The why of tech
The why of tech
Remember all the fuss about Napster? The group of no-good techno-geeks that wrote a program that allowed kids to trade copyrighted music with paying for it? At any rate, that's the story the record companies want you to believe. Why digital
scares big businessThe truth is Napster is a company that demonstrated to the entire world that record companies have a stronghold on the multibillion dollar music industry that can be broken with a few computers and a program designed by a college dropout.
In just a few months, millions of people were getting the EXACT same quality of music that record companies sell you, without the record companies. And if they are no longer needed as middlemen, the consumer can pay a lot less and the artists can make a lot more. No wonder the Fat Cats wrangled up artists to sue on their behalf.
The point is: Every time man digitizes one of the processes that involve the conveyance of information, enormous progress is made.
Consider good old vinyl records. While much cheaper and easier than getting Beethoven to play in your living room, their analog nature make them susceptible to a number of faults. For example, they require record players that spin at the right RPM, they require a good needle to interpret all the grooves, the surface of the record itself must be never be damaged in anyway, and most importantly, it is exponentially more expensive to make even slight improvements in quality.
Almost twenty years ago, CDs were created to digitize part of that process. By converting the information on recordings from analog to digital, an enormous advance was made: People could listen to music of the exact same quality the most expensive and advanced studio equipment could record. Because all the information is zeros and ones, it is relatively cheap to have near-perfect sound quality.
The second revolution came in the form of MP3 -- the file type traded by Napster users -- which contains CD-quality music in one-tenth the space.
While CDs contain digital information, the problem is the CD itself is still analog: It has to spin in a machine at a particular speed in order for the music to be played. And more importantly, as analog media CDs have to be manufactured, distributed and sold through stores to the consumer. This represents a great expense passed to the consumer and shown as profits to the records companies, delivery trucks and record stores -- not to the artists themselves.
With MP3s and the Internet, all those middlemen are eliminated. In the time it would take me to drive to the store, buy a Metallica CD and dive home, I could have downloaded it from a site that charged me $7, and gave $5 to the artist. Besides being cheaper, all digital saves gas, wear on my truck, and the frustration of yet another person driving up Piikoi on Friday afternoon. Not to mention all the expense and resources consumed to manufacture and deliver all those CDs to all those stores that didn't have to be built in the first place. No wonder millions flocked to Napster.
More appropriately, no wonder there is so much fuss about digital. The trick is to understand it for what it is, not what moneymaking parties would have you believe.
Steve Jefferson is a Honolulu-based freelance writer
and section editor for InfoWorld. He can be
reached at: stevej@lava.net