From its mechanical relay days in the late 1930's, to its ENIAC and UNIVAC vacuum tube days in the early 1950's (when it was the size of a 200-seat classroom, delivered an amazing, for that time, 5000 calculations per second, and drew so much energy, it is said, that the lights of Philadelphia dimmed when it was started) . Wherein, by 1985 one chip about the size of a dime delivered calculations 200 times faster at an infinitely smaller cost, with the energy consumption of a low watt light bulb. And, today we have portable laptop computers with multi-gigabyte hard drives that can connect to terabyte file servers (which can hold the equivalent of 1 million floppy disks) that do multi-millions of (mips) instructions per second.

It remains, however, that the computer is but one (although arguably the most prominent) of myriad of gizmos that can be subsumed under the rubric of new communication technologies. For along with "the computer" (and usually interconnected to it, or with it, in some form or fashion) there is an ever growing array of technological marvels markedly advancing the production, storage, dissemination and retrieval of information. Certainly, in most every respect, the communication media landscape ( The InfoSphere) is changing. As to the exact nature and impact of this change--??

An anonymous sage once observed, "forecasting is hard , particularly the future." Indeed, predicting the future is a little "like trying to drive a car blindfolded, following the directions of someone looking out the back window." Despite our apparent inability to plot the sales curve, there are some safe predictions that can be made:

 #1: "Anybody's guess is equally valid. "An analysis of more than 1500 technological predictions made from 1840- 1940 by a wide variety of forecasters found little difference in the accuracy of experts and nonexperts in forecasting a given field."

 #2: Anybody's guess is more likely wrong than right. An investigation "of the accuracy of new product
forecasts by various companies found an average forecast error of 65% for new product sales and 128% for new product profits."

 #3: Anybody's guess is probably going to overestimate the adoption rate of multimedia... "A comprehensive analysis of 165 forecasts from six subject areas found, for example, that nine of twelve forecasts for computer technological capabilities errored optimistically."

 #4: The more one's guess is based on a analysis of unmet consumer demands, the more reliable one's forecast will be.. Specifically, regarding "the evolution of computer technology ... forecasts which were market-driven (i.e. matched unmet user demands with technological potentials) were most reliable". (Klopenstein, 1989).

For the next few years all emerging communication technologies will be subjected to the phenomenon I term media-myopia-- defined as a unique combination of shortsightedness when it comes to estimating the public's desire for any given technological advance AND rearsightedness when it comes to ascertaining its ultimate utility. The concept of "media -myopia" is derived from the clearest lesson to be learned from the history of media evolution, that being that at the outset, both in conception & application the content & aesthetic of each new medium is directly derived and/or crudely concocted from the existing media it is to replace. As Marshall McLuhan so aptly noted decades ago, "It is instructive to follow the embryonic stages of any new growth for during this period of development it is much misunderstood, whether it be printing or the motorcar or TV, Just because people are at first oblivious of its nature, the new form deals some revealing blows to the zombie-eyed spectators" (McLuhan, 1964).

An Abbreviated History of Media-Myopia

Books
In what many regard as the oldest mass media, the historical development of books holds important lessons for our newest the media, interactive technology. Every new medium takes some time to gain its own identity.

"Printing had its "horseless carriage" phase of being misconceived and misapplied during its first decades, when it was not uncommon for the purchaser of a printed book to take it to a scribe to have it copied and illustrated...the first centuries of printing from movable type were motivated more by the desire to see ancient and medieval books than by the need to read or write new ones. Until 1700 much more than 50% of all printed books were ancient or medieval" (McLuhan, 1964).


The Telephone
Perhaps no more pointed example of media-myopia can be evidenced than that of the telephone. Who would of guessed that a medium that enables anyone to converse with anyone, anywhere in the world, would result from an idealist's work and intention to improve the lot of the deaf? "The invention of the telephone was an incident in the larger effort of the past century to render speech visible. Melville Bell, the father of Alexander Graham Bell, spent his life devising a universal alphabet that he published in 1867 under the title Visible Speech. Their struggle to perfect visible speech for the deaf led the Bells to a study of the new electrical devices that yielded the telephone" (McLuhan, 1964).

Moreover, the telephone's initial applications were designed for mass entertainment rather than intimate conversation. The first uses of the telephone included such broadcast-like episodes as: 1) a band playing the "Star Spangled Banner" in Boston while being listened to by an audience of 2000 in Providence, 2) a singer performing "The Marriage of Figaro" in Providence for an audience in Boston, and 3) 800 people in the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga listening to a concert by telephone wire from Madison Square Garden (Barnouw, 1966, pp.7-8). As succinctly described by the words of The Wondrous Telephone:, a song published in 1876:

You stay at home and listen
To the lecture in the hall,
Or hear the strains of music
From a fashionable ball!

The Phonograph
Reportedly, while attempting to develop a device that would increase the speed of the Atlantic Cable, Thomas Edison, by happenstance, "invented" the phonograph. Since, initially, he wasn't even trying to develop such a device it's understandable that he did not know what to do with it, let alone what to call it:

"....the phonograph was involved in many misconceptions, as one of its early names-gramophone- implies. It was conceived as a form of auditory writing (gramma-letters). It was also called "graphophone," with the needle in the role of a pen....Edison was delayed in his approach to the solution of its problems by considering it at first as a "telephone repeater." Hence the name phonograph (McLuhan, 1964).

It would be decades before the phonograph would take one the central role of the household music box, with its complement of albums & 45's. As it was originally envisioned, however, the phonograph was thought to hold more promise for medicine than for music:

"There were prophets who could foresee the great day when the phonograph would aid medicine by providing a medical means of discrimination between "the sob of hysteria and the sigh of melancholia...the ring of whooping cough and the hack of he consumptive. It will be an expert in insanity, distinguishing between the laugh of the maniac and drivel of the idiot...It will accomplish this feat in the anteroom, while the physician is busying himself with his last patient." In practice, however, the phonograph stayed with voices of the Signor Foghornis, the basso-tenores, robusto- profundos...." (McLuhan, 1964).

Motion Pictures
It would take almost 15 years for motion pictures to find and develop its unique aesthetic. That unique style and substance we now call the narrative film. As with the phonograph, there was initial confusion as the what to call "it" and how to use "it." The inventors (Edison and Dickson, 1889) called it the Kinetoscope . In later variations it was called the vitascope and bioscope. These latter labels reflected the initial content of the films, as a simple and straight-forward recording device of life at its most routine. The first motion pictures provided nothing more one minute snippets of "Feeding the ducks of Tampa Bay", "The Arrival of the Paris Express", and "The Gondolas of Venice". As the media scholar, Joseph Dominick, observed:

These early efforts in the Edison lab were not directed at projecting movies to large crowds. Still influenced by the success of his phonograph, Edison thought a similar device could make money by showing brief films to one person at a time for a penny a look. The Kinetoscope reflected this idea; it was much like a modern-day peep-show machine. Edison built a special studio to produce films for this new invention, and by 1894 Kinetoscope parlors were springing up in major cities. The long-range commercial potential of this invention was lost on Edison. He was dead set against developing motion-picture-projection equipment. He reasoned that the real money would be made by selling his peep-show machines. If a large number of people were shown the film at the same time, fewer machines would be needed. Edison argued that only ten projectors would be needed to show films to everyone in the entire country. His estimate was a little off (Dominick, 1983).

Radio
While noting that almost 60 years after its development the word "wireless" is still used in Britain... McLuhan, again, observed that: "The history of radio is instructive as an indicator of the bias and blindness induced in any society by its pre-existent technology." His point is vividly illustrated by media historians who have recorded such incidents as:

- "The initial reaction to the wireless radio early in this century when the U.S. Navy installed radio transmitters on ships of the Great White Fleet for its round-the-world voyage and then discarded them in favor of carrier pigeons....(Dizard, 1989).

- When AT&T finally decided at an executive meeting held in New York City on January 12 1922, that it would take up "public radiotelephone broadcasting," the decision was framed wholly in telephone terms. Lloyd Espenschied, who was present, described the original conception: "We, the telephone company, were to provide no programs. The public was to come in. Anyone who had a message for the world or wished to entertain was to come in and pay their money as they would upon coming into a telephone booth, address the world, and go out" (Barnouw, 1966).

And so it was that, "Many thought that radio would never amount to much.... radio was looked upon as a competitor to the telephone or telegraph industries. The fact that it was public, that everybody could receive it with the proper equipment, was looked upon as a drawback. No one could quite understand why anybody would want to send messages to a large group of anonymous individuals...." (Dominick, 1983).

The New Media
There is a clear parallel with the initial perception of radio and how many today perceive multimedia. As Dominick observed, "For many people radio seemed no more than a toy, a passing fad for hobbyists and those who tinkered with electronics..." (Dominick, 1983). Why is this the case? Why is it that in virtually every instance when a new medium has come along it is it is misperceived, misapplied and misunderstood? McLuhan believed that, "Western man has had, so far, no education or equipment for meeting any of the new media on their own terms...The western interests of acquired knowledge and conventional wisdom have always been bypassed and engulfed by new media..." (McLuhan, 1964). This observed lack of overall media literacy might explain the chronic state of media-myopia that has plagued the development and application of every new medium that has come along. To date, no other explanation has been proffered that would account for such long and continuous record of misconceptions, faulty assumptions and incorrect forecasts concerning every medium's introduction. It is a wonder that any new medium ever developed at all, given the incessant inclination by the vested interests to perceive it only in terms of their needs and the current state of affairs.

So what does this truncated review of the history of media evolution prognosticate for the purported up- coming communication revolution? The first and foremost lesson to be learned is that we must realize that what we see (now) is not what will get (later).

. Already, the technological catalyst of the revolution is in place-digitalization. For: "With digitalization all the media become translatable into each other--computer bits migrate merrily.... A movie, phone call, letter, or magazine article may be sent digitally via phone line, coaxial cable, fiberoptic cable, microwave, satellite, the broadcast air, or a physical storage medium such as tape or disk. If that's not revolution enough, with digitalization the content becomes totally plastic--any message, sound, or image may be edited from anything into anything else." (Brand, 1987). Akin to the energy generated by nuclear fusion, the communication power which can be generated by media fusion will be formidable. The lesson of media history is clear. And, it is:

"A new medium is never an addition to an old one, nor does it leave the old one in peace. It never ceases to oppress the older media until it finds new shapes and positions for them" (McLuhan, 1964).


REFERENCES

Barnouw, E. (1966) A Tower In Babel (New York, Oxford Univ. Press) pp.7-8,106.

Brand, S. (1987),The Media Lab (Viking Press: New York), p.18.

Dizard, W.P. Jr. (1989) THE COMING OF THE INFORMATION AGE (New York, Longman) p.39.

Dominick, J.r. (1983) The Dynamics of Mass Communication (Menlo Park, Addison- Wesley) pp.142,109-10.

Klopenstein B. (1989). Forecasting New Communication Technology: Lessons From Home Video. Journal of American Society of Information Science, 40:1, pp.17-26.

McLuhan (1964) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York, McGraw-Hill) pp. 250,171, 268-9, 276, 281,195, 174.