Edward Tenner, a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University and the author of a forthcoming book about the unintended consequences of technology, noted that the new information technologies require publishers to master unfamiliar, resource-intensive skills. "The greater the technological possibilities of a medium, the more expensive it becomes because you need skilled people to exploit those possibilities," he said.
Enormous multinational publishers will have the resources to exploit the new technologies. Some entrepreneurial companies will also flourish (many of them will get bought up by the large conglomerates). "But someone gets cut out," he said, "and it tends to be the medium-sized and smaller publishing houses." Those companies have published important books in the past, so "that's something that concerns me."
Tenner also raised a concern about authors and editors posting academic articles online, bypassing for-profit journals. In the past, revenues from the high-priced journals have enabled many publishing houses to take a loss on speculative book projects. Without the journal subsidy, he said, some books will not be published that otherwise would have been.
In his remarks, Douglas Gomery, Professor of Journalism at the University of Maryland, stressed the financial implications of the NII. "Mass entertainment and journalism generate $100 billion a year," he said. "That's what people are getting into this business for--not to change our lives or make us happy, but to get some of that money."
Gomery said that advertising is coming to the Internet, and advertisers want to reach well-educated people with disposable income. "People who do not have money are not going to be accessed. Do you think advertisers want to access poor people?" Getting the poor online, he contended, will require some sort of cross-subsidy.
Newspapers will lose some advertising revenues to the NII, he added, and many newspapers will try to compete online. "The cost of their production will be minimal. They'll just regurgitate the newspaper they already have in hopes of generating a revenue stream."
Gomery predicted that Hollywood will thrive, with its stock of fully paid-for, readily exploitable programming. He also predicted that mass entertainment in general will increasingly resemble radio. "What's radio today? Lots of choices most people never listen to," he noted. "The average big market like Washington has 80 radio channels. The average person listens to five."
One problem, for news and entertainment alike, is monopoly. "An institution wants not just to maximize profits, but to retain control," Gomery said. "I don't want to share my profit-maximization scheme with anybody else.... And of course, that's not in the public interest." Without regulation, the marketplace may provide not today's free-wheeling Internet but a highly restrictive "Internet, Inc." that accepts only information likely to enhance its profits.
The technologies will reinforce the position of the very largest players in the media world. If there is going to be a victim, it will probably be the medium-sized publishers, including most of the larger university presses that have been very important pools of knowledge and skills.
Edward Tenner
Visiting Fellow
Princeton University
