Les autoroutes de l'information: Un produit de la convergence

Economic, Institutional and Cultural Barriers to Convergence

Economic, Institutional and Cultural Barriers to Convergence Nicholas GARNHAM Director Centre for Communication and Information Studies University o f Westminster, UK The use of a cluster of buzzwords — convergence, multi-media, the information superhighway — currently bedevil research on changes in the ecology of our media systems and policy debates related to those changes. Such usage fails to distinguish between a number of distinct, if interrelated, processes. 1. The convergence of technical distribution channels onto a common, digital, broadband, switched cable system. 2. The convergence of media forms — the computer controlled storage, manipulation and display of combinations of text, moving and still pictures and sound. 3. The convergence of the modes of media consumption — between oneway and inter-active, switched and non-switched. 4. The convergence of modes of payment around pay-per systems. 5. The convergence of the residential and business markets. The technological and economic drivers, the social, economic and cultural impacts and therefore the policy concerns, the players and the stakes will all be different, depending upon which process of convergence we are discussing. If we are concerned with network convergence, then we will be interested in the clash between the telco and computing 42 Nicholas Garnham models of network design and control and in the competition between telcos and cable companies for control, over access to homes and businesses. If we are concerned with the development of multi-media products, then issues of print and audio-visual industry convergence, of copyright and the development and use of new media forms will be the central focus. If we are concerned with the convergence of payment modes, then issues of control of conditional access systems, of the future of advertising and public funding, of control over customer data will loom large. If convergence of markets is our concern then PC penetration may be the technological driver, Internet the model of the future, the impact of teleworking the problem and Microsoft the main global player. Each of these processes needs to be kept distinct because, for example, it is clearly possible to have the development of a major market for multi-media products and services but delivered on competing, nonconverged networks or alternatively a monopoly converged network delivering a range of non-converged media forms. In order to understand where these processes of convergence might be taking us, we need to understand where they and we have come from ; the nature of our current system of media provision and why it developed in the way it did. I would argue that no technological or economic changes are so revolutionary that they can completely overturn an established regime. There is huge inertia built into the system stemming from the accumulated financial, social, cultural, political and psychic investments made in the past. It is not just technological development that is path dependent. Such change works by accretion, establishment of new forms in niches which may, over the long term, lead to the slow undermining and transformation of an economic and social ecology. In this paper, I will focus on the convergence between telecommunications and broadcasting which, as we will see, involves a number of the different convergence processes outlined above. Historically a series of media industries have arisen each based upon distinct and successive technologies of production and distribution. It is no accident that, in both popular and academic parlance, we still name these industries on the basis of their distinct underlying technologies – press, records, radio, television, telecommunications, computing. Each developed to exploit the cost/benefits of their technology and in so doing developed distinct ranges of products and services, distinct systems of distribution, distinct relations with their users and distinct cultures of usage, distinct organizational forms and cultures, and last, but not least, distinct regulatory regimes. Economic, Institutional and Cultural Barriers to Convergence 43 Some forms declined in the face of competition from new forms. Live theatre, for instance, faced by the cinema and the cinema in its turn when faced by television. But in general that decline was slow and rarely absolute. The old forms survived and the new media in large part lived off the older media they were in part replacing — as the cinema did off theatre — and added a further layer to the media mix. The same is true for the post and written communication vis-à-vis telecommunication. The often prophecied end of the postal service is endlessly postponed. Although when first conceived radio was...