Avatars: The computer-graphic characters continue down the sordid path toward success. Personalized online representations of people have gone from the utopian world of academic papers to the baser climes of The Palace – where avatars spend most of their time rubbing up against each other – and now to Madison Avenue. The buzz at Siggraph 97 was all about avatar licensing opportunities. Forget Barbie backpacks, say hello to merchandise inscribed with digital characters like Floops and Bliss. Just as unrealistic a body image, but now in pixelated 3-D.
Multicasting: Seldom has a technology been so routinely hyped yet so consistently ignored. Networking vendors and analysts agree that IP multicast – which saves bandwidth by sending data once to a group instead of sending a separate copy to each person – is important, desirable, and coming "real soon." But for the last five years, it hasn't. Now things will finally change, say the technology's true believers (really!), thanks to Microsoft's NetMeeting, which sends huge video streams to groups of people. Advocates are overlooking one detail: with the coming of Gigabit Ethernet, network managers are trying to find ways to use all the bandwidth, not save it.
Kickboxing: Physical fitness, like other activities that promise more transcendence than they can possibly provide, swings from fad to fad. From Jazzercise to spinning, fitness buffs have told themselves that the newest workout is somehow different. This time, gym junkies won't stop out of boredom; this time, they really will lose 10 pounds. The latest craze is kickboxing. It's martial arts without all the Eastern philosophy guff, or aerobics without the embarrassing leotard, depending on how you look at it. Either way, any habit that is enjoyed by Jean-Claude Van Damme and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is one best avoided.
DVD-RAM: Despite fervid hopes that DVD players would give the consumer electronic industry the same boost as VCRs and CD machines once did, DVDs have more in common with failed formats such as laserdiscs and DAT. The reason isn't tough to figure: DVD players can't record, they're expensive, and software is practically nonexistent. Vendors are belatedly addressing the first problem with DVD-RAM, but this still misses the mark. Because video must go through an expensive encoding process before it can be stored on disc, DVD-RAM will be useful only for backing up computer data. And as any VCR salesperson can tell you, recording porn is the real killer app.
Online Chat: The past few months have seen half a dozen Internet chat start-ups secure venture capital, release simple software programs that allow two people to type to each other over the Net, and then send out press releases like crazy – as they watch said programs disappear without a trace. This flurry of entrepreneurial activity was set off by the "discovery" that the most popular part of America Online is its chat rooms. But this observation ignores two crucial facts. One, it's mainly people new to the Net who indulge in much online chat – and most of these people are on AOL. Two, telephone calls are both cheap and a hell of a lot easier than typing.
This article originally appeared in the November issue of Wired magazine.
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