AV Technology - November/December 2008 - (Page 35)

OPINION THE WAY I SEE IT: BECOMING AN INTERNET NATIVE The internet is not just another telecommunications service — it represents the idea that we can create our own solutions. SO WHAT’S HOLDING US BACK? By Bob Frankston W e have been living in the land of telecommunications for over a century, going back to the days of the telegraph when we would entrust operator companies to send messages on our behalf using their wires. Over time, we got the talking telegraph, also know as the telephone. Then we moved beyond wires with radio and television broadcasting, and with cellular telephony, we gained mobility. But the basic business model of telecommunications is the same — the operators provide services using their own infrastructure. They use the revenue from selling these services to fund their infrastructure. Then one day, the internet happened, and everything changed. Well, not exactly. The change had been brewing for a while as we became adept at fashioning our own solutions. In the days of analog networking you needed a special infrastructure for each medium in order to preserve the signal — carrying a phone call across the country or across an ocean was an impressive engineering feat. The telephone companies invested in research and developed digital technologies. Unlike analog technologies, you could regenerate a digital signal over any distance. At first, “digital” was seen as a technology for the carriers to use to improve their ability to provide their traditional services. In the 1960s and ‘70s we started to connect computers directly to each other using wires and sometimes radios. As long as the systems were close together, we didn’t need to buy telecommunications services. We could just send digital www.avtechnologyonline.com packets between systems. If a packet got lost or garbled, the software would just resend it until we had the complete message. This was the essential idea behind Ethernet. We considered it all to be networking, but it was no more like telecommunication’s notion of networking than driving a car is like taking the train. The defining concept of the internet is the “end-to-end” principle — we can create our own reliable solutions even over an unreliable network. We need to be careful to avoid confusing “end-to-end” with “womb-to-tomb.” The november | december 2008 | AV TECHNOLOGY | 35 http://www.avtechnologyonline.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of AV Technology - November/December 2008

AV Technology - November/December 2008 Contents Precedent Corporate: Finishing with Style Government: It’s Still About People Education: Surviving Budget Cuts Applying Metrics to AV ROI Selecting Room Scheduling Software Six Things You Need to Know About Webcasting The Way I See It: Becoming an Internet Native Casino Uses AV for Dramatic Impact Just What the Doctor Ordered The Loneliest Help Desk in Town Product Forum Product Spotlight Tech Horizons New Products Ad Index AV MO

AV Technology - November/December 2008

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