The numbers do not lie, and they are surprising:

• The majority of households in the United States are now unmarried.
• In the United States, death rates are collapsing even faster than birth rates - once every 13 seconds versus once every 7 seconds, respectively.
• Poverty rates around the world are also falling rapidly, as a percentage of the total human population and as the total number of people afflicted. At this rate, by 2015 the number of people in extreme poverty will be less than half of that in 1981 (0.6 billion versus 1.5 billion).
• In the United States, violent crime, despite periodic short term spikes, continues a downward trend that began 13 years ago.

These changes are the direct result of scientific and technological breakthroughs over the past 20 years and the spread of education, especially to women. Of special note are new drugs and treatments that have extended life expectancies, the Internet, birth control, and wireless and cellular networks. As these technologies reach more impoverished countries, effects are immediate, creating the “leap frog” effect of developing countries adopting new technologies at a faster rate than developed countries.

It remains popular to lament about the state of the world, and extremist views of apocalypse are as widespread as ever, but as more and more people reject religion, faith, and spirituality; as more and more women are empowered; and as individuality continues to usurp community, statistics clearly reflect results that defy the most pessimistic presumptions.

Tom Merritt from CNET writes about “My fight with Amazon Unbox” and his thoughts, along with many of those commenting on the article, are predictably negative. In the blogosphere the universe centers around the individual speaking and most individuals tend to fill their space with bitching. Call it Bitch 2.0.

Amazon Unbox is the best digital download service yet since Apple added television programming for purchase through their iTunes Music Store last October. From iPod quality to DVD-quality, from one download version to two (DVD-quality and portable media player versions), from a modest selection to 200 television series and 1000 movies, from one service to many, and all of this in less than a year. This is something to bitch about?

Merritt complains that the Unbox software is too invasive and requires too much effort to install and uninstall. He complains that he cannot burn his purchases for viewing on a DVD player, and he complains that the first file downloaded was corrupted.

Merritt, and his sympathetic readers, should remember that he is an early experimenter with a service early in the existence of this industry. He should remember that just a year ago, no such extensive video service or software existed. He should remember that content producers pay money to produce content and can be forgiven for being Draconian in their first fledging attempts in a new industry. He should remember that Draconian measures always diminish with competition. He should remember that he was not forced to download the Unbox software and that his first Unbox digital download was free. He should remember that new services and software are beta whether or not they have been labeled as such.

I, on the other hand, remember what it was like before most media became available online. I remember my clunky television and the physical storage space required for VHS tapes and DVDs. I remember not having ready access to my favorite television shows and movies. I remember driving to the store to purchase content or waiting for content to arrive via snail mail. I remember watching television at a network’s preset time. I also remember the sour reception of DVDs, iPod and the iTunes Music Store, and other so-called failures. I remember less than a year ago when there were no broadband video channels supported by advertising nor burn-to-DVD services.

In spite of the negative commentary, consumers are rapidly adopting digital downloads. Competition continues to sweeten the offerings. In a year, most of the issues with current services will have been resolved or replaced.

Bitch all you want, you Bitch 2.0′ers; all you are really doing is taking for granted just how rapidly our world is changing and how far we have come.

• TransVision 2006
• University of Helsinki, Finland, Europe
• August 17-19, 2006

In May there was a series of specials called “The End” on CBC Newsworld about the end of traditional media. I finally got around to watching the first one about radio tonight, and found both a wealth of music options and, in my opinion, confirmation that terrestrial radio is dying a slow and agonizing death. The most important find was Pandora, a web service for creating your own streaming radio station.

Back in the late 1990’s while I worked at eBay, I used a vaguely similar streaming radio service. You rated songs as they came up and based on your ratings the station slowly tuned itself to your interests. This was fantastic until the music studios had the service shut down. Their argument? Adding artists and rating them meant the listener could basically listen to whatever they wanted whenever they wanted for free.

Now that the media conglomerates are finally starting to experiment and relent just a little, new web services have better options for licensing their content. Pandora allows you to start listening to music right away without setting up an account. An account gives you greater access to songs and you can listen on different computers, though only one at a time. A paid subscription (around US$36 a year) gives you ad-free access to the Pandora site.

Pandora station setup began with choosing a song or artist I like. I chose my favorite band: Fleetwood Mac. The service then began playing a Fleetwood Mac song, followed by other artists’ songs that Pandora believes are similar in sound. This similarity comes from what Pandora calls the “Music Genome Project” - a group of musicians and music experts who analyze music to capture those attributes than can relate songs together. As songs play, you give them a thumbs up or a thumbs down and the service will tailor itself based on your votes. My “Fleetwood Mac Radio” station now includes Gin Blossoms, James Taylor, Queens of the Stone Age, The Pretenders, and artists I have never heard of but who turned out to be great. You can ask Pandora “Why did you play this song?” and it will respond with something like “Based on what you have told us so far we’re playing this track because it features electric rock instrumentation, a subtle use of vocal harmony, major key tonality, electric rhythm guitars, and many other similarities identified in the music genome project.” How true

If you want more variety in your station, you add addition songs or artists and the station will search for wider ranges of music. I added another favorite band - The Weakerthans - and a different “genome” of music started to queue (leading to songs from the Beatles!) You can create separate stations for specific sounds, or stations with a wider variety of favorites across multiple genres.

All of this activity is through Flash, done correctly. Navigation is easy to figure out. Other features of Pandora include the ability to search for songs and albums for purchase on Amazon or iTunes; read more information about the song, album or artist; and send family and friends your stations and lists of bookmarked songs. You can even add your lists to your blog (something I may add here in the near future). Here is my page if you want to take a listen to my station:

http://www.pandora.com/people/rleisjr

Music options today are nearly endless. Pandora is a wonderful example with its mix of streaming favorites and new discoveries. The only thing missing is portability. The day Pandora becomes available in my car will be a box opening worth living for.

The Virtual Worlds are starting to get interesting:

• The MLB piped the All-Star game into Second Life (population 321,000).
• Transhumanists have set up an Island in Second Life call Uvvy and held a presentation there while beta testing a new voice/hand raising technology from Vivox.
• Apparel companies are selling virtual versions of their clothing before releasing the physical version in the real world.
• Habbo Hotel (population 53 million) is expanding to mobile phones with a U.S.$7.7 million investment from a Japanese company.

What I find most fascinating is that most of this activity is occurring before the Grid truly arrives. Some games and virtual worlds are hosted on local grids, but the wider merging of all of these local grids into one global Grid is still a few years away. Even without mature technological platforms, virtual worlds already rival physical countries in both economy and population.

Virtual world activity in Asia, especially South Korea, is especially promising. These are places where all demographics visit the virtual worlds, unlike the United States where teenagers and young adults dominate.

If you do not already, what features would convince you to start spending time in the virtual worlds, and what features keep you away currently? I get bored with the virtual worlds easily and annoyed by people who knock me off mountains or say bizarre things as they pass by. Also, I do not like any delay in the graphics, but there is often latency (probably my 4 year old computer’s fault).

On the flip side, I am interested in the educational opportunities offered by virtual worlds. Museums, universities, galleries, and digital representations of real world art pieces are popping up in the virtual worlds. If you can master the building skills of each virtual world, then creating your own virtual space become much more interesting. So far I have only dabbled, but building and scripting tools are becoming easier all the time.

Accessing a virtual world is free or relatively cheap, but actually building a home/island and business costs money (though far less than trying to do the same in the real world). I wonder if people will start buying or renting cheaper and smaller places in the real world while they start spending more time in the virtual worlds? There is some indication of this trend in Japan already, where people are renting “Media Immersion Pods“. Maybe we will all live in “Media Immersion Pods” a decade from now. Take care of the body’s physical needs in the real world, explore the endless landscapes and possibilities in the virtual worlds…

A recent The New York Times article published at News.com suggests that although DVD growth has slowed, the format will continue to dominate for many years to come despite competition from the high definition DVD formats, digital downloads, pay-per-view (PPV), and video on demand (VOD).

The conclusion was similar ten years ago when DVD’s were not expected to significantly replace VHS tapes for some time because of expensive hardware and limited content made available by the movie studios. Ten years later, the DVD format not only replaced VHS tapes in record time but it changed the entire video industry. Walmart’s booming DVD sales business, television shows offered by the season, reissue after reissue, and Netflix are just a few unexpected outcomes of the rapid transition that occurred.

There are several reasons why DVD’s defied expectations. When DVD’s were introduced compact discs had already become wildly popular. Consumers unexpectedly began watching DVD’s on their computers, prompting earlier than expected adoption. Television series were put out two episodes per disc until the first full season boxed sets became immediate successes. The price of hardware fell rapidly while other consumer electronics such as game consoles began adding DVD support.

Of all contenders for distribution of video content in the future, only digital downloads can equal or surpass DVD’s in impact. Experts argue that digital download services are handicapped by limited selection, lower resolution, and the late arrival of broadband to a significant number of consumers in many countries. However, these obstacles are rapidly being overcome, while the problems faces by competing formats escalate. The format war over high definition DVD’s has abruptly inhibited any chance for their success even as holographic disc technology poises to leap frog over HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. PPV and VOD are popular but limited to satellite and cable. By the time these services adapt to IP, digital downloads will have become the popular format of choice by both content providers and consumers.

The availability of legal digital movie downloads took off earlier this year when the movie studios began making their content available to Movielink and CinemaNow. Both companies are rapidly increasing selection, spurred on by the success of television and music videos in the iTunes music store in only eight months and the inevitable launch of an iTunes movie store. Google jumped into the fray early with a growing library of more obscure, independent, and cult classic movies. Amazon, Netflix, and Blockbuster are all rumored to be working on their own digital download services.

All of this activity has occurred in less than one year and this intense competition will lead to much more content and higher resolution video very soon. The success of the $1.99 per episode model of television series on iTunes in spite of the low resolution tailored for the small screen of the iPod with video, as well as the willingness of consumers to watch these video on their computer monitors, indicates any increase in resolution will be immediately matched by greater demand.

Broadband penetration continues to rise while speeds increase and competition between traditional telecommunications, cellular, wireless, satellite and utility companies heats up. The Internet itself, regardless of how we access it, continues to swallow traditional media whole. When consumers finally embrace the availability of all media at all times on the Internet, all other distribution methods will fade away, beginning with physical media.

Then, around 2010 when digital downloads become the preferred format for entertainment distribution, the real significant changes will begin. The Internet is already transforming into a globe-spanning computing, software, format, sensory, energy and distribution platform called the Grid. When the Grid arrives and nearly every technological device becomes a mere extension of the platform, media content will become available anywhere in the world at anytime on any device both inside and outside of our bodies. Downloading will not be necessary because content will simply be there, accessible at the speed of light.

DVD’s, digital downloads, and then the Grid. Ten years from now, every other format will be mere footnotes in history.

• The Singularity Summit at Stanford
• Memorial Auditorium, Standford, CA, USA
• May 13, 2006