November 2009 Editorial Update: 99.9% of this crap was written nearly a decade ago when I registered the domain. Go do whois or dig or whatever if you care. If you don’t know what that means, then go find someone else who cares, cuz I don’t. On this site, you get no biz plans, no charts, no graphs, no forecasts, no projections, no promises, or any of the other standard VC bullshit. I don’t want “a meeting” and have no “elevator pitch.” You just get the decade-old obvious ideas here, ten years of search engine goodwill, and a price tag of $5M for the .com and .net domain names if ever you want to hook up with Disney or GE and do this right, mkay? Otherwise, either grab the RSS or go away, mkay? Mkay.

Since about 1995, I’ve been evangelizing the idea of Ethernet TV, along with dozens of other obvious technology services that Could Be Done Right Now, But for Lack of Visionary Capital.

In brief:

  • The idea was to roll out the simplest possible integrated communications platform capable of supporting just about any information service imaginable, while ensuring scalability into the indefinite future.
  • Not least among such services is the ability to stream infinite “channels” for TV and movies via IP multicast as the method for providing VoD.
  • Most obvious: Any TV station, anywhere on the planet, any time, from any web enabled device.
  • With this network, every home internet connection is inherently imbued with equal potential to become an information value creator, as well as consumer. This was obvious long before YouTube, TokBox, Phreadz, and others became the tangible manifestations of this inherent capability.
  • Of course, such an infinite channel Peer to Peer, Social Media stream-a-verse is only possible given Massive Symmetric Bandwidth; which, sadly, we here in the U.S. also failed to build when we had the opportunity to do so.
  • The RIIS reference model provided the architecture.
  • ETTH provided the service platform.

It was a great idea and it worked well in a number of proof-of-concept field trials, but sadly, Death From Above has done sufficient market damage to cripple the most promising of such capabilities, effectively turning the internet into little more than one big tivo, when it comes to media creation and distribution. To the casual observer, viewing Katie Couric on a web site is passed off as some kind of technological great leap forward for media. In essence, however, such applications are only the most disingenuous and superficial application of what could have been a truly and radically democratizing, fully symmetric streaming media transformation.

Traditional media has not adapted and evolved to meet new technological capabilities, but instead blackmailed and sabotaged new technologies to capitulate to the terms of a brutal anachronistic meme regime.

To the extent that Net Neutrality is effectively undermined (ironically, by a *lack* of proper regulation; see It’s Our Net and Save The Internet) we can only look forward to more and more asymmetric tivo-net noise. Sites like YouTube and JumpCut are valiant attempts to fight back against the Death From Above carpet bombers, but without open access to the underlying network and without rapidly tunable, scalable, SYMMETRIC capacity, such attempts are doomed to be shoe-horned into the intentionally-crippled internet; stifling the richest possibilities for the many-to-many network that could have been.

If there is a bright side, it’s that you, the viewer are relieved of the burden to CONTRIBUTE anything and are free to continue indulging in the same ritual that shackled the hearts, minds, and imaginations of your great-great grandparents in the 1940′s, 50′s, and 60′s. So sit back, relax, grab a beer in one hand and a wireless optical mouse remote control in the other, and CONSUME, CONSUME, CONSUME. No original thought or effort required. Yes, you are SO original and unique and independent minded as compared to those mere media sheep of the previous TV generations. Yes, this amazing technology has set you SO free.

Or not, if you sample these lumbering attempts:

It’s certainly true that some programming delivers significant redeeming value. The criticism herein is that the WAY that the underlying network is architected and regulated directly impacts HOW MUCH independent programming is produced and distributed in addition to filtering and focusing public attention AWAY from what many would consider significantly superior educational and individually edifying choices.