Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 3, 1994 TAG: 9404070287
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LAURIE FLYNN SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
At SRI International, the Menlo Park, Calif.-based think tank, Mandel has spent the past two decades helping the computer industry and other businesses figure out the next wave - and the one after that. A professional ``futurist,'' he has helped organizations from government agencies to Silicon Valley start-ups to established companies like Apple Computer Inc.
While Mandel's work isn't limited to computers - it doesn't appear, in fact, to be limited by anything - his current focus is ``new media,'' that is, how current forms of communications and publishing are being changed by new and emerging technologies.
His current project at SRI is called the Digital Video and Advanced Multimedia Program, a research project in the emerging area of electronic publishing and multimedia, including an examination of the information superhighway and the high-stakes business of interactive television.
Mandel, too, has also been working with Time magazine to create an electronic version of the magazine and today manages many of the service's electronic bulletin boards.
How does one go about becoming a professional futurist?
For Mandel, it was a circuitous route, including twice dropping out of college, spending nine months in Vietnam in 1969 and finally meeting an inspiring professor at the University of Hawaii. After majoring in futuristics there - there was no formal program; Mandel designed it himself - he did graduate work in cybernetics (the study of the relationship between complex electronics and the human nervous system) at San Jose State. When Mandel joined SRI in 1975, the organization had some 30 futurists on staff. Today, he's the last of the old guard.
Here are excerpts from a recent interview with Mandel, covering subjects from interactive TV to future software:
Q: What's the next problem that needs to be solved in personal computing?
A: To make things usable for lots of people, things that empower. Right now 30 percent of households have PCs, but it's not clear how many of those are using them effectively. And probably groupware - PCs have made some individuals more productive, but they haven't made groups any more productive.
Q: What is the promise of interactive television, really?
A: People who think that everything will converge around the television are wrong. People will use different devices for different things. There will be at least five devices: TVs, PCs, personal digital assistants, little TV sets and notebooks.
We don't know what [interactive television] is, and we won't know until all these tests are over. It'll take 10 to 20 years before we know - most new media take that long, a generation. And how is it going to work with a PC? There have been lots of visions out there, but it's been largely oversold.
It will be a very fragmented world - like the print world, not like the broadcasting world - with lots of niche stuff.
Q: What is the future for today's form of on-line services?
A: One interesting question is whether there will be a place for the Prodigys and the AOLs [America Online], or will we have a direct access world - like the Internet - where there's no need for these services. The major cost of on-line services is the network costs, but the broadband stuff will make it more affordable.
You'll go to places, like the Well, or Mercury Center or Time Inc. on the net. But today, because of the crappy quality of interfaces and the economies of scale, the business is in service provision. I don't think this separated world will last much longer.
What does ``place'' mean anyway? Today, I can go down to Mac's Smoke Shop to see 2,000 magazines. You'll want to go to one ``place'' on-line for everything.
Q: What sort of interfaces will we see on these services?
A: For information and entertainment, the interface will be different. We're not going to have Windows on interactive televisions. You don't see Windows on video games.
Q: How quickly will we move to these new forms of communication?
A: There will be a lot of cross-media cannibalization that will occur before it settles out. It's very exciting, but things will not change as rapidly as we're being told. Traditional media will stay around for a long time. It takes time to build forms appropriate to new media. That will happen with the data highway.
by CNB