Do We Really Need a Magic Box on Our TV?
or
The Ghosts of Interactive TV Past

Peoria, IL -- The year was 1993, and the words on everyone's lips in technology, entertainment, cable, and aardvark breeding were "Interactive TV." The tech crowd wanted to design cool set-top boxes that could access your bank account; entertainers wanted you to help direct lifeless plots; cable wanted to charge you for 500 channels of mind-numbing programming; and aardvark breeders wanted to finally have their own TV channel.

The only problem was that consumers didn't bite. The technology wasn't mature enough and the costs were prohibitive for plain folks. Fast forward to 1998, and the rise of the Internet. With 10-gazillion channels of barely readable drek, the old ITV players felt they finally had a gold mine. Why else would AT&T buy cable dinosaur TCI?

If they could slamp the Net onto TV sets, add local and long distance phone service, and provide a converged mega-channel guide, they would have it all: a Magic Box that would be your personal portal onto life. Do your banking, buy your groceries, watch your sitcoms, call Grandmama, download your porn, gamble the rest of your savings away -- on the stock market, *not* sinful online gambling -- and take college courses and pray in virtual church.

The idea is simple: why leave home? It's dangerous out there with criminals lurking in every shadow, traffic clogging the freeways, and conversation with strangers at an all-time high. With the Magic Box and a good security system, every American family could live their lives in isolated splendour.

But guess what? The technology is still not mature enough and still costs too much. And even when it does mature and get affordable, what's gonna make Autie Em and Uncle Bert want it? Their current phones work fine, their cable TV or satellite dish gets more channels than they'll ever need, and the Internet is barely worth a glance every few days. Email is a nice way to keep in touch with kids, but do they want a $500 Magic Box just so they can pay for everything on one bill?

Convergence is a nice buzzword, and theoretically sounds great. One big pipe with all the data and voice traffic hosing down the household with one big spurt. But it's the pipe dream of accountants, merger specialists, and business schemers more than anyone who'd actually use it. And for aardvark breeders, there's always cable access...

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Patting Ourselves on the Back

The staff of 3MR is usually a modest bunch, but every once in a while we just have to toot our own horn -- no matter how out of tune it may sound. In this case, we've been popping champagne corks after winning the San Francisco Bay Guardian's 1998 "Best of the Bay." We were chosen as "Best Healthy Dose of Silicon Valley Sarcasm," just edging out DaveNet, Suck, and Jim Barksdale's Senate hearing appearance.

3MR is especially proud to have swept both SF alternative weeklies' awards this year, including the SF Weekly's "Best of the Bay" a few months back. That feat was last accomplished by singer Chris Isaak, who won both "Best New Artist" and "Best Flash in the Pan" in one year.

Though we usually shun such awards, we sent our reluctant Editor-in-Chief Max Schlickting to a group photo shoot, with the resulting photo to run in this week's Guardian. And how can we not like a newspaper that says 3MR covers the online biz with "the glee of a mortician hopped up on embalming fluid"?

Read it and weep here:

http://www.bestofthebay.com/1998/urban.html#sarc

And check out the newly updated DeathRace 2000 site here:

http://www.mediawhore.com/deathrace/
 

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"3-Minute Roast" is a bi-weekly, advertisement-free, opinionated rip on anything that strikes our fancy in the online world.

Max Schlickting - Editor-in-Chief
Barbara Yalpsid - Online Editor
Lefty Periwinkle - First Amendment Expert

* If you hate our rantings, send a reply message: "Converge right outta my emailbox," and we'll take you off the list.
* To see all our back issues, link up to 3MR on the Web at: http://www.mediawhore.com/3-minute/roastarchive.html
* This material is copyrighted by the Convergence Divergence Society, hoping people won't notice that our world is going to Hell in a handbasket because they're too busy watching "Howdy Doody" reruns.
* Feel free to forward this to three friends or enemies. Some call it a pyramid scheme; we call it distribution.

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