Lessons from Lewinsky

When the Starr report went online, the US government went offline. Millions of people from all over the world were logjamming the US gove...

When the Starr report went online, the US government went offline. Millions of people from all over the world were logjamming the US government’s network in quest of the most boring pornography since De Sade. Such was the deluge that taxpayers had trouble getting at their Internal Revenue Service records. Terrorists, on the other hand, could have taken advantage of the information blackout. But no one was complaining. On the contrary, there was some rejoicing, for the Net had apparently demonstrated that it is the happening mass medium.

But just cast your mind back and try to recall where you learned about the Starr report going online. The chances are that it was either the morning newspaper or the evening news on the telly. The number of people who got the glad tidings from an online source are so minuscule that none of them is prepared to admit it. The happening mass medium still has to depend on legacy media to hawk its goods.

The fact is that the Internet is not yet a mass medium. It is, however, thefirst bulk medium since the Renaissance, which brought forth the bestiary, the encyclopaedia, the atlas and the dictionary. In the case of the Starr report, what the Net demonstrated was not its mass reach but its ability to make information available in bulk. Try to picture a TV show dedicated to the full text of the report. Try to imagine it on the front page of a newspaper. What a drag.

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Eventually, we will be hard-wired to the Net. Carrying an Internet connection about will be no more dramatic than clipping a pager onto your belt. It will be continuously active, maybe even during take-off. Last week, the first wearable PC was revealed to a gasping press as the first step in this direction. But the sad fact is that it runs Windows 95. Which often crashes.

Two factors stand in the way of a mass Internet. The first is kludgy and buggy legacy operating systems. It’s hard enough managing them on a desktop. Imagine trying to do it on a Walkman-sized unit whose screens are built into your spectacles. Youcould be blind and deformed in days.

The second factor is the Net’s continuing dependence on telephone lines for last-mile connectivity. When the cellphone and wireless companies start offering cheap or advertising-subsidised data frequencies, people will be happy to chuck their television sets. But until then, they will be too conscious of the clock ticking when they are on their personal connections.

But with these factors in place, the Net will be very different. People will actually have the time to look at all those ads out there. The Internet ad industry will not have to cite the solitary example of the Superbowl-related campaigns to vindicate its potential. There will be thousands of successful properties around, just like in television and the newspapers. As the ad industry gains more confidence, ad rates will move closer to those of TV. This, in turn, will allow information providers to actually start making some money on the Internet. And that, in turn, will allow the Net to remain what everyuser expects it to be — a free service.

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A few hundred thousand media companies have marked out their turf on the Internet. But by and large, investments are low because no one is expecting huge operating profits. Right now, the most attractive products are those typical of a bulk medium: archives, complete TV footage, full interview transcripts, backgrounders. Research tools, no more.

But soon enough, the Net will be both bulk medium and mass medium. It will no longer have to depend on legacy media to get its message across. In fact, older media might need the Net a lot more than the Net needs them.