5. Broadcast or Narrowcast? [Next | Previous | Contents]

Message on Medium

Marshall McLuhan in his book Understanding Media, stated: “in a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message.” [1] He goes on to explain his famous conclusion: “‘the medium is the message’ because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.” [2] The Electronic Highway as a medium will shape the message as profoundly as any other medium.

The Electronic Highway will continue to carry the media which are common today (telephone, data, radio, and television) but will also support the new media which are beginning to emerge. These media will fill a void in an area which the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications for Japan has identified (see the blank area in the figure below). [3] This area is the one in which innovations in communications will have the greatest impact.

In the figure, the vertical axis indicates the length of time between the origination of the information and its reception. The horizontal axis indicates the size of audience the information normally reaches for a given medium. “A blank area clearly emerges for topical information of a moderately specialized (i.e., small audience) kind; it is into this empty terrain that the new electronic information systems will make their appearance during their pioneering period.” [4]

From the Church’s perspective, the area in the lower left portion of the figure is the one of most concern to an individual congregation. Communication within a congregation is supported by personal conversation, the telephone, and hand delivery (essentially the same as a courier) of documents such as church bulletins and prayer calendars. Above the blank area, are the published media most commonly used by the Church (books and special purpose magazines). In addition, in this area are other media used by many churches: classroom instruction, CDs (or records and tapes), and movies (or video tapes).

To the right of the blank area are the media which reach large audiences. The Church (for example, as denominations, but only a few individual congregations) currently uses radio and TV and has some large-audience magazines (e.g., Christianity Today, which recently went on-line [5]). To a limited extent the Church also uses the newspaper media in the form of congregational advertisements on the religion page.

The blank area represents media which reach limited audiences (100 to 10,000 people) with information which is less than 12 hours old. At present this void is not filled by TV, radio and urban commercial newspapers as they are too expensive to use for reaching audiences of this size. Special purpose magazines and books can be produced by the Church for small audiences at a per unit cost which is not significantly greater than the per unit cost for large audiences. However, it takes longer than 12 hours to prepare a document and distribute it through the mail.

E-mail will be one of the technologies to fill this void. E-mail is generally oriented to smaller audiences and falls within the lower left quadrant of the figure, along with telephone conversation, and personal conversation. But there are two emerging media which will also ride the Electronic Highway and seem to be likely candidates for filling this void. These are electronic publishing and electronic bulletin boards.

These two media will tend to collapse the outer edges of the figure into the blank area. Electronic publishing, which will eventually replace conventional publishing, will allow a person to prepare high quality pages while composing the text. Type-set text produced on one screen will be ready for display on any other viewer’s screen within seconds of the last correction. This will collapse the time frame for producing special interest, weekly and monthly magazines. The top and upper-right edges of the figure will be pushed down toward the blank area as the time to produce text is reduced.

The electronic bulletin board along with electronic publishing will provide many of the services such as advertisements, classified ads, and local news, now provided by newspapers. The audience for an electronic bulletin board can be as large or as small as desired, with very little incremental cost for additional members of the audience. This will tend to collapse some of the information currently provided by newspapers into the blank area. In fact it is likely that newspapers will disappear entirely during the time frame under consideration in this book. “Newsprint is doomed, ... within five to 10 years, portable tablet-computers will be displaying electronic text pleasing to the eye.” [6]

Much of the right-hand edge of the figure will also collapse into the blank area with the arrival of the econosis discussed in chapter 7. Radio has already undergone changes since the introduction of TV, and has found a niche as background sound. It is unlikely that its role will change much over the next twenty five years. However, the role of TV will likely change. It will still be called upon for live broadcasting of news and some entertainment, but will be replaced as the source of some forms of entertainment such as movie viewing. Movies will still be viewed on screens in the home (i.e., televisions), but the signal will not be broadcast. Rather, each viewer will select from an information supplier the entertainment he wishes to view at the time he wishes to view it. Some short-term information such as news will also be obtained from database services rather than from TV broadcasting.

The collapse of the right-hand of the figure into the blank area will be very significant. The Electronic Highway will provide for the development of new media which will likely replace some of today’s broadcast media — magazines (e.g., Time and Newsweek) and newspapers — and modify significantly television as a broadcast media. This change will result from the introduction of technologies — E-mail, electronic publishing, electronic bulletin boards and database services — which will allow information to be narrowcast [7], [8] rather than broadcast. The new technologies are going to transform the role of the old technologies, and also transform society. For as McLuhan said: “the medium is the message.”

Paperless Society

The rising cost of moving correspondence, bills and other communication in the form of paper will be the primary factor in the change to E-mail from postal systems and courier systems. It also will be rising costs which will push our society to paperless communication for other forms of information.

As the cost of distributing and delivering heavy piles of newsprint continues to rise, the operating profit of newspapers will disappear. [9] In the U.S., the circulation of newspapers has declined from 124% [10] of households in 1950, to 63% today. [11] This decline in readership has resulted in some advertisers (e.g., supermarkets and department stores) moving to other means of reaching their audiences such as the door-to-door distribution of flyers. If the cost of a newsprint-based newspaper continues to increase, the additional cost will be reflected in increased costs to both advertisers and readers. This will encourage even more advertisers to seek alternatives to the daily newspaper. [12]

The trend away from a newsprint-based newspaper has already begun. “By early 1981, the Toronto Globe and Mail was using a domestic satellite to send facsimile pages to Vancouver and Montreal.” [13] The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper and is available across the country in every city early each morning. It is sent out from Toronto in digital form and printed in regional printing plants in remote locations. USA Today in similar fashion, is broadcast throughout the U.S., and printed locally. It is only a short step from making a newspaper available electronically in remote printing shops, to making it available to anyone with access to the publisher via a communication link.

In fact the Globe and Mail was a pioneer in making the contents of the newspaper available at personal computers. Since November of 1977 the entire text of the Globe and Mail, including extensive indexing, has been available on-line trough a service called InfoGlobe. An abbreviated version of the Globe and Mail along with a Boston and LA newspaper are available through Pointcast, an electronic newspaper service. However, most people who read the Globe and Mail still read it in paper form while eating breakfast, on the train while commuting to work, or at their desks in the office to start the morning.

Newspaper publishers are moving beyond just making available the text portion of their publications. For example the San Jose Mercury News is available in full coloured layout (including such things as weather maps, photographs and charts) in electronic form either through direct dial or through CompuServe or America Online. The ‘newspaper’ can be down-loaded through the Electronic Highway to a PC and viewed off line. For those wanting to craft their own ‘newspaper’ commercial software called Journalist is available. It can be used with CompuServe (for example) to search for, and download, a selection of news articles from many publishers and assemble these into a custom layout for viewing. [14]

The development of electronic publishing is already becoming a reality. There are a number of specialist fields which have moved to paperless forms of information circulation. [15], [16] The intelligence community in the United States as early as 1972 was a major user of systems which permitted preparation, indexing, distribution and retrieval of extensive quantities of information. [17] In some scientific research and medical and engineering disciplines, articles are submitted electronically. The articles are sent to reviewers, electronically. Then the editor prepares the accepted articles for publication at his terminal or PC and makes the latest issue of the publication available to all subscribers over an electronic network. Those who need paper copies can always print them when they wish; but from composition to final consumption, it is not necessary to use paper.

The book publishing industry is moving in a similar direction. Most authors today are using word processors to prepare their manuscripts. Accepted manuscripts can now be made available to publishers in digital form. The publishers can edit the text on computers and add typesetting information, and submit the digitized text to the printers. The technology is also available today for delivering this digital text to subscribers.

Of course important questions relating to royalties and copyrights [18] need to be worked out before text in this form will become widely available. And there are also some technical problems at the display end which must first be solved before digital delivery of publications will become the norm.

It is uncomfortable to sit at a computer display (with 24 lines of 80 columns) and read large quantities of uniformly sized text. It is easier to scan the headlines or section headings of a large page and focus in on the items of interest to read in more detail. Also, current computer screens in wide use do not accommodate high resolution graphics or photographic images. This makes it difficult to supplement text with illustrations. These two problems may lead some to ask where is the promised coming of the supposed revolution in textual news dissemination.

One writer with degrees in linguistics and library science has said that “the computer is superfluous” [19] since it does not provide information that the average householder wants and not in the form he wants it. Another writer has said “certainly paper will not vanish. Books are marvels of easy access.” [20] I think that these comments are too simplistic and do not show an understanding of how quickly computer technology is changing. The devices for viewing text will improve significantly over the next two decades (as I pointed out previously in the section entitled Plug Compatible) and the cost of providing paper copies of text (especially highly time-sensitive text such as that found in newspapers) will increase substantially over the cost of providing text in electronic form. In a few years it will be easier and cheaper to obtain and use an electronic ‘newspaper’ or ‘book’ than it is to obtain a paper one today.

In the past few years desktop publishing has become one of the hottest areas of development in the computer industry. The flexibility and functionality of the software available for desktop publishing is astounding. [21] Using software which costs less than $500, a person can typeset a document (such as a newsletter, a policy manual or a full-length book) and print multiple copies for local distribution, or print a camera-ready copy for use in offset printing. I have such capability in my home, and the whole set-up cost less than $5,000 (including computer, software, and a high quality laser printer).

It will soon be possible for any one with a computer to prepare in his home, publications (e.g., a news ‘magazine’, or a ‘book’) containing text, coloured graphics and photographs, and accompanying animation and sound effects. He will be able to send these publications to any other person connected into the electronic communication network.

A person wishing to view the material which he sends will begin by using what is referred to as ‘greeking’. This expression comes from the commonly used phrase ‘its all Greek to me’. Greeking in a desktop publishing system permits a person to view an entire page. The finer details (such as small print) are replaced with a grey shading. This allows the viewer to read only the headlines or section headings of a document. He can then zoom in on the portion of text that he wishes to display in more detail.

Other sophisticated methods will be developed for use when viewing publications on a computer display. For example, the headlines could be presented as one level of indexing. The next level could display a short abstract of the text. The next level could provide the text itself. Going to deeper levels could allow access to background documentation (e.g., footnotes), and even to source documents, spoken speeches which were quoted, or sound examples (e.g., music) which were referred to in the text, and video segments. There will be a convergence of interactive computing with the textual news sources feeding newspapers, and the ‘live’ dimension of television video. [22] This technology is called hypermedia, and is discussed further in chapter 7.

Electronic publishing benefits from the intangible nature of the digital medium which makes it easy to copy and distribute information. The production of the original text is a fixed cost, which is essentially the same regardless of the type of publication. Even excluding the capital cost, it is becoming cheaper to use word processors and desktop publishing systems than typesetting and manual paste-up. And once the equivalent of camera-ready pages is produced, the cost of electronic duplication and distribution is far cheaper than printing and shipping printed documents.

In addition to lower cost, paperless publications have the advantage of reliability. You would not have to wait for a late newspaper or retrieve a soggy one from the front steps, or miss an issue of your favourite magazine because a sorter in the post office decided to place it on his coffee table. Computer communication systems can be set up to guarantee delivery. If the communication network is inoperable, the computer will try again later, and keep trying until the document is successfully transmitted. The computer sending the document will wait for an acknowledgement message from the receiving machine indicating a complete reception before it finally concludes the transmission.

Using techniques such as those being developed today for desktop publishing, and techniques not yet invented or even dreamed of, it will become possible to provide an electronic ‘newspaper’ which will be easy to view on a display screen about the size of a clipboard. In the morning you will connect the portable display unit to the information network and store in seconds the latest news. You will then view this information on your light-powered portable display unit anywhere you wish to carry it. Within a few years you will be able to function in a paperless society.

The Wittenberg Door

October 31st, 1517 is a milestone in the history of the New Testament Church. On that day Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. However, Luther was doing nothing out of the ordinary, for this was common practice in his day. The cathedral door was the bulletin board of the late Middle Ages. He had little idea that within weeks his theses would be translated and printed in almost every European language, and that from his simple action would arise a wind to sweep clean the Church.

The bulletin boards of the modern era are newspapers, radio and TV, and more recently the World Wide Web. Through advertisements in newspapers or on television, unions, concerned citizens groups, political parties, and special interest groups are able to present their position for consideration. However these two media are ‘broadcast’ media and as such are generally expensive to use. They reach a large and diverse audience causing the impact of ‘posted’ items to be diluted. This makes it difficult to bring together the parties which are affected by the advertisement. In addition, it is usually not possible through these media to carry on a meaningful debate on the issues presented.

In a few years we will see the wide-spread use of a public bulletin board technology, built around the Web, which will provide both a means of narrow-casting a message and a means for fostering debate. This technology is already being introduced in E-mail systems, in some of the information utilities, and occasionally as stand-alone services which can be accessed for the purpose of query and discussion.

Community Memory in San Francisco was apparently the first computerized bulletin board, It appeared in the early 1970s as the product of a non-profit organization. Terminals connected to the bulletin board were installed in the public library and in a health food store near the Berkeley campus. There are now over 50,000 publicly accessible computerized bulletin boards in North America (up from 10,000 in 1987 [23]) and 92,000 worldwide. [24] They are the trendy communication medium for the 1990s. [25] The largest of these is the Usenet which has about 2 million readers. [26] Most of the computerized bulletin boards today are implemented on commercial services such as America Online, or on the Internet.

A computerized bulletin board has a number of advantages over bulletin boards in any other medium.

• The posting cost for an audience of 10 million is no more than for an audience of one, this makes the medium accessible and inexpensive. [27]

• Communities sharing common goals can be formed around reciprocal special interest forums on the bulletin board. This is not possible with one-way media such as magazines (except to a limited extent through the letters to the editor). [28]

• It is an excellent medium for perishable information (e.g., announcements of meetings, or the availability of unsold tickets)  [29] yet it allows for the recall of information as often as desired (as opposed to radio or TV).

• It allows responses to be posted and made available to all viewers, thus encouraging debate on an issue.

• Debate can be carried out on the electronic network with alternate opinions and ideas being posted as additions to the original posting. Usage is not restricted, anyone may post items on the bulletin board.

• Forceful personalities who dominate live brainstorming sessions, lose their ‘pulpits’ when the discussions go electronic. This lets the participants focus on the ideas rather than on the people generating the ideas. [30]

• Messages can be selected based on profiles used to classify material posted on the bulletin board. This allows participants to review only items which are of potential interest to them.

There are however some serious problems with electronic bulletin boards. One of the major problems is the ease with which a computerized bulletin board can be abused. For example, the police officer responsible for the Metropolitan Toronto Police’s public bulletin board indicated that he was aware of solicitation by male and female prostitutes ‘advertising’ in some computerized bulletin board systems. [31] Also, controlling junk mail is a problem in E-mail and computerized bulletin board systems. The cost of general broadcasting, or of posting for general retrieval, is very low when compared with the cost of postage, and it is tempting for an advertiser to ‘hit’ everyone rather than only those whose profiles he would normally select.

Personalized filters will be introduced in E-mail and computerized bulletin boards to help control the large number of items mailed and posted. [32] A filter will allow readers to peruse only items which have a profile consistent with a predefined set of attributes. These attributes can be ones coded into the ‘envelope’ of the item posted in the bulletin board, or they can be key words in the text. The attributes and key words will cause items to be included in (or excluded from) a selection.

It will take time for the electronic bulletin board to become widely accepted. However, it will become as common as TV is today. Within a decade it will have become a social ‘necessity’.

Mount Ebal

The introduction of E-mail, electronic publishing, and electronic bulletin boards will introduce a new era of inexpensive communication with audiences of any size and composition. For example, the cost of posting a full-page document on an electronic bulletin board for an audience of one million recipients will be less than today’s cost for a small classified ad in a metropolitan newspaper. Similarly, the cost of mailing one million items via the electronic network will be less than one-tenth of the cost of sending the same number of items by the current postal system. This will be both a curse and a blessing for the Church.

Using this inexpensive medium, any special interest group, cult or religion will have access to bulletin boards for posting, or to the electronic mailbox of everyone on the network. When the power of the Electronic Highway is ‘discovered’, great confusion will arise from the mass of information that will be published, posted, and mailed.

It is also possible that the government will attempt to regulate the content of information flowing on the Electronic Highway. If they do, it is likely that religious publishing, advertising, posting or mailing will be restricted. However, as discussed in the previous chapter, controlling the message content on the electronic network is going to be very difficult. It will be more difficult than controlling what people carry in their cars on the highways of North America.

Instead of government control, people will purchase or develop filters [33] for controlling the information they receive. Some of the filters that will be developed will include:

• Lists of information sources from which information will be accepted. If the source does not appear in the list the filter will not select the information from the knowledge base, view the posting, or accept the mail. This will be equivalent to having an unlisted telephone number but will work in reverse.

• Key words which will trigger rejection or acceptance of text. [34] The text of a document could be scanned by ‘intelligent’ software and rejected. For example, a person not wishing to view Christian material of any kind could reject any document with combinations of these words Bible, Christ, Jesus and salvation, unless the source of the document was already in a list for immediate acceptance.

• Abstract viewing. Documents on the Electronic Highway will usually have a short one- or two-line abstract. It will be possible to read items which pass filtering in abstract mode first, before they are either rejected or read in detail.

Narrow-casting and filtering will bring about the complete ‘privatization of information’. [35] This will compound further trends already at work in our society. The quest for privacy has become a major feature of late 20th century North American society. The private automobile is a standard feature of almost every home, rich or poor. Nuclear families often replace extended families. Entertainment is private with video-cassette players replacing movie going, personal TVs replacing family viewing, and personal portable stereos replacing the kitchen radio. Religion also is becoming a private matter, which is expected not to be displayed in public.

Privatization of information will increase the isolation of individuals and families, making their need for the love of Christ more immediate, but at the same time it will make the public presentation of the Gospel more difficult. This may finally bring the Church to the realization that the most effective method of reaching the hordes of spiritually lost is through what some have termed ‘friendship evangelism’. The Church must reach out personally in friendship and love to a society suffocating in its self-created solitary confinement.

Mount Gerizim

“A man is known by the company he keeps.” This old quip can be rephrased for the 20th century as: “A man is known by the books he has authored.” It seems that the more books a person has written the more he is viewed with respect and as an authority. This respect of men for their publication list certainly affects the secular academic institutions where there appears to be much pressure to publish. Sadly, the Church also plays the same game.

However, the nature of publishing is going to change. It will soon be possible for almost anyone to compose a document at a PC and format this in a highly professional manner. Desk top publishing systems (such as Ventura and Aldus Page Maker) are able to drive professional quality laser printers (at densities of up to 1000 dots per inch). The output from these systems is indistinguishable from that produced by the largest publishing house.

When software such as this becomes common and available to the average person, it will be possible for anyone to publish a document such as an article, essay, brochure, pamphlet, or book. Once a writer has prepared the text of his document he will have access to the same network for distribution as will be available to the commercial publishing houses. In fact, it will be difficult to distinguish between high quality documents published by an individual and those published by a commercial publisher. The ease with which documents will be distributed, copied electronically, and viewed on large high resolution screens will make printing unnecessary.

In addition, the cost of printed copies will be far higher than the cost of electronic copies. Furthermore it will be practically impossible to prevent copying of documents. Today the cost to photocopy an entire book is probably about the same as the cost to purchase the book. To a certain extent this limits the amount of illegal copying of books. However with music, videos, and computer software, copying is almost always cheaper than purchasing the published original. Copying in these areas has almost become a matter of course, although in many cases it is still illegal. Private copying of electronic documents will fall into the same class.

Electronic publishing is going to put low-price and open-access pressure on commercial publishing houses and necessitate the re-definition of the legality of copying. Initially there will be institutional resistance to this new form of communication. But as individuals begin to publish on the network the concept of publishing will dramatically change. I believe that new forms of publishing will be a benefit to the Church for the following reasons:

• It will be easier than it is today for people to prepare and distribute information within the Christian community, and within the wider population. It is possible that the publisher as a middle-man will be eliminated entirely. However, publishers may still have a role to play as editors and as bodies putting their stamp of authority on a publication.

• The editorial control of the publishers will be diminished. This will mean that publishing houses will lose some (if not all) of their control over the types of material which are put on the market. This will be a good counter measure in an industry that is dominated by theological liberalism and in love with depthless pulp.

• The commercial nature of writing and publishing will change. It is probably going to be very difficult for an author to make a living from his writing, since it may be impossible to control the copying of documents and therefore impossible to guarantee the payment of royalties to an author and costs to a publisher. This may mean that those who write will be more likely to write because they believe that they have something to say, and less because they expect to gain financially. This will take us back to the early days of the printing press where “the creative writer, the man of ideas and inspiration, wrote his books because he wished to express himself and not to make money.”  [36]

• It will be considerably cheaper to publish. About the only significant cost will be time. The actual preparation and distribution of a document will be inconsequential. This will make it possible to proclaim biblical truths on even the most limited budget. There will be nothing to stop a local congregation from publishing a neighbourhood newsletter except a lack of motivation.

• Since anyone will be able to publish, there will be a reduction in the amount of awe that seems to accompany those who have successfully published a book. This will not diminish the importance of good communication and substance in content. Those with important messages for the Church will still be recommended on the network and heard.

A while ago I looked over some material published by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. In looking at this material I was amazed on two counts. First, I was amazed at how carefully they disguised their false doctrines. Second, I was amazed at the professional nature of the writing and presentation of the material. This is a marked change over the poor quality of a few years ago. This presents a problem for the Church, since:

Too many people seem to believe that if it is in print it must be true, and it must be every bit as important and urgent as claimed by the author.

The false cults certainly know the power of print. Unfortunately, among evangelicals, many erroneous interpretations of Scripture and unbiblical programs have gained the support of sincere but mistaken people. Because print comes across with such an air of finality, unbiblical ideas have become national institutions. [37]

But at the same time there is now a great opportunity for the Church. In the past many congregations and denominations holding consistently to biblical truth have had no hope of publishing material with the professional appearance and quality that some of the cults have been able to achieve. The cost would have bankrupted them very quickly. But the Electronic Highway will act as a great equalizer. The cost of using the Electronic Highway, electronic publishing and public bulletin boards will be within financial reach of almost any congregation or arm of the true Church. Satan will hate this. For money alone will not be able to buy a hearing. The truth will be available as readily as falsehood. It also will be packaged as professionally. For those who bother to look into religion, the distinguishing attribute between truth and falsehood will not be superficial. Both messages will be on the same medium. By their works they will be judged, and the truth of the Gospel will stand.

Will the Electronic Highway be used for evangelism? Using it for bulk mailing will probably not be effective, as people will soon learn to filter out ‘junk’ mail when it is not of interest to them. But there may be ways in which the Electronic Highway will be used to spread the Gospel. For example, “in one project testing the field of electronic communication for church use, the Lutheran Church in America supplies a weekly electronic newsletter to The Source, a computer communication data base” [38] accessed by the public.

But as a tool for evangelism, the greatest difficulty in using the Electronic Highway will be the problem of attracting strangers. The challenge which will face the Church is how to provide an information service which will be of interest to the average non-Christian and will also give an opportunity for directing the user to spiritual questions and answers.

For example, in Toronto a Baptist pastor started an ‘evangelical electronic bulletin board system’ called Bible Talk. The system allowed users to submit questions for discussion and answers. The pastor answered some of the questions and called on others on the network to assist with the preparation of answers. He said that the service gave young people the chance to ask questions in an environment which they found non-threatening. In addition, the text of the Bible was available. There was also a section with information to help young people deal with drug abuse, a section for announcing upcoming church activities, a section for placing prayer requests, a number of games, and an area for private and public correspondence. [39] The same ideas can be implemented easily today on the Word Wide Web.

“Communication takes place only between persons within a common context; in this context they may share a common aim, a common problem, a common curiosity, a common interest. In other words they must share a community of interest.” [40] Within a church denomination a bulletin board service provides an effective means for members to keep in touch, particularly in large congregations or at the regional or national levels. Examples of broader-based Christian services include the Christian Community Network (http://www.christcom.net), Seed Sowers (http://www.saved.com), and Gospel Communication Network (http://www.gospelcom.net) which includes over forty organizations such as Inter Varsity, the International Bible Society and the Navigators. This form of networking works well because the members share a community of interest.

For the Church, the Electronic Highway will likely be of primary benefit as a communication medium for those already within its scope. Reaching the unchurched on the Electronic Highway will probably be more difficult than reaching them through radio and TV. However, I wait to be surprised. Creative individuals working by the grace of God may bring this invention of men into the service of God, for the salvation of souls.

Copyright © 1997, James R. Hughes. All rights reserved.

Endnotes [Next | Previous | Contents]

[1] Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man (New York: Signet Books, 1964), p. 23. Back

[2] Ibid., p. 24 Back

[3] Adapted from: Anthony Smith, Goodbye Gutenberg: The Newspaper Revolution of the 1980s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 17. Back

[4] Ibid. Back

[5] “Christianity Today Goes On-line,” Christianity Today, May 16, 1994. Back

[6] John A. Adam, “Interactive Multimedia: Applications, Implications,” IEEE Spectrum, March, 1993. Back

[7] David Lyon, The Silicon Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), p. 58. Back

[8] Smith, op. cit., p. 275. Back

[9] Ibid., p. 73. Back

[10] Many households bought both a morning and an evening paper. Back

[11] Gary Stix, “Extra! Extra! Newspaper Publishers Reinvade Cyberspace,” Scientific American, February, 1994. Back

[12] Smith, op. cit., p. 74. Back

[13] Ian Reinecke, Electronic Illusions: A Skeptic’s View of Our High-Tech Future (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 87. Back

[14] Jon Pepper, “Delivering the Electronic Page,” Popular Science, September 1993. Back

[15] Smith, op. cit., p. 119. Back

[16] Edward A. Fox, “ACM Press Database and Electronic Products — New Services for the Information Age,” Communications of the ACM, August, 1988. Back

[17] Philip Morrison, “Books — A review of Toward Paperless Information Systems,” Scientific American, April, 1979. Back

[18] I discuss the issue of copyrights more fully in chapter 7 Information Implosion. Back

[19] Deborah C. Sawyer, “Notes on a Revolution: Or Why the People Would Rather Eat Cake,” NOW, December, 1981. Back

[20] Morrison, op. cit. Back

[21] “Electronic Publishing Technologies,” IEEE Computer, January, 1988. Back

[22] Eric M. Hoffert and Greg Gretsch, “The Digital News System at EDUCOM: A Convergence of Interactive Computing, Newspapers, Television and High-Speed Networks,” Communications of the ACM, April, 1991. Back

[23] Bill Musgrave, “Bulletin Boards and Business,” Datamation, January 15, 1987. Back

[24] Larry Press, “The Internet and Interactive Television,” Communications of the ACM, December, 1993. Back

[25] Thomas B. Allen, “Bulletin Boards of the 21st Century are Coming of Age,” Smithsonian, September, 1988. Back

[26] Paul Effert, “New Open Channels, Old-Fashioned Societies,” IEEE Computer, April, 1992. Back

[27] Smith, op. cit., p. 256. Back

[28] Doug Schuler, “Community Networks: Building a New Participatory Medium,” Communications of the ACM, January, 1994. Back

[29] Smith, op. cit., pp. 256, 261. Back

[30] Michael F. Wolff, “Brainstorming With PCs,” IEEE Spectrum, November, 1987. Back

[31] Alison Cunliffe, “This Electronic Bulletin Board Plays Games, Alerts You to Scams,” Toronto Star, May 17, 1987. Back

[32] Ted M. Lau, “A Catalog of Liberating Home Computer Concepts,” Byte, May, 1977. Back

[33] W. Malone, et al., “Intelligent Information-Sharing Systems,” Communications of the ACM, May, 1987. Back

[34] Paul S. Jacobs and Lisa F. Rau, “Scisor: Extracting Information from On-line News,” Communications of the ACM, November, 1990. Back

[35] Smith, op. cit., p. 274. Back

[36] John Carter and Percy H. Muir (eds.), Printing and the Mind of Man: The Impact of Print on Five Centuries of Western Civilization (New York: Hold, Rinehart and Winston, 1967), p. xxiii. Back

[37] Norman Street, “Power of Print,” Gospel Witness, November 19, 1987. Back

[38] John W. Bachman, Media — Wasteland or Wonderland: Opportunities and Dangers for Christians in the Electronic Age (Minneapolis: Augsburg Pub. House, 1984), p. 69. Back

[39] Joseph Hall, “Pastor Goes On-line to Access the Flock with His Bible Talk,” Toronto Star, November 12, 1986. Back

[40] Hiroshi Inose and John R. Pierce, Information Technology and Civilization (New York: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1984), p. 129. Back