Twenty Years

What the Internet Will Do for Oprah (and You).

By Frank Sikernitsky

Editor in Chief

travelled twenty years into the future last night and saw the future. Since I'd pushed the 'perfect world' button on the time machine, I got the see the best of what the Internet will do for the world. (I also munged a downshift and blew the synchro on second gear, but it still works if you wiggle it.)
No, the Red Sox still haven't won a World Series, but there is now a National Soccer League. Ford still makes the Escort, and it's still a nasty car. McDonald's added hot dogs to the menu. Pepsi turned its cans blue, then Coke turned theirs black, then Pepsi went green, and Coke went white and the Pepsi made their's glow in the dark, which caused thirty-nine million cases of cancer, and the Pepsi got sued off the shelves.
It is 2016. An what is to follow is the promise of today's Internet delivered in full. A promise not even touched by today's commercials. Based on toady's technology, I will put myself in a living room of the future. And I'm going to tell you what it's like. Not some gauzy picture of the future, but what you see and hear.
Installed on the south wall of my living room is a 2.5 by 1.5 meter plasma panel. Based on technology developed in the 1980s, this screen gives sharper than TV picture in a thin package. (Not to mention the electricity that it draws...)
It's run by a box about the size of a room speaker, and IKEA has taken care of making furniture that integrates it. Also available at Sears and WalMart, these coffee tables integrate the box into the decor of the living room.
The panel is running a hybrid Irix/MacOS system developed in a 1999 joint venture between Sun and Apple. It is a Java-based system running on a fast processor developed by Sun. What is special about it is that it can run several windows at one, of different sizes. This mean that one can be running a video call, or a regular television show, or a letterboxed movie without losing aspect radio.
There are several ways to control the output of the screen. One is a remote control that offers an on-"wall" display of options. keyboard is available in a drawer in the coffee table, and there is also a modified Gallium Arsenide laser available to use as a pointer. Voice - interaction is available, but isn't very popular as it is still susceptible to background noise like meowing cats, screaming kids, and the like.
What services can it run?
First, on the television front, through a coax/fiber cable, it can get over 1,000 channels. All of the major networks are available, as well as six news channels, eight adult ones, three weather, nine HBOs, and an all White House channel. Jim Carey has his own channel. So does Jim J. Bullock, but nobody watches. There's an all-50's channel, plus an all-60's, all-70's, all 70's detective show channel, plus 80's, 90's, 00's, and a myriad of "pop-hot" channels. One channel is re-running all sixty years of As the World Turns in eight-hour chunks. They started in 2014, so it will only take them about six years to finish. Popeil has three channels, and still sells worthless miracle products.
Also included in the package is video phone capabilities. with a 6.5-million pixel CCD device built into the frame. This video camera can broadcast across the line in audio and in video to any similarly equipped panel. The ability to show a still image is a blessing to those who don't want to be on camera at 6:00 am. Many families just run the family portrait in place of a live image.
It drives a derivative of the Surround Sound system through nine speakers.
But where is the Internet?
Each of these screens is a stop on the internet. Each panel operates as a machine on the Internet just like desktops and mainframes do today. This prompted the addition of a new extension to the IP hierarchy - .prs, for personal. Each system can hold Web documents and also access them. They are now fully interactive, and every major catalog is now animated and video-clipped. Many rejoice that J. Crew is accessible 24-7. Families and individuals can have pages and 40 million keep the up to date.
The desktop computer has not died. The line between furniture and computers has strengthened and not blurred as the time progressed. People still have Intel P9 systems and Macintosh Quatio Instatowers, and these connect to the living room box for access through Firewire connections. These ultra high-speed connections have were proposed in 1994, but are now standard across the computer world. (The box is limited to four connections to prevent companies to accessing a zillion machines through one box.) The desktop/wall dichotomy came out of the fact that people wanted machines that one could use on the Internet, but didn't want junior using while they were trying to watch re-runs of "Hill Street Blues". For the same reason people buy more than one television, they now buy desktop computers for use in other rooms of the house.
In the event that service is out, normal telephones can still work on the lines, as well as normal TV tuning. One can also plug in standard VCRs, CD players and other video and audio equipment to utilize the system to play them. Audiophiles still maintain that LPs offer better sound, so turntable sales still continue. There is an Ace of Base revival happening in 2016, as well as nostalgia for body piercing and that really strange stuff called "fleece".
Massive Internet search engines are still available, and over 50 billion Web documents exist to search. over a million books are available online, and every one is now also published electronically. However, paper books sales have not entirely sloughed off, as people seem to need the physical need to hold a block of paper in their hand. Many books are now published entirely on the Net as interactive novels and stories.
Users can store their data on recordable CD-II discs. They are discs just like we have today, except that the mechanism uses the GaN blue-green laser to store over 1.2Gb on a disc.
IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, is now known as IRV, for Internet Relay Video. Chat groups number almost thirty thousand, and some operate as online talk shows. Oprah is even more popular now that her worldwide audience numbers one hundred and fifty million per two-hour show, each one videoed into the show. Yes, she's still around, but wears the grey gracefully.
Service runs about $200 per month (that's with inflation - today it's about $100). The unit costs about $2000 in a base configuration (if you take away inflation, that's about the cost of a good 27" or so TV set now). The panel is the biggest percentage of the cost, so bigger screens cost more. The largest panels cost about $5000, being almost four meters across and three high.
Of course, calls and purchases are also extra costs, and can be charges to a bank account, credit line or other account. There are now E-VISA, CirrusLink and NetNovus, the credit card variants that are entirely electronic. Billing is automatic, and as long as your accounts are up to date, the video collection agent won't visit you.
I won't go into the social ramifications of this service, but suffice to say it does bring many people together. Unfortunately, they're also sitting on the couch while they're doing it. Nordic-Aetna International sells an variant of the Nordic Track that will control the panel, so couch potatoes can exercise and watch the wall at the same time. We are also raising a generation of children who fail to see the humor in Moe the Bartender's line, "and now, back to the wall." He was right on, though, when he charged Barney to watch it with him.
To them, the wall is everything.
Next week, I'll push the "bad world" button and tell you what I see.