BY MARY GOODERHAM
- November 4 1997
WHEN a spectacular car crash took the lives of Princess Diana, her boyfriend and their chauffeur, not everyone turned on their television set for details.
Instead, an astonishing number of people delved into myriad Web sites looking for the latest tidbits on the accident, chatted about it in discussion groups and even watched hours of live funeral coverage on their home computers.
The most sensational in a long list of events carried on-line - including the O.J. Simpson trial, the Olympic bombing in Atlanta, the crash of TWA flight 800, the Heaven's Gate suicides, the Pathfinder Mars probe and murder of fashion superstar Gianni Versace by a serial killer - the crash drew increasing numbers of users to the Internet and earned it new respect as a news and entertainment medium.
Some have heralded the moment as the Web's coming of age as a mass medium. But others say it is far too early to declare the Internet a successful home entertainment product that can go head to head with others such as television.
"For this to become mainstream, there's a lot of pieces that have to come into place," said Bill Buxton, a computer scientist and head of research at Alias/Wavefront Inc. of Toronto.
The medium remains somewhat costly and complicated, it is not found in most homes, it is heavily based on text and a one-person keyboard for input, and it is decentralized into endless specialized pockets of interest, making the Internet impractical as "the main information appliance" in homes.
"A family can all sit on a couch and watch TV," Mr. Buxton says. "A couple that wants to delve into the Internet ends up fighting for the computer and then finds their kid on it already."
But some say that all of that could change as the era of ubiquitous networked Internet computing in the home fast approaches.
"The Web is eating television," says Don Tapscott, chairman of the Alliance for Converging Technologies and author of a new book called Growing Up Digital. Mr. Tapscott's own Toronto home is on the leading edge of the wave, with seven networks, including a local area network tying together five computers in bedrooms, studies, the kitchen and family room. There is also a system for cable television, hi-fi sound, fire, security, power and the telephone, which includes three standard lines, a high-speed line and an intercom.
He admits his home is "a bit ahead" of others but the figures in his book show an impressive growth in computer and on-line use in homes, especially those with children, that he said is comparable to the rate of television adoption in the 1950s.
This year, 43 per cent of all U.S. households have computers, while 56 per cent of those with children have computers. By 2000, 53 per cent of all homes and 62 per cent with children will have computers. There are similar increases in Internet access.
On-line companies boast that television use is dropping as a result. America Online Inc. of Dulles, Va., suggests that its subscribers spend 15 per cent less time - one hour less a day or seven hours less each week - watching television.
"The broadcasters are terrified of this," Mr. Tapscott says. "Television is being replaced by an interactive, social communications activity, although what's different is that we're not all in the same room watching it."
Whether that means the Internet can truly become a group or mass activity like TV is the question.
Jesse Hirsh, director of the new media unit at the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto, says the infrastructure is coming together to make it such.
Already, he says, "we conceive of our communications as a series of interoperable and interconnected networks" and the Internet is beginning to "consume" or encompass other media such as radio, voice mail and E-mail throughout the world.
In the home, "it's a molecularizing effect." Mr. Hirsh predicts that eventually the computer modem will become a customized "utility box in the basement" that runs everything from computers to home appliances. "The medium dissolves, it becomes second nature."
Individuals will have their own isolated "vid screens" because the Internet by its nature "has a tendency to subdivide out of clarity, finding your own interests and space." Still, he says, it is a mass market experience culturally and especially when there are big events.
"It feeds the spectacle by allowing everyone to have his own niche. If there's more crevices in the cave then it means that more people can fit into it."
Gerald Bramm, a marketing research consultant in Oakville, Ont., says there are few reliable studies to show how many households today have more than one computer, but he believes the number is "quite high," especially as people pass on older or excess equipment to children. But he adds that most home computers are not found in main living areas but in offices, kids rooms and basement rec-rooms.
"It's not really a social instrument. People don't gather around the computer to look at something on the Internet - it tends to be an individual process."
Mr. Tapscott says that the challenge is to "design" the family itself to be more open, and for parents to "impose balance in our kids' lives" and make the Internet a group experience by talking about its content and the issues it raises. He compares the Internet in the home to the introduction of the telephone, another interactive, "one-to-one" medium.
"I don't know that there was a great hue and cry about how the telephone might divide us and undermine communications within the family. The main reason we're so concerned about the Internet is that as a society we don't really understand it."
Mr. Buxton says there are many issues to be worked out. He thinks that one of the most critical is trust and control over Internet content as the information on it explodes. "The people who can manage sites and keep them accurate and interesting and focused are going to become the real heroes."
Interestingly, companies such as America Online and the Microsoft Network have done this by organizing their material into "channels," employing the familiar TV metaphor to categorize and simplify their content and technology and to perhaps compete with television.
The companies are developing their own programming, changing to revenue models that depend on advertising and marketing much like TV and trying to appeal more to the mass audience by making their services easier to use.
Mr. Buxton thinks that the Internet will not be a threat to television but a "complementary technology," as has already been shown by TV networks offering additional interactive information via the Internet on events like the death of Diana.
"You're not only using the Web to receive the story but also have input into things," he says. "The technology is just an amplifier."