This is a blog about the emergence of a digital culture. What might it look like? What can we see already?
And all my other details are kept at benmason.org.
The BBC, BT and ITV are proposing a telly box connected to the internet. Now this excites me for two reasons. Firstly most people don't really web that much. They still telly loads. I prefer the nature of the web. I like the unbridled, collaborative, messy nature of it. So it'd be good for the BBC to make the web available on the box people spend most time in front of. And secondly it excites me because of Dan Hon's comments on it here. He talks about openness. But more of that later. If you want the full story on project Canvas try here, or just read Dan's great post. For the purposes of this article you just should know that Canvas will likely be a set-top box which will offer:
So, point three, internet-delivered telly, sounds very interesting. As Dan points out that means two-way communication. It should mean that anyone can publish telly. But the point that Dan and others have made is that this must be open. For the format to be successful as part of the internet anyone must be able to publish through it. It's this openness which is such a strong component of digital culture. It's the openess that propelled HTML to the fore while others where charging for their versions of linked files online. Openess became the standard. It'll be interesting to see if this absolute necessity for open publishing becomes the default for all TV eventually (whatever TV becomes). It seems likely that since publishing costs become negligible once the internet is involved, publishing must be open to all. Openness is default And from there you end up with an open exchange, a million pet videos and utterly brilliant things like Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat. I haven't been so enthusiastic about the telly box for a long time. [image from]
