But no new orders are to be found in the economic society's use of the medium it created. "A country that is chiefly interested in turning out consumers and producers," wrote Robert M. Hutchins, "is not likely to be much concerned with setting minds free; for the connection between selling, manufacturing, and free minds cannot be established. Such a country will transform new opportunities for education into means of turning out producers and consumers. This has been the fate of television in the United States. It could have been used for educational purposes, but not in a commercial culture. The use of television, as it was employed in the United States in the 1960's, can be put in its proper light by supposing that Gutenberg's great invention had been directed almost entirely to the publication of comic books."1
A major portion of America's creative energy is siphoned off into television's exploitation of the profit motive: "Few messages are as carefully designed and as clearly communicated as the thirty-second television commerical... Few teachers spend in their entire careers as much time or thought on preparing their classes as is invested in the many months of writing, drawing, acting, filming, and editing of one thirty-second television commercial."2
1Robert M. Hutchins, The Learning Society (New York: Praeger, 1968), p. 127.
2Peter F. Drucker quoted in: Gerald O'Grady, "The Preparation of Teachers of Media," Journal of Aesthetic Education (July, 1969).
The Videosphere
I have found the term "videosphere" valuable as a conceptual tool to indicate the vast scope and influence of television on a global scale in many simultaneous fields of sense-extension. Like the computer, television is a powerful extension of man's central nervous system.
Just as the human nervous system is the analogue of the brain, television in symbiosis with the computer becomes the analogue of the total brain of world man. It extends our vision to the farthest star and the bottom of the sea. It allows us to see ourselves and, through fiber optics, to see inside ourselves. The videosphere transcends telepathy.
Broadcasters now speak of "narrowcasting," "deepcasting," "minicasting," and other terms to indicate the increasing decentrali-ation and fragmentation of the videosphere: regular Very High Frequency programming (VHF); Ultra High Frequency special-interest programming such as educational television or foreign-language stations (UHF); Community Antenna Television (CATV); Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV); Videotape Recording (VTR); Videotape Cartridges (VTC); Electronic Video Recording (EVR); Satellite Television (COMSAT, INTELSAT)— all of which amount to a synergetic nonspherical metaphysical technology that drastically alters the nature of communication on earth.
Although the emphasis now is on the EVR cartridge and videotape cassette as being revolutionary developments in communication, the more likely possibility is that CATV and the videophone will provide unparalleled freedom for the artist as well as the citizen. In addition to regular broadcast programming, CATV operators may establish subscription systems through which customers might receive as many as eighty channels of color programming not available to the VHF or UHF audience. Much of this programming obviously will constitute the kind of personal aesthetic work to be discussed in this ook. CATV subscribers may lease receivers with high-resolution 1,000-scan-line pictures, compared with broadcast TV's 525 scan-lines.3 In addition to providing videofax newspapers, magazines, and books, CATV will allow "visits" to friends, shops, banks, and doctors' offices without ever leaving the comfort of one's home. CATV systems are now being developed to transmit programs to home VTRs while a family is sleeping or away from the house, to be replayed later.
It is estimated that ninety percent of American homes will be wired for CATV by 1980, primarily because "demand TV" or "telecommand" systems are expected by about 1978. By this process one will telephone regional video-library switchboards, ordering programs from among thousands listed in catalogues. The programs will be transmitted immediately by cable, and of course could be stored in the home VTR if repeated viewings are desired. The videophone will be included in a central home communications console that will incorporate various modes of digital audio-visual and Xerographic storage and retrieval systems. New developments in videotape recording will be crucial in this area.
There are two key phases in information storage: recording and retrieval. Retrieval is perhaps more important than recording, at least at this early stage. Retrieval systems are more difficult to perfect than recording devices. Nam June Paik has illustrated this problem with the difference between the English alphabet and Chinese characters. "Retrieval is much quicker with Chinese characters," he explains. "You can record (write) quicker in English but you can retrieve (read) quicker in Chinese. One is retrieval-oriented, the other is recording-oriented— but you read more than you write." Thus it is quite likely that video-computer systems will be available for home use with one-inch videotape, half devoted to video information, half to digital storage codes.
The Picturephone: "A completely new video environment and life-style." Photo: Bell
Telephone Laboratories.
After some twenty-five years of public television, we are just now developing a sense of global unity that is destined to affect directly the life of each individual before this decade is past. We have seen that technology already is fragmenting and decentralizing broadcast television. Soon entertainment and localized functions of the video-sphere will be handled by CATV and videotape cartridges, leaving broadcast television free to perform vital new tasks. Large communi-cations conglomerates such as RCA, CBS, ABC, CBC, BBC, Euro-vision, Bell Telephone, AT&T, and COMSAT are now planning net-works of planet analysis that will result in television as a constant source of global metabolic and homeostatic information.
Direct satellite-to-home television has been technically feasible for some time. Scientists at Bell Telephone and COMSAT anticipate fifty domestic communications satellites in orbit by 1977. The total system will be capable of 100,000,000 voice channels and 100,000 television channels.4
Hughes Aircraft engineers estimate that within the decade individual roof-top antennas will pick up twenty-five to thirty channels from "local" satellites in addition to whatever video information the home may be receiving from CATV and videotape cartridges.5
Existing satellites now deliver photographs and video images with such high resolution that "COMSAT typesetting" is possible. A CBS satellite system employed by the military to flash reconnaissance photos from Vietnam to Washington reportedly resulted in color qualities "as good or better than National Geographic." In 1969, RCA engineers began work on video cameras and receivers capable of 10,000- and possibly 12,000-scan-line resolution. Also in that year, RCA officials proposed that NASA's TIROS M meteorological satellite could be converted into an "earth resources" vehicle to help overcome food shortages and combat pollution problems. Equipped with special high-resolution 5,000-scan-line cameras in a 500-mile orbit, the satellite would yield picture resolution equivalent to 100 feet above ground. Higher resolution would be possible, officials announced, but some countries would complain of "invasion of privacy.
On the receiving end, the next few years will see the development of transistorized sets with 500-hour rechargeable batteries; TV sets that can screen 16mm. movies through the color cathode tube by using built-in telecine systems; so-called spectral color 3-D television without Polaroid glasses; four-by-six-foot cathode tubes only one foot thick; self-correcting color receivers that will correct even broadcast errors; one-gun color sets that will eliminate three-gun registration problems; stereo TV; new color TV projection systems that will project six-foot color images with brightness and registration equal to studio monitor equipment; two-dimensional laser color TV; tubeless TV cameras smaller than a man's hand, coupled with TV receiving tubes the size of a quarter. And it is estimated that the flat wall-size plasma crystal screen will be distributed commercially by 1978.