I’ve been very disappointed with the internet. I hate to talk about the good old days, but I remember when I would occasionally find a really nerdy & interesting website. It would normally be hidden in page 3 of a hotbot search. It would feature horrible color choices, grainy small photos and a lot of passion.
Nowadays, that kind of website has passed. Sure, there are a few interesting blog posts that get passed around, but it’s rare that someone creates their own website on their own terms. Moreover, those sites tend to be buried so deep on Google as to be non-existant. Instead, I get 1249 websites that are either like Amazon or Ebay, trying to sell me something. The net is now everything I was trying to escape from the real world.
That brings me to Google TV. Already, I hate TV because of the moronic adverts and even worse programs. Now Google wants to integrate their flawed search engine onto my TV. Why?
If we really want to take these crusty old mediums, like TV, and inspire people, we need to get away from the model of advertising at all cost. I think that’s why iTunes has succeeded. Sure…today it has fallen down to advertising Justin Beiber or Lady Gaga on the front page, but when I flip to my catalogue, I am confronted with a simple list of stuff I like.
I don’t know if Apple TV is going to be like that, but if it is, it will be the eventual winner.
The Consumer Electronics Show next month in Las Vegas was meant to be the great coming-out party for Google’s new software for televisions, which adds Web video and other computer smarts to TV sets. Although Google already has a deal with Sony for its Internet TVs, other television makers — Toshiba, LG Electronics and Sharp — were prepared to flaunt their versions of the systems.
But Google has asked the TV makers to delay their introductions, according to people familiar with the company’s plans, so that it can refine the software, which has received a lukewarm reception. The late request caught some of the manufacturers off guard. And it illustrates the struggles Google faces as it tries to expand into the tricky, unfamiliar realm of consumer electronics, and drum up broad interest in a Web-based TV product that consumers want.
This much is clear: Google TV may be interesting to technophiles, but it’s not for average people. On the great timeline of television history, Google TV takes an enormous step in the wrong direction: toward complexity.
Most people, he said, would rather “just stream Steve Jobs’ authorized movies” than connect to an open public space that would almost certainly become demonized as a haven for terrorism and lawlessness.
“If we want to have a true peer-to-peer network, we now understand what it might look like,” Rushkoff said. “If you want to have something real, we’ve got to build it from scratch.”
http://rushkoff.com/2010/12/13/interview-the-internet-was-never-free/