Digital Television: High Definitions

Michele Hilmes work "Digital Television: High Definitions" in the book Digital Cultures: Understanding New Media touches on the shift from coaxial cable TV to digital TV.

This is a shift that my generation has been able to witness while growing up. HDTV is a fairly new technology which seems to be taken for granted now. Cable TV took off in the early 1980's in the United States, and digital cable made its move into the market in the late 1990's.

Hilmes article breaks the Digital Television era into production and distribution.

Digital production dates back to the 1980's with the Sony Digital Betcam.

Soon, Apple burst onto the market with its Quick Time software. Apple helped shift digital production from the big movie studios to the household computer.

Easy to use software like Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premier have made video editing and digital production possible for the average computer person.

Distribution of digital television has changed since the 1980's as well. Satellite TV in the United States, however, took off in the mid-1990's with DirectTV and Dish Network. These digital television providers have satellites rotating at the same speed as the earth over 2,000 miles above earth's surface transmitting news information as well as entertainment to the world.

Another form of distribution of Digital television is through cable. Again, digital cable took off just before the turn of the century and added on-demand and additional pay per view channels covering events like boxing matches and concerts.

The internet is the newest form of distribution for digital television. Major TV network's (like NBC and CBS) websites have embedded videos of episodes aired earlier that week. Hulu is another website that brings viewers all their favorite shows.

TV DVD's as well as Blu Ray's are another form of digital television distribution. These disks and players along with devices like TiVo and DVR have made VHS tapes prehistoric objects.

Wikinomics

Collaboration is key when working in a group setting. All ideas must be shared and brought to the forefront of the meeting. After the sharing of ideas is finished, the elimination process begins.

There are multiple ways to get to a certain destination or conclusion; it is up to the collaborating team to determine the most efficient and productive way. These collaborating teams do not even need to know each other. For example, the "Goldcorp Challenge" invited geologists as well as students, professors, and anyone else willing to contribute an idea on how to get the gold out of their land. The compilation of all the ideas helped Goldcorp determine the best possible way to extract gold from their mines.

According to Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams in their book Wikinomics: How Mass

Collaboration Changes the World, Goldcorp, through mass collaboration, changed their image as well as their profits. They moved from a multi-million dollar company to a multi-billion dollar kingpin (Wikinomics).

Goldcorp is not the only entity that adopted the wikinomic approach. Common sites like Myspace, YouTube, and Wikipedia are mass collaboration wiki sites which use the same ideas as the Goldcorp brass had about their mass collaboration project.

Collaboration is not just limited to wikisites online. Medical practitioners, lawyers, and other professionals have their own collaboration methods. These methods could someday help cure cancer or solve an old murder case.

Wikinomics is more that just dollars and cents; it is about getting the best product or result through collaboration. Online collaboration is growing as fast as any collaboration community and will continue to grow as the technology advances and spreads.