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On Sunday, July 11, 2010, the future of television news will be decided in South Africa.

As billions watch the Netherlands and Spain play for the FIFA World Cup, a few tens of thousands will be watching that all important match in 3D actually "stereoscopic 3D" (the official term, you'll hear a lot from now on, as well as "stereoscopy").

The experts are already saying that the main electronic item this Christmas will be the dual capacity 2D and 3D HDTV set, so the consumer can watch 3D broadcasts (with glasses for now) from cable, satellite or off air, and switch to standard 2D for the rest of the program schedule.

Three-D is coming faster than anyone expected. The experts, those who are already shooting 3D, say technical requirements of 3D will demand a highly professional approach that, done properly and skillfully, will return the photographic profession to the standards of the film era.

In May, I attended the HotDocs conference in Toronto.

There were two sessions on emerging 3D, one focused on production, the second on technical issues.

I walked into the first session, "Crafting 3D," expecting to hear about megabuck high tech equipment and a future years away, only to find out that the future is now.

It began with the release of James Cameron's Avatar in London on Dec. 10, 2009. The next phase of evolution began on June 11, 2010 when the first games of the FIFA World Cup opened in South Africa. Twenty-five of the games were to be broadcast in "stereoscopic 3D" using Sony cameras, the $100,000 HDC-1500 and the new $30,000 P1, plus the backend software required to put it all together. The 3D games will be broadcast by EPSN's, Sky's new 3D networks and Al Jazeera. (There's a summary in this report from Broadcasting and Cable )

The final game will also be broadcast in Canada in 3D by the CBC which has the Canadian rights for the World Cup. Unfortunately the CBC (once long ago a leader in technology) was, under its current management, late to announce they would broadcast the 3D game -and my usually reliable sources in the Toronto Broadcast Centre that it was pressure from the Rogers cable company which is also one of the sponsors of the broadcasts that forced CBC Sports into the 21^st century,

The buzz was out there for 3D coverage long before the first whistle of the World Cup. Three-D sets were already in sports bars and sports pubs (the Masters was broadcast in 3D) and according to the members of the second, tech panel, "Stereoscopic 3D from script to screen" what fans were seeing in UK sports pubs in May was already driving consumer demand for the sets far beyond anything Avatar could have done. It was that panel that predicted that the biggest electronic item this Christmas will be a dual capacity 3D/2D HDTV monitor. The standard HDTV set is already obsolete.

This week, newspapers around the world are full of ads for 3D sets. (But one has to wonder if the bean counting corporate publishers are paying any attention beyond the revenue from those ads.)

The networks around the world are keeping a close eye on the World Cup and there are already demands for 3D content as the world telecoms put together 3D offerings on satellite and cable. (This is also going to be a huge headache for network bean counters who, just a couple of years ago, spent hundreds of millions implementing HDTV, only to find that investment has be made all over again with 3D).

There are already shoulder mounted 3D cameras, about the size of the first heavy video cameras or a large, professional 16mm film rig.

At "Script to Screen" I asked the panel when there would be news crews using 3D cameras. The consensus answer was "'within two years." Discovery already plans a 3D channel for nature and science programming, which was also the first first attractive market for HDTV. 

The consensus of the panel was that like HDTV, the first efforts in 3D by news organizations will be high-end, prestige documentaries, then the current affairs programs and finally the evening newscasts. The panel said that there were rumours in the 3D community that 3D planning by CNN was already well underway.

Panasonic is expected to launch a smaller, lighter 3D camera costing $21,000 this autumn, a camera that reminds one of the movie robot Wall-E.

At the recent Profusion trade show in Toronto, both Sony and Panasonic had 3D displays. The Sony display was a mind blower, a large 3D HDTV with a video of fish in an aquarium, quality that came close to Avatar. Panasonic had a prototype camera that did not impress the tech savvy crowd, whether it was the technology or the sales tech staff that set it up. The glasses didn't work well and there were ghost images on the screen. (But it is likely those bugs will be worked out by the official launch)

The electronics business wants  a consumer-friendly 3D market ( amateurs and family shooters are now an estimated at 90 per cent of the photo and video market) and wants those photographers to shoot 3D, and already have announced low end 3D equipment. But the experts on that panel said that shooting 3D so that it creates an environment that draws in the viewer--and doesn't make them sick or trigger a headache--will require high skill levels to shoot.

In others words it could be a return to the film era. There were millions of amateur photographers during the film era, but in 95% of cases, the professional was paid for the professional product.

Professional photographers and videographers have been facing the future with fear and loathing for the past few years as the value of their work has declined in competition with the prosumer and amateurs whose work is easily available for a just a dollar or more often for free.

By Christmas, 2010, that too will begin to change. The best present for those who want to create visually and earn a decent living, is that a blue alien and the beautiful game will revive and reinvigorate professional photography.

The professional will have to master parallax, depth cues, stereoscopic depth perception and depth resolution, interocular distance, depth placement, convergence, orthostereoscopy and the audience's 3D comfort zone. (All beyond the scope of this blog).

So whether you are cheering for the Netherlands or Spain, give a couple of cheers for the 3D crews as well. Because if it works, it's a whole new ball game.

Links

Panasonic introduces 3D  videocamera.

Stereoscopy.com

Nieman Labs reports this morning that the Apple app censors are refusing to allow Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Mark Fiore to syndicate his work on iPhone and iPad apps because editorial cartoons"ridicule public figures"

Complete Nieman Lab report

Mark Fiore can win a Pulitzer Prize, but he can't get his iPhone cartoon app past Apple's satire police

We're now seeing our creative freedom further diminished by the computer industry.

First Google  engineers are killing good, creative writing by demanding that text copy fit into their search engine parameters (at least that's what the more spineless media managers demand....smarter media organizations encourage good writing but make sure the keywords are there so Google can find a story).

Now Apple, which may soon may be a powerhouse with iPad, has arrogated to itself  (through corporate arrogance and caution and probably also at the behest of corporate lawyers and image makers) the right to censor the content on their devices.

This isn't just a censorship issue. It is another case like the Google books controversy of an large American company imposing U.S. law and U.S. corporate custom on the rest of the world.

Now it appears that Apple believes that lowest common denominator of American culture will apply to the rest of the planet, that is if  the world wants to use  iPhones or an iPads.

So just how is Apple going to deal with the rest of the world once the iPad is finally released internationally in about six weeks or so?

As Nieman and the blog Gizmodo have reported, Apple is already cracking down on the European custom of  (what is called in the UK)  "page three girls"  Today they censor nipples,  tomorrow editorial content."

Apple took down Stern's iPhone app without notice. Stern--a very large weekly news magazine--published a gallery of erotic photos as part of its editorial content. It wasn't gratuitous...

The origin of the term "page three girl" is of course Rupert Murdoch's money maker, the London Sun. Watch for developments there....

The letter to Fiore, as quoted by Nieman says Apple's policy is:

"Applications may be rejected if they contain content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, sounds, etc.) that in Apple's reasonable judgment may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory."

What would be "defamatory" in Apple's "reasonable" judgment? Under whose law would something be defamatory? The state of California?  The United States? Canada? Common law or civil law? Or even defamatory in dictatorships where it is illegal to criticize the current great leader?

Investigative journalism is almost always vetted by lawyers working for a news organization. A good lawyer knows how to protect the news reporter or producer while ensuring that the story, often vital to the public interest, is published or broadcast within the legal framework of that country's media. 

So imagine this,  there was an iPad  on June 13 ,1971 when the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers about how the United States made mistake after mistake in Vietnam.
The Washington Post soon got its copy of the papers and published. The Nixon administration tried to get an injunction stopping publication but failed when the U.S. Supreme Court  ruled that the attempt for an injunction was unconstitutional prior restraint under the U.S. constitution.

In a democracy, government prior restraint can be contained by constitutional law.
Given the track record of Apple and other similar corporations, it is likely in that in a similar situation, either out of corporate policy or on the advice of their lawyers, the Pentagon Papers would not have been published by an app controlled by a company such as Apple.

Corporations are not always restrained by constitutional limits on government actions. especially when it comes to censorship.

What Apple is doing is as if Goss, the giant maker of printing presses, or  a pulp and paper company that supplied newsprint to a newspaper decided that they had the right to control the content of that paper.

Corporate PR is now  corporate prior restraint, at least as far as data, web and app delivery is concerned.

Update

Columbia Journalism Review now warns the media to be aware of Apple.
It's Time for the Press to Push Back Against Apple
The writer of the piece, Ryan Chittum says:

And this is a good excuse to more closely scrutinize the market influence that Apple, now the third largest corporation in America, behind Exxon and Microsoft, is gaining on markets, including software development.

Other key links from the CJR story
Dan Gillmour in Mediaactive Complicating Relationships in Media: Apple, NY Times Dealings Raise Questions

and an early warning from Wired by Brian X. Chen in Gadget Lab IPad Apps could put Apple in charge of news

One the smartest  members of  the new generation trying to find their path in an world  where the current news media is in mortal danger is Cody Brown, a 21-year-old student at New York University.

He has posted an very interesting column in TechCrunch, Dear Author Your Next Book should be an App, not an Ibook.

Brown asks:

So much has been said in the past few weeks about how the iPad will change the book industry but in almost all of the tweets, posts, and articles I've come across a simple questions seems to be completely dropped. Why do we have books in the first place?

And goes on

If you, as an author, see the iPad as a place to 'publish' your next book, you are completely missing the point. What do you think would have happened if George Orwell had the iPad? Do you think he would have written for print then copy and pasted his story into the iBookstore? If this didn't work out well, do you think he would have complained that there aren't any serious‑readers anymore? No. He would have looked at the medium, then blown our minds.

And concludes

I can say with a lot of confidence that the 'books' that come to define my generation will be impossible to print. This is great.

Later in response to comments on  TechCrunch, Cody Brown tweeted

To address a lot of initial comments. I'm suggesting a new medium, not *total displacement* of books. Just registered www.padature.com

Dear Cody:

An app is an app and a book is book.

I've published five books and written another five or so that weren't published (and the first few weren't publishable).

So here's the first big question. If the next generation of books become impossible to print, how long will they last?

As many critics of  the iPad have asked, how long will the iPad last?  Will your iApp be obsolete in ten years, while the book printed on paper is still read?

I've spent this weekend preparing to move from Toronto to British Columbia.

I've been dividing my books into three piles.

Some of my research material from my books are going to libraries and archives. Some I'm donating to my sister's church for a bazaar sale (I have so much to do I can't be bothered with the used bookstore route).

The third pile has those books I'm keeping.  

The oldest book in my collection was published in 1874, written by American war correspondent Januarius MacGahan, covering the Russian conquest of  central Asia, Campaigning the Oxus and the Fall of Khiva.  (Khiva is an ancient city in what today is Uzbekistan.)

Let's compare that with news on the web, which often disappears as soon as management changes a sever.

When Wikileaks  this week released the controversial video of the 2007 shooting in Baghdad. I went hunting on the web for another piece of  airborne video, the USAF pilots dropping a bomb on Canadian soldiers in Kandahar on April 18, 2002, now known as the Tarnak Farms incident.

Some years later, probably in 2006, that Kandahar video was leaked to ABC News.  I was one of the CBC news staff assigned to track down the video. (I'll never forget the USAF spokeswoman who told  me, "Just because it's been on television doesn't mean it isn't classified.")

The video was eventually released by the USAF (I am not sure when, but probably sometime during the court martial proceedings).  The problem is that if you want to compare the pilot's attitude over Kandahar with those of the Apache pilots over Baghdad, you can't.  The video is gone from the web.  The links on both the CBC and CNN sites are dead.  I was unable to find it on the ABC News site (which originally broadcast the video)  and the video is not linked on the Wikipedia page on the Tarnak Farms incident.

Shortly after the Tarnak Farms incident, I produced a multimedia piece for CBC News, a combination of  stills, video and text, on three Iraqi exiles living in Toronto on their thoughts prior to the upcoming US led invasion. That too is gone from the web.


I was always a klutz with a typewriter;  one reason I fell in love with computers.  I wrote my first book, King of the Mob, on an Osborne  1 (double density), with a tiny four inch screen.   The operating system was CP/M and the word processor was Word Star. Both are long gone.

A few years later, I did  convert the manuscript from CP/M Word Star to MS Dos text. The problem is that the manuscript is stored on 5.25 inch floppy disks.  Today's computers don't even take the successor, the 3.5 inch floppies.  (My first PC had a "giant" 40 megabyte hard drive. Now the photographs  I take with my DSLR are all greater than 40 mg)

It's interesting that you are quoting George Orwell.   So I'm  wondering, along with many others, if Steve Jobs is the new Big Brother, with all the controls that Apple is placing on the apps.  Apple seems to want to control not only the  programming language but likely the content as well, as outlined in this New York Times article, Rethinking a Gospel of the Web.
As reported by Mashable, that has sparked a war with Adobe and as one widely quoted blog has reported, raised concerns among multi-platform app developers.

What if Steve Jobs and the Apple staff don't approve of that app you have spent so much time to create?

If you do all that work, do you want to have to hire an expensive lawyer to make sure that a 200 page digital rights management agreement doesn't  screw you and leave you with just pennies from that $9.99? Will that Apple DRM  prevent you from porting that app to another system? 

Will that DRM prevent you from taking advantage of some new technology not yet thought of? (After all the big book publishing firms are already trying a rights grab from authors to convert existing material to e-books based on the word "book form" in original contracts. The only people going to profit from that are the lawyers as they argue the meaning of "book form.")

If you do you all that work, what happens if your project is arbitrarily deleted as Amazon deleted George Orwell's Animal farm from Kindle (George Orwell again)?  Even worse, what if somehow accidentally your project is deleted from the server (as has happened to me)?  Even if you have backup, it might take days or even weeks to get the app back on the system, if ever.

I agree with your Tweet and your new term "pdature" that some interactive app system is a new medium with a great deal of potential   

But the comments on TechCrunch are right. Is this something that an individual can do?   It's very time consuming just to research and write book length journalism without having to program an interactive flash map of the character's movements (Oops. Flash is a no-no for Apple).  Can you do that or will that be something taken over by a gaming company like Electronic Arts?

Will you have the time? Especially if there is no advance or only a small advance for a project like that, especially if it sells for just $9.99 while you're trying to pay the rent and keep food on the table.

Don't get me wrong. I want projects like that to succeed and make a lot of money for you, the creator (not just Apple or Electronic Arts).

A book is a book and an app is app.  

In 2074, people will still be able to read MacGahan's Campaigning the Oxus two hundred years after it was published (especially since it was printed on acid free paper).  I am sure you can produce as brilliant a piece of journalism sometime in your future career. But if it's an app, and not a book, will people be able to read it in 2074?

best wishes

Robin

It's  iPad day in the geek world, April 2, 2010, the day that Apple releases the long-awaited iPad.

Cassandra, is worried, but unfortunately no one listens to her. People should listen.

Millions apparently have already rushed online and pre-bought or pre-ordered an iPad 1.0, just as others lined up for Iphones a while ago. Then from my friends with 3G Iphones, especially those in New York, came the tweeted, blogged and voiced complaints about poor connections to wireless networks and poor battery life if you have too many of those delicious, but power-draining apps.

As for myself,  I'm going to wait and see how the iPad actually works.  Whatever happened to the old adage of never buy Version 1.0 of anything?

Just how good is the iPad battery life?

What about predictions that the iPad will overwhelm bandwidth in some parts of the world?

Just how will the public react to news originally from newspapers, wire service or TV on the iPad?

Will the public pay for news on an iPad? Some media outlets say they will charge for material on the Ipad, others say they won't charge.   That media question alone will keep economics students writing their Phds long after the current crop of iPads is being torn apart by child labour in some developing world hell hole.

I decided that my own media preview of the iPad was in order.

So through sources on Mt. Olympus (I have family connections in that part of Greece) I asked Hermes, god of both messengers and thieves, to use his skills to obtain an iPad from Cupertino and deliver it to Cassandra, the princess from Troy who had great beauty and the gift of true prophecy but was cursed by Apollo (whom she spurned) so that no one would believe her prophecies.

It was Cassandra who warned the Trojans not to bring that wooden horse inside the city walls.

Her first reaction was, "What do I need this for? Since Apollo's snakes licked my face, I can see all and know all."

"I can tell you this," Cassandra told me in an interview from an undisclosed location. "There will be unintended and surprising consequences from this iPad thingy.

"There was a day like this, not long ago, Oct. 13, 1994, when the beta version of Netscape Navigator was released. I said then that this Netscape would change the entire world within days, and no one listened, and Netscape did, the world, until today, has run on browsers.  Now there are iPads. Of course, I warned Netscape there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, but did they listen? No.

"Take that all seeing eye, the digital camera.  At first, the digital camera was expensive, and only a few professionals used one. Now millions have digital cameras and it is destroying the world of professional photography-- although that world can be rebuilt in time."

"Some expert last year welcomed the world inside what he called the castle walls of journalism in encouraging 'user generated content.'     Well the Trojans welcomed that horse, despite my warnings, and we know what happened....

"The city was destroyed?" I asked.

"Oh that too," Cassandra snorted.  "But can you count just how many bards, poets, writers, artists,  potters,  painters,  historians, archaeologists,  actors, movie makers, TV producers, game designers have been living off that story for the past three thousand years? Not to mention what's coming up in 2025....."

"What in 2025?"

"You wouldn't believe me,  even if I told you."  .

"So what changes will the iPad bring?"

"Well these ones you will believe because all have happened so many times before.  

"One. The war between the creators of content and the  computer engineers goes on and on just like the wars with the centaurs.  I see no end there. 

"About ten years ago, I appeared in human form at a conference of media executives. I warned them that while they had to spend money on computers, their bards and chroniclers were their most important asset.  Did they believe me? No, they didn't. Now for every journalist they can out on to the street they have to hire three IT people.   The iPad doesn't run Flash. That means hiring more IT people to do the same work over and over, while throwing away the people who actually create the content.  But did anyone listen? No.

"Two.  Not all centaurs were bad guys of course, look at Chiron. Some years from now, some kid will find a new and amazing way to use not just the iPad but all the tablets out there."

"Who, what, where?"

"You wouldn't believe me. But believe me, that kid will be fabulously rich before he's 28."

"Three. A lost or misplaced iPad will be the centre of a major world crisis before the year 2020."

"What will happen?"

"You won't believe me, even if I told you."

"How will the iPad change journalism?"

"There will be a new device, after the iPad. It too will come from a geeky kid, in a workshop, somewhere in the developing world. Even my vision cannot see where or when this will happen.

"The browser, the smart phone, the tablet/ipad, no these will remain but this new, new thing, that will be the most profound change of all. The creators will once again be able to earn their coins. But there will be many more creators.

"Can you tell me some details?"

"You wouldn't believe me....."

"What do you think of the iPad?"

"The battery run out too soon.  I asked Hermes to return it."


"Thank you Cassandra."

"Thank you. There's one prophecy you can believe. Copy desks around the world are going to hate the spelling i-P-a-d"

"You're right. Thank you again."

The prophet spoke in the fall of 1992. 
Cassandra was alive in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  As Cassandra warned the Trojans,  she was ignored.  You, the news executive, were warned. And you ignored it  The World Wide Web destroyed your business model.

I am cleaning out old files and found a proposal from the MIT Media Lab in 1992 for a "News in the Future" study consortium, with a prospective launch date of Feb. 1, 1993.

Here is what the executive abstract said:

When we think of news, we think of how we receive it: by newspaper , magazine, television and radio.  We think of the range of coverage from  international to our local neighborhood.  And we think of various categories like sports, weather and finance. The organizing elements come from the information provider, broadcasting to a demographic  group, large or small. The delivery of news is usually funded by advertising, resulting in a kind of roulette for the advertiser and noise for the reader.  In the future the consumer will decide  if the output is to be audio, video or print.  The organizing element will be the consumer.  And advertisements  will be welcome news.  How will this transformation  of the passive to the active consumer happen?

Well, the transformation was brought by something called the Internet (which was around in 1992 but not mentioned in the proposal ).  

The organizing element is the consumer.

They were right.   The nine page document gives what may one of the first references to the "Daily Me."

Some more gems

One heading More than keywords can say, calling (in academic language)  ways of finding the conceptual relationships between keywords.   And behold,  then came Google.

Here is what the proposal says about story telling, predicting:

a story teller system produces narrative tailored to what is knows --and learns-- of a consumer's  background, preferences and interests. Stories emerge dynamically as the system mediates between the user and the element.  Questions and criticisms  yield new sequences of video, sound and explanation in reply.

The sounds a little like User Generated Content.   Twitter is a dynamic information system where the media and the citizen exchange information with immediacy in real time, as the events in Haiti have shown. Youtube recuts present "new sequences of video and sound."
Blogs present questions and criticisms which often have to be answered and also create new sequences of explanation.

There is one idea that is still  pending and still debated.  The last item in the proposal "The Feel of Paper"

Printing on paper is a mature, ubiquitous and very successful  technology for information display, Among its strengths are low cost, robust  portability, high resolution and contrast and its intuitive tactile  user interface.  ON the other hand, it suffers from severe limitations  of both permanence  (the information cannot be easily modified) and impremanence (the  information is destroyed  if the paper is destroyed)  Existing digital information  systems easily remedy thse constraints but fail  to capture many of the strengths of paper. We will be exploring  user force sensing  and generation to provide  tactile  I/O  for information systems(such as flipping pages or locating markers), hybrid active/passive display materials for more accessible portability and conceivably reusable paper for printing in the home.

Will the launch of the Apple tablet later this week solve that dilemma, providing an "intuitive tactile user interface."  Or will it be another cold piece of technology? We'll know soon.

If the Trojans had listened to Cassandra, they would not have brought the horse within the walls of the city. 

While not all the work from the MIT media lab has come to pass, as predicted, in the beginning there were those words on nine pages of  laser printing, that if at least some executives had considered a possible prophecy, perhaps the news business would not see the walls breached and the kingdoms falling.