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Digital Culture Media Technology Video

Long Bet

One of my favorite sites on the Internet is Long Bet, where people publicly bet on long-term future issues. The third Long Bet has been decided, and it has to do with Video consumption. In 2002, Jim Griffin bet Gordon Bell that:

A profitable video-on-demand service aimed at consumers will offer 10,000 titles to 5 million subscribers by 2010.

If you can remember back to the period when this bet was made, there was no YouTube. Read the comments on the initial bet to see just where people’s minds were in regards to video at the time. The first few comments mention companies like Intel, Sony, Viacom, and Time Warner….and the reasons that Gordon Bell give for the bet not being possible include things that look silly in retrospect: Sufficient bandwidth (at least 1 Mbps), a codec that will deliver TV quality picture, and my personal favorite where Bell says “I don’t think five million people will want to watch movies on their PC screens while checking their email.”

Just goes to show how fast technology changes, and how fast culture and expectations are altered by the technology as it changes.

Anyone want to make a Long Bet regarding libraries? I’m interested. 🙂

By griffey

Jason Griffey is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at NISO, where he works to identify new areas of the information ecosystem where standards expertise is useful and needed. Prior to joining NISO in 2019, Jason ran his own technology consulting company for libraries, has been both an Affiliate at metaLAB and a Fellow and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and was an academic librarian in roles ranging from reference and instruction to Head of IT at the University of TN at Chattanooga.

Jason has written extensively on technology and libraries, including multiple books and a series of full-periodical issues on technology topics, most recently AI & Machine Learning in Libraries and Library Spaces and Smart Buildings: Technology, Metrics, and Iterative Design from 2018. His newest book, co-authored with Jeffery Pomerantz, will be published by MIT Press in 2024.

He has spoken internationally on topics such as artificial intelligence & machine learning, the future of technology and libraries, decentralization and the Blockchain, privacy, copyright, and intellectual property. A full list of his publications and presentations can be found on his CV.
He is one of eight winners of the Knight Foundation News Challenge for Libraries for the Measure the Future project (http://measurethefuture.net), an open hardware project designed to provide actionable use metrics for library spaces. He is also the creator and director of The LibraryBox Project (http://librarybox.us), an open source portable digital file distribution system.

Jason can be stalked obsessively online, and spends his free time with his daughter Eliza, reading, obsessing over gadgets, and preparing for the inevitable zombie uprising.

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