VIDEOTEX: STONE AGE TELEMATICS?

Ian Miles, May 1990 [note: this was prepared as a chapter for a book concerning an International Videotex Study, to be edited by Volcker Schneider, Graham Thomas, and Thierry Vedel. I dont know why the book was never published the authors did manage to get several papers in print. I do recall a well-known UK academic of the SCOT persuasion refereeing this paper and judging it technologically determinist. Dont you just hate that? Judge for yourself, I have not rewritten anything, bad grammar and all. IM) 1. Introduction

In thinking about the future of videotex, it is important to remember that this is a technology whose main features were designed in the 1970s. In other words, these design features stem from an era before the microelectronic/Information Technology revolution had really begun to take off. Videotex systems today continue to reflect this in profound ways: and increasingly, these design features look like imitations rather than virtues. This means that even if communications systems of the future have lineage in current videotex systems, they are likely to look decreasingly like what we now know as videotex as we move further into the future. Videotex was a pioneer product. (who was it said pioneers get scalped?) When the first public videotex systems were launched, personal computers (PCs) were bulky devices for vanguard professionals, and home computers were hobbyist devices catering to small markets. When the first videotex systems were being designed, the huge IT markets based on these products were hardly dreamed of. We might think of this as the Stone Age of IT. Its monuments and monoliths were mainframe computers, its flint tools were punch cards. Such is the pace of IT development that we have already moved out of this era. IT devices are everywhere in domestic appliances as well as professional equipment, in information products like audio-visual goods as well as embedded computer devices like in white goods and motor cars. Videotex is far from extinct, of course. Systems are continuing to develop and even continuing to find new markets1. But it is not uncommon for obsolescent technologies to thrive. Users may find it more cost-efficient to stay with familiar systems than to have to learn new skills and write new software. Considerable human effort may also have gone into creating social and technical infrastructures which support established products. This is as true in the IT world as anywhere else. Thus in 1990 DEC launched a new version of its PDP11 computer twenty years old, and vastly less capable than more recent products, but with stone tools survived into the iron age, in particular niches (eg mortar and pestle) or where access to the means of
1

While writing this I have learned of the planned large-scale launch of the Irish and Norwegian systems.

production of new technology was not available. Houses were built of stone for many centuries. The design of metal products bore the imprint of the earlier technologies for a long time. In a more recent technological resolution, the railway has survived in the age of the car and train indeed it is continuing to be the focus of considerable innovation and investment (highspeed trains, etc). So even though videotex was initially constructed in what may seem like prehistory, and videotex systems have many features that strike experienced IT users as primitive or archaic, in itself this is no basis for concluding it will wither away. Recall that fax was supposed to be displaced by the technologically superior electronic mail by 1990 and then consider the fax explosion of the late 80s 9Miles and Thomas, 1990). In the UK, fax sales doubled annually from 1985 to 1988, reaching a (temporary?) plateau in 1989. Nevertheless, I am going to argue that a number of ongoing developments put the future of videotex into considerable uncertainty. The telematics systems of the future are liable to be indebted to it, but to resemble it as little as Salisbury Cathedral resembles Stonehenge, or a power tool a flint one. 2. The Key to the Wired Society The notion of mass access to databases the public information utility was an imaginative idea that moved from the realm of science fiction to that of engineering in the 1960s and 70s. The information society, the social application of IT, was seen as a matter of access to large-scale information resources. A key assumption in the early design of videotex was that its users in the mass public were going to be unsophisticated. Computer use was restricted to a small priesthood. Computers were large and remote recall Multivac in Asimovs stories. (The only portable computer in science fiction was not carried around: rather, the robot whose user interface was speech, and whose image was alternately humorous or threatening carried itself around.) Videotex was first envisioned as an adjunct to the TV. The computer would remain remote as remote as the newscasters and soap opera stars who services the TV system. The living room TV was widely diffused and domesticated communication technology. The main problem from a technocratic standpoint was that people children especially were not using it for more than passive leisure. But people were used to deriving information from its screen news and current affairs as well as trivia. The information was provided by powerful central broadcasting authorities (authoritative information guaranteed): the model of TV is one where the user simply selects among preordained channels to find the programme best fitting her/his requirements. The video recorder, allowing people to time shift and replay broadcasts, and to shop for programmes (often of a kind that the authorities decidedly would not broadcast) in rental outlets, was only to widely diffuse in the mid 1980s. Likewise for the remote control, which made it much easier for people to zap between TV channels rendering another limited form of

interactivity into everyday experience. The remote control was eventually combined with teletext, to give access to large volumes of up-to-date data via the TV, without the need to tie up the telephone line. The interactivity designed in the 1970s into the first videotex systems was more powerful that teletext could provide, of course. And videotex systems carried several orders of magnitude more pages of information than teletext. But both were limited: the user could access large volumes of material, but only through (often highly repetitive) use of a few primitive commands. The formats of both systems had deliberately been made the same but only a small amount of information could be displayed on screens at any time. TV screens were not suited to displaying dense text in readable form. Anyway, people were not used to reading much more than programme titles and credits, and perhaps subtitles, from the TV. Accordingly, videotex information was presented in pages, modelled on other print media, and in attractively coloured and large, easy to read characters. In the 1980s, videotex and teletext both provided access to large volumes of information, for consumers equipped with relatively basic terminals suitable equipped TV sets in the teletext case. But for videotex the TV model (seen as the solution in early Prestel design) tended to be displaced by the specialised terminal or a PC of home computer-based solution. Where videotex did prove successful, furthermore, it emerged that access to information was rather less popular than messaging and related activities. This is true for consumer videotex, with the messagerie on Minitel and the computer hobbyist sections of Prestel. But it also seems to be the norm for business applications: the interactive information systems (as opposed to displays in railway stations, etc) tend to run on non-videotex formats2, with videotex being used in transactional applications. In the early 1990s a number of developments make it likely that we will continue to see rapid technical development, rather less rapid successful product innovation and diffusion, and novel twists in consumer information technology. These developments may well lead us to look back with nostalgia on videotex by the first decades of the twenty-first century. New consumer information access and messaging services will have gained very substantial markets, and they will take a large number of forms. A set of technological developments and product concepts which lead us to these conclusions. All of these innovations are based upon the long-term trends in the heartland IT of microelectronics. Even if there were to be little advance in this core technology in the future and this is extremely unlikely the development of software and applications around current chip generations (and related achievements in liquid crystal, optronics, and other technologies) are bound to result in the proliferation of new enhanced products. 3. Proliferation of Potentials
2

Though some instances persist, even in the high-tech financial world.

Whatever the specific form that it takes, we can expect to see considerable application of microelectronics to consumer products as appliance controls and displays, as systems for more realistic entertainment (HDTV and other audio-visual products), at least (Miles, 1988). The big question is the extent to which we will see computer power manifested as computer and communications equipment, rather than merely as embedded computing in everyday appliances. Three developments are particularly worth watching. 1. First consider developments in Telecommunications. The conventional telephone system is changing dramatically in the 1990s. Already we have seen the rapid take-off of cellular telephone as a business service: new and cheaper portable communications will almost certainly put telephones into many more peoples pockets in the next few years. This would mean fewer black holes in communications. Telephony is mainly restricted to messaging, but audiotext has been a growth area and people on the move may have more requirements for weather and traffic forecasts, for information about train and opening times. Will such new mobile systems be restricted to voice communications? Possibly not especially if consumer fax also diffuses in the 1990s. In-car fax systems are emerging: hand-held fax is more of a problem, unless and until ways of displaying text information without a paper printer are developed. As well as screens, it is conceivable that voice synthesis systems could be used to read text. It is worth stressing that fax is not necessarily only a messaging medium. Already some fax databases have proved successful tough less flexible and interactive than standard online information services, they have found audiences for specialised new functions (eg boat races); and ordering of take-away food by fax is now widely offered in the UK. Other important developments are underway in telecommunications. We are witnessing the long-awaited installation of ISDN systems, providing new capacity for extra voice and data lines to users. Simultaneously, the intelligent network systems which are being implemented, using computer control of switches (via databases detailing customer requirements), offer many new facilities. Taken together with two-way cable TV networks, and the spread of direct broadcast satellite communications, it will be apparent that a rapid expansion of telecommunications options is in hand. Opportunities grow to deliver more messages, in more formats, over more media, in more circumstances. These facilities cannot but provide new scope for telematics services. If suppliers exploit these opportunities, there are liable to be new rivals to videotex for example, direct broadcast teletext to hand held receivers, or broadcast fax (which is already emerging as an in-house business service). Suppliers are known to be actively exploring such possibilities. 2. Second, the combination of distinct technological developments is particularly significant. IT is promoting developments in many application areas, and a too-narrow focus may lead to premature conclusions about

the design features of new systems. Alongside new telecommunications service are also major steps in data storage and retrieval. Two data storage systems are particularly significant: optical media and smart cards. New storage media based on compact disc technology (CD) is rapidly emerging. CD-ROM is a computer medium used mainly for databases, though CD-ROM games for PCs are available. Though the medium is clearly best suited to information that does not rapidly date, sufficiently large-scale use can lead to regular reprinting (as in General Motors regular optical catalogue for its US dealers). And then there is the bucket and drip option, used in the UK by one firm which supplies an optical guide to magazines and newspapers (for use by Public Relations firms etc), but provides online/floppy disc updates which the system software uses to overrule the optical data. Sonys Dataman, the first hand held CD-ROM player can be seen as a primitive electronic book (or library, rather, since one disc can hold many books, and discs are interchangeable). It was released onto the market in 1990. But a range of consumer- oriented developments is being pursued. Philips (together with Sony) is pursuing a strategy of promoting CD-I 9interactive CD, carrying text, audio, graphic and video data) as a consumer medium. The idea is to market this as a new audio-visual product (associated with the TV again) rather than as a computer peripheral. However, portable versions of CD-I are also to be released, some looking rather more like laptop computers, others like more conventional portable audio-visual goods a cross between a personal stereo, a remote control and a portable TV. CD-I is expected to have applications in education (eg language tuition), culture (music with text and pictures, computer art galleries, and systems enabling music and art composition), entertainment (better games), and domestic planning (optimising car journeys), among others. If the efforts to achieve large markets for such products succeed, we will see a new range of interactive media entering the home and quite possible, in portable forms, the car, briefcase, and pocket. They will accustom users to interactive multimedia display, with sophisticated abilities to more between, or to combine, high quality test, audio, graphics, etc. The main obstacle to success would seem to be the emerging conflict of competing and confusing standards: CD-I is rivalled by DVI (with a lot of computer industry support), CD-ROMMXA (ditto), CDTV (Commodore) and others. It remains to be seen whether this confusion deters consumers and software suppliers, and whether one standard comes rapidly to dominate. It seems highly likely that public awareness of such systems will be quite high by the end of the 90s. The interface and quality of output of CD-I and related systems makes videotex look positively antediluvian. There are moving video and hi-fi audio features, together with photographic stills up to the quality of the display unit. The user interfaces (trackerball/pop-down menus, etc) are likewise much more a product of the 80s than of the 70s. The information content of

storage media depends upon how frequently the media can be refreshed: (re) writeable CD systems are coming, but more slowly and expensively. But one could imagine combinations of large CD archives (including formatting information) with time-urgent data (prices and product availability in teleshopping systems, for example) held in RAM on chips or electronic media more drip and bucket solutions. As for smart cards, these are particularly important as lightweight and highcapacity rewriteable media. By the end of the 90s, a smart card will be able to carry more data than an entry-model hard disc drive does now 20 megabytes. The use of these credit card-sized devices for carrying financial and health data is being widely explored. Significantly, the Keyline terminal (on which more below) incorporates a smart card reader this allows for telebetting to evade regulations restricting the use of credit for betting and Minitel-related smart cards are being used for electronic funds transfer. One can imagine the telecommunications (even from public kiosks) or other means into smart cards for subsequent perusal. Assuming wide availability of cheap smart cards, two uses for consumer information services spring to mind. First is use of the card itself to store data as thousands of videotex or teletex pages, possibly, but quite conceivably other formats. Why not something much more like a conventional newspaper? Why not audio (eg the most recent radio broadcast)? Second is its use as an intelligent interface, selecting from broadcast or other media according to user preferences either consciously input or learned from analysis of past behaviour. Cheap, high-power data storage, then, will be increasingly available over the 90s. This can be used for supplying new types of bulk information product. The utility of such products will be increased by adding higher levels of interactivity to them probably with multimedia and hypermedia components and storage can further help to realise more personalised forms of interactivity. Telecommunications will be challenged as a delivery medium both by storage and broadcast alternatives, and the perceived quality of videotex-type systems is likely to decline as experience grows with higher levels of interactivity and with more realistic and/or sophisticated use of graphics, images, and audio. 3. A third area of rapid IT-based development involves displays and (given the development of flat, light screens) portable equipment. New screen techniques (eg liquid crystal colour displays) mean that slim and lightweight screens can achieve displays of sufficient quality that reading text from them may no longer prove a major problem. Videotexs use of large text, limiting the quantity available on each page may be in consequence less necessary. Probably the most dramatic change in display technology, however, is high definition TV, HDTV. This is another a potential mass consumer good of the late 90s which is the site of intense standard wars at the beginning of the decade (in this instance, with American and European firms vying with the

Japanese who were first to announce a standard). HDTV promises much crisper (photograph-quality) images with a higher aspect ration (ie more like cinema screens). Some efforts are underway to side-step the complex restructuring of broadcast technology needed to fully implement HDTV, for example by simply getting smart TVs to interpolate extra lines in an existing broadcast signal. The move to HDTV in one or other form looks unstoppable, and one big question is how far it will impact upon computer system displays. Since mass HDTV production should drive down equipment prices, since PC users may be expected to become more demanding of their professional equipment (and home computer users of their game devices), and, last but not least, since US PC manufacturers see video as a way of gaining an edge over low-cost south Asian competitors, it is likely that computer output to HDTV-type displays will be a trend. (See the next computers displays, for example.) This raises more questions for videotex. The formats appropriate for HDTV will be different from those for traditional systems (unless only windows in part of the screen are used). Again the restrictions on the quantity and quality of text would seem to be lifted. Remaining captures within these limiting standards will probably be seen as archaic. The development of portable equipment takes us in another direction. Alongside mobile communications, and following the success of laptop computers, notebook and pocket computers began to appear at the beginning of the 1990si. A large number of competing products are now appearing on the market. These range from electronic diaries and organisers to unusually small and light laptops (notebook computers) including at least one that can accept hand-written input on a touch-sensitive screen, and convert this into text for subsequent word processing, or data base retrieval. The main problems seem to be associated with small keyboard size, ie a user input problem. The portable devices depend crucially upon user input. One frequent reason for disillusion with the home computer as other than a games machine was the users discovery that to be useful for hobbies (eg organising collections), domestic work (eg accounts management), or similar functions, it required laborious input of data. Telecommunications systems like videotex were seen as one way of providing data inputs without the work. But the data on these systems were generally far from relevant to these consumer applications. While home users developed interactive communications linking their systems to videotex or bulletin boards many more limited computer use to either exploring the machine (programming, graphics, music, etc) or even more playful computer games. Only professionals working at home, and a relatively few particularly enthusiastic hobbyist, engaged in large-scale text and data input. This suggests that we should look at the scope for new portable IT devices as deliverers of information services rather than as simply portable home computers. And in this light, a particularly interesting factor is the intensified

discussion of prospects for product loosely described as the electronic book or electronic newspaper. A large number of suppliers from information industries (eg publishing), as well as computers, telecommunications and electronics, are currently exploring the product space which stems from the notion of using book-sized displays as portable electronic media. The Dataman is a pioneer product here, but many others are known to be under development. There seems to be little agreement as to standards and interfaces, nor as to whether the information content will be more-or-less archival, news versus entertainment, etc. Modes of delivery are again in competition with each other. One can imagine videotex-like media, but equally portable CD-I, and perhaps electronic equivalents of newspapers and magazines -even with display formats modelled on conventional press layouts are conceivable. Finally, it is also important to note that the last few years have seen the side diffusion of personal stereos (Walkman), and that pocket TVs and even portable video recorder/TV systems (Watchman) have begun to take off in several countries. Whether the use is to catch up with morning business new broadcasts on the way to work, to have complete control over the in-flight video, or as portable TVs are reported as being used in some countries to surreptitiously follow afternoon soap operas while at work we cannot yet say. With appropriate equipment and software it might be possible to download videotex or teletext pages into such portable TVs, but with heavy restrictions on interactivity. 4. New Media Futures Computing, telecommunications, and broadcasting have long been recognised to be converging; or perhaps a better term is overlapping, since there is considerable stress and strain involved in integrating the businesses, skills, and cultures of the three domains. The archetypal forms of information associated with each medium are increasingly being manipulated as digital data by new IT systems which can be based in any of the three areas. Videotex, an early effort to integrate text and (primitive) still images, and deliver them to basic computer terminals down the mainly voice-oriented telecommunications network, is now joined by a host of new media audiotext, multimedia, computer video, and so on. Some of the traditional boundaries between text, video images, and speech may be eroding, in any case. Recordings with fast-forward-backward facilities allow linear media to be scanned and searched like text. Hypermedia systems are intended to add to the scope for moving between media in this way. However, the traditional advantages of different types of information are likely to persist. Video may offer graphic realism, audio may allow for nuances of tone, but reading is likely to remain a valued way of accessing information for a long time. Our educational practice, if nothing else, renders text an intuitive medium from scan-and-search, for developing lists and for working in specialised languages like mathematics, for engaging in

introspection and reasoning, etc. (Is it too early to begin mobilising for the political defence of literacy in the information age?) However, if electronic book predictions come true, text is likely to be increasing made available in electronic and optical media. (It is already being produced and stored in these media for conventional publishing.) Text retrieval from such sources offers new search facilities, new opportunities of modifying the material, etc. One forecast, then, is that the assembly of material is likely to be more personalised and the selection of material will probably be semi-automated. Rather than a standard page for all users, the look and content of material may be tailored to individual requirements. Pages themselves may be redundant as users learn non-page-based systems. The scope for delivering packages or package-creating software systems may be considerable. And the same material may be combined together with other material and with various IT facilities to yield very different presentational formats from personalised layouts to personalised use of multimedia. There are many speculations that can be derived from the as to the social and economic use and meaning of new media and their information products. But this is beyond the scope of the present essay. We have suggested that we are entering into an explosion of possibilities for information delivery and presentation, for media and for messaging. The main problem with commercialising these possibilities may simply be their dazzling profusion. There may well be limits as to how much our living rooms, pockets, and wallets can take and to how much time we can or want to, spend accessing information or remote contacts. Videotex will have to find its place among these proliferating opportunities. It is likely to be forced to respond to increasingly sophisticated forms of interactivity and visual display, and to the challenge of multimedia and new modes of information delivery, by more or less fundamental changes in how it operates and how it presents itself to users. If there still are systems in the future, these are unlikely to look much like videotex does at the beginning of the 90s. As to what these future systems will be like some hybrid with qualities (variably) like those of traditional print media, traditional broadcast media, and contemporary hypermedia systems is my best bet. Or rather, videotex systems will be a small component of these future integrated systems, which will use broadcast and stored data alongside massive computer power and telecommunications. Full integration may be a long time coming, it may even be an endlessly-receding vision as more options to integrate become available). But we are bound to see systems that bring together much more material than videotex ever did. Videotex itself may be simple a display format used for certain specialised applications: some sorts of public display, teaching device, and, perhaps, nostalgia. And then there are new auditory, visual and tactile interfaces, and Virtual Reality to consider3but that too is for another book.
3

For a series of interesting essays on these, see the July 1990 issue of Byte magazine.

References
I Miles, 1988, Home Informatics, London, Pinter I Miles & G Thomas, 1990, The Development of Telematics Services, STI Review, Summer 1990.

10

The first draft of this essay, several thousand words long, was composed on a hand held PC the size of a scientific pocket calculator. With 156k of RAM to write text into, this has more than five times the RAM of my first home computer, bought 9 years ago. It has standard software word processor, spreadsheet, etc installed on ROM. It is far from perfect for writing more than notes, with a minute keyboard and only 6 lines of text displayed. However, its portability (and ease of use even in crowded trains, where almost all of this was prepared) makes it more attractive than a conventional laptop. The low cost less than half that of my first system, ignoring inflation was also a significant factor. Despite my view that I had written a reasonable first draft, I have still engaged in a round of reformatting and rewriting on a hard-copy version.