Hype List
1. Multiuser Games
Build an interactive digital world, and they will come. At least that's what the online services seem to be hoping as the trickle of announcements of multiuser, graphical, immersive worlds becomes a flood. But the question is: Who wants to participate in the kind of sterile, cartoony world that companies like CompuServe and Prodigy are doomed to create? Perhaps a few – just as there are people willing to live in Orange County, California – but the rest will want to move into grittier, less-planned online worlds. This new digital landscape will not offer architects or urban planners the jobs they're really angling for.
2. Cable Modems
The cable industry continues its search for relevancy in the '90s. Disillusioned by the failure of video-on-demand, the industry has come up with a new strategy – cable modems. The dream is to use the existing cable network to bring high-speed Net connectivity to the home. While in theory the cable network can handle transmission speeds that leave phone lines in the dust, in reality much of the network will need to be refurbished to support such data transmission. Nonetheless, the specter of cable modems should help to spur on ISDN deployment.
Current Position Position Last Month Months on List
| Multiuser Games| 1 | 5 | 2
| Cable Modems| 2 | – | 1
| VRML| 3 | – | 1
| Direct Broadcast Satellites| 4 | 3 | 2
| Enigmatic Multimedia| 5 | – | 1
3. VRML
VRML (virtual reality modeling language), which brings support for 3-D graphics to the Web, exhibits two flaws guaranteed to land any technology on the Hype List. First, it uses the term virtual reality without irony. Second, VRML advocates claim that 3-D graphics are somehow better than 2-D. They're not. Look at the failure of everything from holograms to 3-D movies. The only people who want 3-D television – or 3-D Web pages – are technologists impressed with their own skills.
4. Direct Broadcast Satellites
The recent history of media is about the rise of interactive media capable of targeting narrow audiences. That's what makes DBS, the new satellite technology that beams 150 channels of digital TV to the home, such a throwback. Not only is DBS asymmetric – able to dump data but not receive any – it is also unable to provide local, regional content. That's a recipe for homogeneous pap. But it's also just what advertisers, accustomed to the good old days of monolithic audiences, want.
5. Enigmatic Multimedia
After struggling to make multimedia easy to use, we now have a backlash: CD-ROMs and Web home pages that try to be user-unfriendly. They appear like alien artifacts: full of enigmatic images, mysterious purpose, and foreboding controls. (Sort of like Unix but with better art.) Still, this new multimedia movement is a welcome antidote to the saccharine helpfulness of Microsoft's Bob. Who knows, designers may stumble on new ways to make humans easier for computers to use!
-Steve G. Steinberg (hype-list@wired.com)
