 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Magazines join the computer age Ray Beatty raybeamelbpc.org.au |
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Convergence. When I hear that word I picture one of those 1950s epic movies where vast conflicting armies of heavily armed soldiers (in reality several hundred thousand Spanish conscripts being paid 10c and a plate of paella a day) charge down the valley walls into a battle with a mighty clash of arms, bloodshed and flashing steel. Heavily dubbed cries and groans roar beneath a galloping orchestra to complete the fast-cut interlude.
Alternatively, convergence might mean to you the traffic of a Melbourne rush hour, roaring out from distant suburbs along concrete freeways to finally converge around the few square miles of business district and then compete heavily for parking space.
The problem is that all of the scenarios like these end up in bloodshed and mayhem. Is this the inevitable result of convergence?
Let's hope not, because we are all going to be subjected to lots of convergence over the coming years, whether we like it or not. Once there were word processors and spreadsheets and databases and communications packages and desktop publishers and graphics programs. Now there's Microsoft Office and Novell Perfect Office and their various look-alikes. Once there were printers and faxes and scanners and photocopiers and telephones. Now we're starting to see machines which do all of these things in the one box.
Once a phone line let you talk to your mum or take orders for your business. Now it will handle numerous calls, Internet connections, data transfers, photographs and videos and the Kinky-Line Make a Date Service. It's all convergence, in every sense of the word.
Enter Wired
The other day I was in the newsagent's browsing through the computer magazines, making the usual hard decisions. Do I get a local one which is more current, or a US one which might have more advanced technology, or a UK one which has incredible quantities of advertising plus a free disk of games and utilities...? And then I noticed an American magazine called Wired. It looked out of place because it did not have a metal box and monitor on the cover - how can it be a computer magazine? I flipped through it. Stories on cable TV coverage of courts, and another on Turner Entertainment - it's a TV magazine. But wait a minute - a story on a million-MHz CPU, and another one on magazine design with a Mac? So it's a computer magazine. And why are Internet addresses sprinkled throughout like confetti?
The more I read the more confused I became. Even the ads were confusing. Ads on Motorola modems and NEC Pentiums - ah, I felt comfortable. But then turn the page and there's an ad for Mercedes-Benz, and another for the Toyota Lexus; for Dewar's whiskey and Absolut vodka; for Sennheiser earphones and the Sony Discman. What sort of magazine is this, anyway?
Then the penny dropped. This was convergence. The inevitable coming together of those growing strands. This was the magazine of the future. It makes sense when you think about it.
Remember when you were going to buy your first hi-fi and invested in a stack of hi-fi magazines and buyer guides? For a while there you were a real expert on hi-fi. You could quote the wattage and dynamic range of several dozen different systems and the merits of certain styluses produced by reclusive twins in Black Rock.
Then came your second car (from the first you learned all the things not to do). Now your coffee table was stacked knee-high in Motor and Autosport and Car. Your vocabulary effortlessly dropped words like "slipped differential" and "16-valve overhead cam". Probably for several years you knew everything about cars.
Now, unless any of these areas developed into a real passion, or a job, you're probably not quite so up-to-date on the facts and figures. You'll even come across words and phrases you've never heard before. Your interest level has passed its peak. That's human progress.
Nuns and nose flutes
But computers are something different. A computer is not a static thing you can stack in a corner of the living room and forget for five years. It keeps changing, and the things you do with it keep changing. You might have bought it to keep the books or write a letter. Now you're producing graphic flyers for the kids' school fete and corresponding about African nose flutes with a nun in Venezuela. If you're a member of this club the chances are that the people you work with, or live among, regard you as the local computer guru and bring all their computing problems to your doorstep. So it has become the most embracing part of your life since you had kids.
But after the fifth upgrade of your word processor, or the fourth time you've traded up to the newest mother chip and a squillion more MB of memory, pure product news gets boring. You know the products, and even usage is not so challenging now that you don't crash the computer every second hour the way you did when you were still learning.
So what is a magazine to do to keep its readership and maintain interest? Publisher Louis Rossetto in San Francisco gathered together some of the smartest, trendiest, Mac-based designers and hip young writers, and started a magazine with none of the expected computer stories. And he heavily based the whole thing round the Internet, though not like the magazines Internet or CompuServe Magazine, but written for bright young people who happened to be heavily into the Net.
Human pets
Take a look at the March issue. A story on how computers will be capable of keeping humans as pets by 2100; another about an online service for medical records; a conference of security professionals and the mind-boggling facts about just how thoroughly they can now watch you; the latest carbon-fibre racing bike and an electric guitar with LEDs to teach you how to play; a story on two of the world's trendiest typographers; a piece on Steven Brill who started Court TV; and another on Scott Sassa, 35-year-old President of the Turner Entertainment Group. A story about Canadian persecution of BBSs for alleged pornography is as close as anything comes to a predictable computing story.
Search as I might, I could not find one software review or hardware comparison: not a Dhrystone or Whetstone in sight, and the only specs were in the handful of ads for computers. Central to this all is the Internet. Books and programs about Internet access; lots of exotic, unusual Web sites; lots of ads for access services and Internet program suites. On top of which, nearly every byline included a Net address. As I read more deeply I discovered they had their own Web site - Hotwired. Wow! I called it up (http://www.hotwired. com) and sure enough there was what has to be the world's hippest site. Obviously the plan is to build that up - at present it's free - into a major publishing force in its own right. One more step along the convergence road.
The magazine has been going for a couple of years now, though this was my first sight of it - but then I haven't been looking. What has excited me is that here's the first signpost of the way things are going. In fact we have another good example right here in this town.
The Green Guide
Take a look at The Age's Green Guide. Now there's a case of natural convergence. I doubt that The Age had the faintest idea when it started of what would eventually emerge 20 years later. It started as a TV program guide. When companies began advertising their hi-fi components, the magazine started running articles about how to stop your turntable humming. Then the hi-fi companies started advertising their new video cameras, and before long the paper was writing articles about how to film granny without shaking the camera. Then someone thought: if they like records and video, they probably like computers. So they wrote stories on why you shouldn't leave your floppy disks on the back window of the car.
The Green Guide in its bluff, newspaper way; and Wired in its slick, trendy, magazine way, are pointing the way for all media in the future. More and more, publishing will have to realise that their job consists of much more than just printing copy on paper. There's a whole new world of online information and CD-ROMs which is demanding attention. It's called convergence.
Reprinted from the July 1995 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
