some of the "statistics" and current state of technology has changed.  Some of his "predictions" have already come true today - broadband, video on demand, BitTorrent).

Metcalf runs through history of "networks".  Internet was originally envisioned as "applications" on Internet accessed anywhere on dumb terminals (hey, maybe we are coming full circle?).  FTP arose to transfer data; e-mail to transfer message; newsgroups to collect messages and categorize by categories.  In 1990's, WWW brought about web publishing and brought about a new kind of content 1) editorial; 2) advertising; (new) 3) community.  By late '90's went from publishing into commerce.  What is next big thing now? Convergence of Internet, telephone and television networks.

Goals vs Reality of Convergence:

• Internet people: Goal: To bring Internet to "everyone", so started on phone networks.  What they got? Newbies and slow connections.
• Telephone people: Goal: To get a lot of long distance minutes! What they got? Short distance hours that they couldn't bill, as well as cannibalization of telephone via Internet.
• Television people:  Goal: Interactive television.  What they got? An entirely different business model where Internet content and carriage is not the same.  TV networks lost their limited competition as the Internet offers millions of choices for viewers vs. limited channels on TV.

Three kinds of television conversion.

• TV as cheap Internet "monitors" (like WebTV)
• Use of cable modems to access Internet.
• Carry TV over the Internet.

The problems:

• current technology makes video shaky
• deployment of broadband access (via cable, DSL)
  
• hardware of Internet TC / IP makes it very slow to transmit video
  
• applications that will drive (for example video on demand)
  

Predicted Phases from Old to New Technologies:

• Arbitrage: old technology is more expensive (tariffs, etc)
• Actual cost savings
• Brings about new ways to do things
• Convergence of old and new
• Emergence of "standards" to facilitate infrastructure development

Implication for education?

• Improved production quality
• Education at home
  

Also, Metcalf notes he is on Board of Avistar (linked here)