Among Harvard's Libraries: Technological advances in publishing and the media: The news in the future program

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Citation Rubin, Jerome S. 1996. Among Harvard's Libraries: Technological advances in publishing and the media: The news in the future program. Harvard Library Bulletin 6 (2), Summer 1995: 24-29.

Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42665390

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Carinthians are grateful to the tumultuous times between the wars, United States of America and to Presi- and during World War II itself, many dent Woodrow Wilson, as well as to his things that should not have been done experts at the Paris Peace Conference were. However, since 1955, when Aus- after World War I, for their role in tria regained her freedom, Carinthia has bringing about the plebiscite of Octo- achieved much in guaranteeing rights ber IO, 1920, seventy-five years ago. for her Slovene minority. We are especially grateful to Professor The people of Carinthia are grateful Archibald Cary Coolidge. to Professor Archibald Cary Coolidge After World War I and the collapse for his help in bringing about the plebi- of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the scite of October IO, 1920. newly established kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, that is, the first After the ceremony in the Widener Me- Yugoslovia, claimed all of the Slovenes morial Rooms, members of the Austrian dele- of southern Carinthia. The disposition gation entered the stacks and walked down to of the so-called Klagenfurt Basin, in- D West, the bottommost level where the Aus habited by a mixed German and class is shelved. There, they saw a consider- Slovene population, was consequently able number of books and periodicals about one of the territorial issues that the Carinthia. On the way out of the stacks, the Paris Peace Conference had to resolve. Deputy Governor commented, "I never ex- Much debate resulted in the plebi- pected to find here books about Carinthia." scite solution, which was due to Presi- I did, though, and that is why I was able to dent Wilson and especially to his volunteer to take the delegation into the experts Professor Coolidge and Lt. stacks. I knew the books would be there, be- Colonel Sherman Miles. The plebi- cause I knew that Archibald Cary Coolidge scite turned out to be favorable to Aus- would have seen to it. tria. The Karawanken mountains, Coolidge, back in the early years of this southern border of the old crown century, understood that Americans would help duchy ofCarinthia, became the border to shape events in places whose very names of the Austrian republic. were unfamiliar to all but a few of his fellow The southeastern part of the country, citizens. Through his teaching, through edit- the area where the plebiscite took place, ing Foreign Affairs-and through giving a contained a population that was about 70 worldwide scope to the Harvard Library-he percent Slovene in language. Yet, Aus- sought to insure that Americans would act on tria gained 59 percent of the total vote, the basis of knowledge. and of the 22,000 persons who voted to Although Coolidge bought 4,000 volumes join with Austria, ro,ooo were Slovene while in Austria, some of the books about speaking. By their own decision, they Carinthia were in the Widener stacks before became part of a German-speaking state. he left Cambridge on his mission. Perhaps the Although the treaties of Paris pro- history of Carinthia was even shaped by some vided for minority rights, in the of those books that are now on D West.

The consortium, formed under the auspices TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES IN of the Media Laboratory of the Massachusetts PUBLISHING AND THE MEDIA: Institute ofTechnology, began life in February THE NEWS IN THE FUTURE PROGRAM of 1993. The members of the consortium are twenty-one media and technology companies Jerome S. Rubin from eight countries. The research projects JEROME S. RUBIN, who has re- research consortium has been formed to are led by seven MIT faculty members, as- cently joined Veronis, Suhler A explore the ways in which news may be sisted by about twenty graduate students, and & Associates Inc. as managing disseminated in the future. The program has I am chairman of the Program. director, continues to be chair- the somewhat ambiguous name of News in Before outlining some of the central con- man of the News in the Future the Future (NiF). cepts of the News in the Future research initia- tive, I would like to provide some background. program. This is a slightly revised version of an address given at the meeting of the Overseers' Committee to Visit the Library, In 1967, when this century still had one- 28 April 1995. third of the way to go, the American Academy Among Harvard's Libraries 25

of Arts and Sciences published a report of the order to be lively and vivid. Increasingly, I Academy's Commission on the Year 2000. want to remove those filters ... I want direct The Commission was an all-star team. It in- access to information of interest to me." It cluded Daniel Bell, Herman Kahn, Pat turns out that what Michael Crichton wants Moynihan, Erik Erikson, Margaret Mead, is an individualized newspaper-a 1990s ver- David Riesman, Eugene Rostow, and Zbig- sion of Pierce's vision-for he goes on: niew Brzezinski. Once Al Gore gets the fiber optic Looking back at the Commission's report highways in place, and the information more than a quarter of a century later, I am capacity of the country is where it struck by its failure to appreciate the astonishing ought to be, I will be able, for ex- potential of computers and telecommunica- ample, to view any public meeting of tions. In defense of the Commission, however, Congress over the Net. And I will I should point out that it was only eleven years have artificial intelligence agents roam- earlier, in 1956, that Univac had introduced ing the databases, down-loading stuff I the first commercially available computer to am interested in, and assembling for use transistors instead of vacuum tubes-the me a front page, or a nightly news so-called second generation. And the first show, that addresses my interests. I'll microprocessor was not developed until r 97 r, have the twelve top stories that I want, four years after the Commission's report. I'll have short summaries available, and One member of the Commission on the I'll be able to double-dick for more Year 2000 did come close, but hardly close detail. How will Peter Jennings ... or enough, to perceiving the remarkable changes a newspaper compete with that?" that electronic technologies would generate. That person was John R. Pierce, who was One of the basic premises of the NiF Pro- then head of the Research and Communica- gram is that the distribution of news can in- tions Sciences Division of Bell Laboratories deed be individualized. The idea is to deliver and who, incidentally, was the man who to the individual reader (or viewer or listener) coined the word "transistor." After saying that news (and advertising) that meets the particu- "it will be interesting to see whether CATV lar needs or interests of that individual-and will continue to thrive," he said, "Ifit does, it to deliver that news at the time it is needed, at may help to bring about another long-time the place it is needed, and in the form that is dream-the delivery of newspapers to homes most useful or convenient to the individual at by wire." that time and place. He then went on to say: But in the Media Lab vision of the electronic newspaper, Michael Crichton's double-click- Although the production of a paper ing won't be necessary. In our vision, people newspaper in the home seems to be will talk to their electronic newspapers (in or- clearly impractical, a microfilm news- dinary English or French or Japanese) and the paper might be acceptable .... Experi- newspaper/ computer will obey those oral ence shows that people want local news commands. If it is more appropriate in some and local advertisements in newspapers, circumstances, we will communicate with our as well as national news and national electronic newspapers with simple gestures. advertisements. In a newspaper distrib- Simply put, we propose to eliminate the barri- uted by wire, some news and advertise- ers between the human being and the machine. ments could be tailored to specific In the twenty-eight years since Pierce's neighborhoods if that proved profit- comments, computer power has grown so able. Indeed, to some degree, mass cheap that software can be developed to make communications might be nearly indi- computer systems easier and more intuitive to vidualized in this process. use. An enormous amount of complexity, all Much more recently, our Visiting Commit- of it invisible to the user, can be incorporated tee colleague Michael Crichton has written at low cost. Systems are becoming increas- that today's American newspaper is "another ingly complex on the inside and simpler on dinosaur, one that may be on the road to ex- the outside. Computer storage has also grown tinction ... gone within ten years. Vanished, dramatically in capacity and shrunk in cost and without a trace." size. And both computer power and computer Michael says that he resents "the front page storage continue to get cheaper and to come editor, or the reporter who prunes the facts in in smaller and smaller packages. 26 HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

Similar advances are on the way for com- Simpson jurors-plus, of course, the com- puter displays. Flat-panel displays are becom- mercials for products in which Michael has no ing larger, cheaper and better-offering more interest. And the odds are that many of the brightness, more contrast and higher resolu- things he wants to know may not be broad- tion. Tiny displays with tiny diodes and cast at all, because his interests may be idio- vibrating mirrors mimic full-size, high-reso- syncratic. lution CRTs. And in the not-too-distant fu- Even when the stories that especially inter- ture we may be able to use small, bright, thin, est Michael do tum up buried deep inside the flexible displays that approach paper in their Los Angeles Times, or are broadcast on the congeniality to the human being-perhaps evening TV news, it is highly likely that he even paper itself in a reusable form, thanks to will want to know more than has been pre- reversible print. sented. As the stores of information accumu- And the proliferation of digital communi- late in digital form, it will be increasingly cation channels will facilitate the delivery of feasible for him to have his individualized sto- the individualized newspaper. Whether it be ries, and the background and histories of those through compressed digital TV, 500- or 5- stories, with as much or as little detail as he zillion-channel cable systems, satellite distri- may desire. bution, or advances in telephony, bandwidth We are also exploring the automatic cre- is becoming a commodity. A single digital TV ation of user profiles, so that Michael will not channel, for example, can deliver the full text have to tell the news system what he espe- of a typical North American daily newspaper cially wants to know. In addition, we are ex- in more or less a quarter of a second. ploring the development of "autonomous Printing with movable type facilitated the intelligent interface agents," software pro- mass communication of news. In the nine- grams that will "learn" from user feedback teenth century, four centuries after Guten- and user monitoring and will not only person- berg, the steam-driven press, the rotary press, alize news selection but also discover new ar- wood-pulp paper, and other technologies of eas of information in which Michael may the time made the newspaper even more of a come to develop an interest. mass-produced, uniform product, carrying In Pierce's peek twenty-seven years ago at the same news and the same advertisements in the newspaper of the future, he raised as a every copy. possible objection to the newspaper electri- But radio and TV, the leading sources of cally delivered to the home the problem of news for most of the world today, are the storing rolls of newsprint in people's houses. quintessential channels of mass communica- A valid objection. While the newspaper of the tion. While a newspaper reader can navigate future will not necessarily be presented on through the paper as she wishes-browsing, paper, paper does have many virtues as an in- skimming, and reading at will, radio and TV formation-display medium. One of the most broadcast the same news to everyone, in the technologically ambitious projects in the Pro- same sequence and with the same amount of gram is, therefore, examining the possible time and the same emphasis. development of a thin, flexible display with Mass communication is necessarily aimed at the look and feel of paper-even paper itself majorities or large minorities. It is one-way; with print that can be "reversed" or made to it is aimed from the few to the many. But disappear. Michael Crichton should not have to thumb Although a computer screen may be supe- through the Los Angeles Times, page after rior to paper for reading stock quotes or pin- page, until he finds some of the stories he pointed classifiedads, paper is clearly preferable wants buried deep inside-if, indeed, the sto- for reading most textual material. Reading the ries are there at all. New York Times in America On-Line, for ex- With TV and radio, the burden is different: ample, is an awkward, eye-straining experi- Michael has to wait for his stories while all the ence. I launched LEXIS twenty-two years ago, other news stories, political sound-bites, and lawyers have not yet become accustomed weather forecasts, and non-Chrichton movie to reading significant bodies of text on the reviews are broadcast, one after the other. screen. They use LEXIS to find cases and then And then there are the interviews with un- print them out to read them comfortably. shaven rock stars, illiterate rap stars, semi-lit- And this is true even of those young lawyers erate movie stars, and disgruntled O. J. who grew up using computers. Among Harvard's Libraries 27

There are also projects in the Program that in color-coded three-dimensional forms. She involve exciting systems for automatic design tells the computer-television in ordinary En- and layout. These systems provide an extraor- glish which stories she wishes to see, and the dinarily rich range of possibilities for the indi- TV obliges. It presents the stories in video or vidualized newspaper-whether printed on audio or simple newspaper-like text, depend- paper or displayed electronically. ing on the nature of the story and the system's These are just a small sample of the research knowledge ofTillie's preferences. IfTillie has projects in the NiF Program. But rather than the time, she asks the machine for background outline the others, it may be more interesting information or more detail on certain stories, to provide a vision of news in the future that and all the while she is looking or listening or the Program may make possible. So let us asking for more information her trustworthy look in on a day in the life of a typical subur- interface agents are noting what she is focus- ban couple a few years down the road. ing on or asking for-so that they can im- Tillie the Toiler and Harry the Home- prove their performance in the future. maker represent the demographic mean- At one point, the computer-television per- two children, one dog, and five digital TVs. ceives that Suki, the family's lovable black These digital TVs are really computers that poodle, is scratching herself with unusual fre- receive and display television signals in digital quency and vigor. The TV immediately brings form. While Tillie is dressing for a day at the the situation to Tillie's attention and, with her office, Harry has fed the kids and sent them permission, then presents a captivating two- off to school. He then relaxes for a few min- minute video on life-threatening flea-borne utes by watching a live broadcast from Tokyo diseases, followed by a series of tasteful adver- of the third game of the American League tisements for non-allergenic flea shampoo, playoffs-the Tokyo Giants versus the biodegradable flea collars, and ultrasonic flea- Toronto Blue Jays. Harry is a great fan of the sex-drive inhibitors that, while not providing U.S. national pastime, and the time difference immediate relief, ultimately eradicate the between East Coast U.S. and Japan makes host's flea population. If Tillie is tempted by breakfast the optimum time in Chappaqua, any of the advertised products, she can order New York, to watch night games in Tokyo. them simply by orally communicating her Harry has the option of watching the game wishes to the TV set. from just about any point of view he wishes. Since Tillie is a good citizen and sensitive If he wants statistics on any of the players- to the concerns of her community, she also is lifetime, this season, this series, this game, interested in state and local news. She there- whatever-he simply asks the computer-tele- fore tells the computer-television to replace vision set for them (in plain English) and the the world map with one of New York State, set replies immediately, both orally and with then with one of Westchester County or text on the screen. The television screen, by maybe the entire New York Metropolitan the way, is a gigantic flat panel covering an area, and finally with one of the Chappaqua- entire wall of the breakfast nook in the Armonk-Mount Kisco area, focusing on news kitchen. stories of special interest in the same way she Tillie, however, is not a baseball fan. When did with the world map. In addition, how- she arrives in the breakfast nook for the high- ever, the Chappaqua-Armonk-Mount Kisco fiber, non-fat, low-cholesterol breakfast that screen alerts her to any unusual traffic prob- Harry has lovingly prepared, she tells the lems on her normal route to the Chappaqua computer-television that she wants to check commuter train station and recommends an the world news. The TV then covers its en- alternative route. tire screen, which is the entire wall, with a After finishing her breakfast and before map of the world similar to the one some of kissing Harry and Suki goodbye, she retrieves you may have seen in the Media Lab's Visual her individualized newspaper, printed on re- Language Workshop. News headlines appear usable paper, from the kitchen computer- on the map at the places where the events television or one of the family's four other have happened or are happening. The most digital TV sets. While the paper contains a recent stories carry the brightest headlines, good deal of news of general interest, it re- and the stories that Tillie's autonomous inter- flects Tillie's individual interests in what is face agents have selected as being of special selected and emphasized and in what is omit- interest to Tillie have headlines that stand out ted by her agents. As you might expect, they 28 HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

have filtered out all but the most earth-shak- she wants to know more about, thumbs up for ing baseball news. As you also might expect, a story she thinks is great, pinkie down for one Harry's agents present him with a very differ- she thinks is ridiculous, or, to give another ent individualized newspaper. Not only the example, a flick of the wrist to turn a page. content, but also the typography, layout, and On her drive to and from the Chappaqua design ofTillie's paper reflect Tillie's personal train station, Tillie listens to the playback of a taste. In the same way, Harry's paper reflects digital storage device that has been recording his personal taste. news filtered from a variety of wire services Tillie folds the paper, drops it into her and radio broadcasts since the last time she lis- briefcase, and reads it on her commuter train. tened to it. These filters, which are linked by Before she leaves for home that evening, she RF signals to those in the kitchen computer- slips the paper into a digital TV in her office- television, also benefit from instruction from digitally linked to the computer-television in Tillie and the advice of her interface agents. her home from which it came. All the print- Depending on her mood and what she hap- ing on the paper is "reversed" (wiped ofi), but pens to be working on at her office, Tillie Tillie is able to tell the computer-television may ask the system to emphasize one or an- (in ordinary English, of course) to save certain other of her interest profiles. And of course stories or advertisements in its memory for Tillie's agents are especially sensitive to news future reference-and her agents also instruct of traffic and weather conditions on Tillie's the computer-television to save certain items. route. If Tillie is uncertain of the best way to The office TV obliges and produces an reach a recommended alternative road, she evening edition of Tillie's personal newspa- can ask to have a map displayed on a flat-panel per. When she returns home to Harry, Suki, screen in her car's dashboard. The map will and the kids, she slips the paper back into the highlight the recommended route and indi- home TV from which it came-and she and cate Tillie's changing location as she drives her agents issue the appropriate instructions to along. the TV. The next morning, as she sets off on And if the tread is beginning to wear on the her daily journey to Grand Central Station, front tires of her car, the car will alert the sys- she plucks out of the home computer-televi- tem to look for tire ads and bring them to her sion that morning's edition of her personal- attention. ized newspaper. Although fleas are unlikely to disappear, On some mornings, when Tillie is espe- baseball and commuter railroads may, so the cially eager to use her evening return-to- scenario I have just described may not play home train time to read a fascinating novel, out precisely in that form. But however it she will take with her an electronic-book plays out, it will be alien to today's mass-com- reader and a flash-memory card on which the munication culture. The tale of Tillie the book is stored. Those mornings, she can read Toiler is not sci-fi fantasy; a number of the her individualized newspaper on the screen of pieces are already in place, and others are on her reader. The screen may be a light-weight, the way. high-resolution flat panel or a thin, flexible The world map of the opening scene is plastic screen, or possibly something like alive and well in the Media Lab. today's Private Eye, a tiny device whose clever We have demonstrated an early version of optics mimic a large, high-resolution screen. reusable paper on which we have printed The newspaper itself will be downloaded onto with a standard ink-jet printer. a flash-memory card by the same computer- We can turn pages on a screen, zoom in on television that on other mornings provides a screen, alter audio volume and otherwise Tillie's reversible-print personal newspaper. control a computer by simple hand gestures She will not only read news stories, but will without touching the screen and without the also look at full-motion video clips if she use of wires. wishes. If an interesting advertisement catches We have developed a vision-based recog- her eye, she can make it come alive in full- nition system that will bring to life the most color video. Since speaking to the device dramatic event of the story-the Suki flea- would disturb her fellow passengers (and Tillie scratching scene. is not the sort of person to violate commuter Although the complexities of human lan- etiquette), she will communicate with the guage and the literal-mindedness of the digital device by simple gestures-pointing at a story computer make dealing with natural language Among Harvard's Libraries 29

incredibly difficult, we are building systems document is printed. It is catechistic: that are learning to understand news stories in the essence of revelation is dealt with ordinary English and, believe it or not, in via simple formulae and sumptuous Finnish. icons. Everyone has a right to salva- We are developing intelligent agents. Their tion. ability to learn sets them apart from most of DOS is Protestant, or even Calvin- the agents being turned loose, or about to be istic. It allows the interpretation of turned loose, in software systems and com- scripture, demands difficult personal puter networks today. decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneu- We are developing techniques for parsing tics upon the user, and takes for and filtering audio. We are learning to iden- granted the idea that not all can reach tify signals in speakers' voices that a new ra- salvation. dio news story is to begin-not only pauses To make the system work you need but variations in pitch. We have in effect gen- to interpret the program yourself. A erated "headlines" in radio news, so that the long way from the Baroque commu- listener can browse audio as well as print. We nity of revellers, the user is closed have demonstrated the ability to listen to within the loneliness of his own inner more than one story at a time and to empha- torment. size one or another. Because of the audio You may object that, with the pas- component in television, this work has broad sage to Windows, the DOS universe application there as well as in radio. has come to resemble more closely the We are also making progress on the other counter-reformist tolerance of the technologies implicit in the tale of Tillie the Macintosh. It's true. Windows repre- Toiler-technologies necessary to transform sents an Anglican-style schism, grand the vision into reality. And every day, MIT ceremonies in the cathedral, but there students receive their personalized electronic is always the possibilty of a return to newspapers through computer terminals con- DOS to change things in accordance nected to the MIT network. To demonstrate with bizarre decisions. When it comes our enthusiasm for paper, these electronic down to it, you can decide to allow newspapers are known collectively as Fresh- women and gays to be ministers if you man Fishwrap. want to. I should like to conclude on a theological And machine code, which lies be- note, and I will take the liberty of translating neath both systems.... Ah, that has to freely from a piece by Umberto Eco: do with the Old Testament, and is talmudic and cabalistic. Insufficient consideration has been given to the new underground reli- If we pursue Umberto Eco's theological gious war that is changing the modern metaphor and extend it to our vision of a sys- world .... tem in which the barrier between the human The fact is that the world is divided being and the machine is obliterated, we ap- between users of the Macintosh com- proach the raptures of the Sufi mystics and puter and users of MS-DOS-compat- their medieval European counterparts, like ible computers. I am firmly of the the Scholastic mystic Meister Eckhart. Losing opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic all sense of separation between themselves and and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the object of their devotion, their souls are the Macintosh is counter-reformist and united with God in the unio mystica. In our has been influenced by the ratio vision, however, the union will not be with studiorumof the Jesuits. It is cheerful, God but with the computer. Our computer friendly, conciliatory. It tells the faith- systems will be so powerful that they will be ful how they must proceed step by step invisible to the user, who will experience the to reach-if not the Kingdom of machine as being a part of herself, as much as Heaven-the moment in which their her own hands, eyes, and voice.