1 A Digital World Driven by natural inquisitiveness, and encouraged by scientifi c discoveries and engineering achievements, the human environment is constantly evolving. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus (c. 540 – c. 470 BC) is said to have taught that there is nothing permanent except change. In social, politi- cal, and commercial affairs, change is everywhere. Change is an eternal condition of mankind, and so it is with modes of communication. Change is most obvious from generation to generation as the new generation picks up developments made by the previous one. Without personal knowledge of what went before, new generations are free to innovate and discover new uses. Certainly this is true of the current period. Within a lifetime, entire industries devoted to digital devices, such as personal computers, mobile phones, software that performs amazing feats without human inter- vention, and a worldwide data network that is available to anyone with a connection and a compatible terminal, have been born and are thriving. The confl uence of solid state (electronic and optical) components, high - level software, and pervasive digital communications has changed the developed world so that new generations are forging a computer - enabled, data - enriched, social, industrial, and political environment. The development of the Internet and its global reach surprised most communications experts. In the 1970s the incumbent telephone companies were moreCOPYRIGHTED interested in voice than in data, MATERIAL perhaps for good reasons: they had quality of service problems. Waiting for several seconds before the overworked common equipment in the central offi ce could return a dial tone was common, and one had to book a time for an intercontinental call. Furthermore, calling across the United States required the intervention of an operator in White Plains, Chicago, or Dallas until direct - distance dialing Connections for the Digital Age: Multimedia Communications for Mobile, Nomadic, and Fixed Devices, First Edition. E. Bryan Carne. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. cc01.indd01.indd 1 77/15/2011/15/2011 111:45:171:45:17 AAMM 2 A DIGITAL WORLD (DDD) could be universally instituted. All that is gone now, but, in the meantime, a facility of the United States Department of Defense (DOD) called ARPAnet (Advanced Research Projects Agency network), developed and built to share government computing resources among research estab- lishments, grew and fl ourished. 1 De facto it became the national data network. Government property no longer, and now called Internet, it pro- vides digital communication capability to a global audience permitting them to send and receive multimedia messages. ARPAnet and Internet provided platforms for the conversion of data, voice, audio, and video media 2 to digital signals. This combination of media became known as multimedia and, when the signals were mixed together (multiplexed) the stream was termed broadband . It is important to realize that broadband signals are only alive as speech, music, movies, pictures, and text at their sources and when captured and interpreted by their receivers. In between they are a broadband stream of digital signals with different formats that must be treated properly in order to be moved from place to place. This advance has spawned a cornucopia of digital portable devices. Now, the once monopolistic voice and narrowband data communications establishments are working assiduously and in collabora- tion to provide broadband services. Today there are at least four times as many mobile phones as landline phones. In addition, the number of Internet hosts is rapidly approaching one billion, and Internet users around two billion people. To the discomfort of existing landline telephone companies (telcos), fi xed - line usage is declin- ing, leaving them with increasing liabilities and underutilized assets. To restore their fortunes they have accepted that communications action is centered on the Internet and its vast array of sites, and they must embrace broadband digital technologies and compete with mobile cell phone com- panies (cellcos) and cable television companies (cablecos). But the envi- ronment is not static; cellcos are expanding wireless services so that mobile users can receive multimedia signals at greater and greater data rates from a range of sources, and cablecos have seized the opportunity to augment their traditional television entertainment businesses with high - speed Internet access and digital voice services. The goals of all of these organi- zations are to construct a multimedia world that will provide connections to stationary, nomadic, and mobile devices to make the electronic encoun- ter as natural and convenient as possible. This book is a snapshot of a rapidly evolving fi eld that seeks to provide digital multimedia communica- tion on demand, at any time, to anywhere, using any terminal, and to compete with the attractions of the Internet. 1 Leonard Kleinrock , “ History of the Internet and Its Flexible Future , ” IEEE Wireless Communications , vol. 15 , no. 1 , February 2008 , pp. 8 – 18 . 2 The terms voice and audio are included in this list to emphasize the difference between spoken voice and music. They are both audible sounds. cc01.indd01.indd 2 77/15/2011/15/2011 111:45:171:45:17 AAMM DIGITAL NATIVES AND IMMIGRANTS 3 1.1 Digital Natives and Immigrants A digital native 3 is a person born in the digital age (i.e., after circa 1980) who regards cell phones, laptop computers, mp3 players, and other por- table multimedia devices as a natural part of everyday life. 4 They are the principal targets of multimedia companies. Older persons 3 who seek to imitate the ways of digital natives are known as digital immigrants . Both of them seek the technologies and distribution channels that best suit their needs, expectations, and environments. The wide range of devices at their disposal connect to the Internet and many are wireless - enabled to achieve mobility. Digital natives are driving multimedia communications by their urgent need to inform one another about everything they are doing. YouTube, Facebook, instant messaging, texting, tweeting, and so on, are examples of services that are meeting this demand. Different situations require different formats, different terminal capabilities, diverse presentations, and special- ized information. Their major communications terminals are: • Telephones : Telephones are interactive devices that are connected to networks by wires, fi bers, cables, or wireless. The number of fi xed line telephones has been overtaken by the number of cellphones (cellular phones), which are the most used personal communication devices in the world. In addition, they may be the most technologically advanced devices. Besides their original use as a mobile telephone providing voice communication for persons on the move, a glance at the electronics catalog pages of Amazon.com 5 (or another equivalent site) confi rms that cellphones combined with proprietary operating systems (smartphones) have the ability to provide Internet access, texting, navigation informa- tion, location information, video programming, and other such services. They are truly multimedia portable devices. Similar devices are to be found elsewhere. • Televisions : Until recently, televisions employed analog signals and dis- played them in a 4:3 format. 6 Beginning in 2005 in the United Kingdom, and spreading quickly to many European countries, and to the United States in 2009, televisions have begun to employ digital signals received by terrestrial wireless, satellite wireless, fi ber, or cable and display them as standard TV in a 4:3 or 16:9 format and as high - defi nition TV in 16:9 format. Most of the developed world will use digital signals before 2020. 3 John Palfrey and Urs Gasser , Born Digital . Philadelphia : Basic Books , 2008 , p. 346 . Also, Ericsson, What Consumers Want from TV/Video Solutions , White Paper 284 23 - 3130 Uen, June 2009, p. 4. An earlier book that gives an interesting perspective is Alex Lightman with William Ropjas, Brave New Unwired World: The Digital Big Bang and the Infi nite Internet . John Wiley & Sons, 2002. 4 Some have coined the phrase echo boomer for the sons and daughters of baby boomers . Echo boomers can very well be digital natives. 5 Http://www.amazon.com/electronics . 6 I.e., four units wide by three units high. cc01.indd01.indd 3 77/15/2011/15/2011 111:45:171:45:17 AAMM 4 A DIGITAL WORLD In addition, digital television is available directly from Internet sites over digital subscriber lines, fi bers, cable, or wireless connections. Normally, televisions are interactive only to the extent required to change channels or to order on - demand entertainment. However, in conjunction with per- sonal computers, or as independent browser - enabled devices, they can display Internet information, including streaming video programs. In addi- tion, newly developed TVs can deliver three - dimensional television. • Personal computers : Desktop PCs, laptops, smartphones, and tablet devices are connected to networks by wireless. In addition, laptop and desktop PCs may be connected by wires, cables, or optical fi bers. Employing complex operating systems, they perform personal tasks and support browsers to access the Internet and the World Wide Web. Connected to the Internet, PCs support interactive searching (search engines), social networking activities (instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc.), and