In the earliest days of television, writers like George Orwell in 1984 and Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451 projected television as the instrumentality of a totalitarian future - a monolithic entity dispensing propaganda. And, if any of you occasionally watch Fox News, you can see they weren't that far off the mark. But here's the thing: the monolithic days of television are numbered. Actually, they've already passed - though, as yet, very few people realize this.
To understand why, we need to go back to first principles. What is television? Here's a functional definition:
Television is the capture, encoding, transmission, reception, decoding and display of moving images.
This definition applies to the Golden Age of television, and to the present era. Yet the definition of every word in the definition of television has changed, because of the introduction of digital production, encoding, transmission, reception, decoding and display technologies.
Redefining Television
I'm pleased to announce that VRML creator and all-around visionary Mark Pesce has joined Mindjack's ever-growing stable of writers. His first article, Redefining Television, is an insightful examination of the state and future of the medium. Here's a snippet:
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