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- New Technologies
- Technological Disruptions 2
- The Master Switch “Cycle”
- Consolidation
- an industry forms from the new technology
- a dominant player emerges
- Disruption
- a new technology arrives
- great promise and utopian discourses for the new technology
- the dominant player tries to suppress the new technology
- the earlier technology declines
- Cycle
- a new dominant player emerges
- the disruptive technology becomes consolidated again
- Telephone
- AT&T becomes Bell monopoly
- promise of universal service
- functions as a common carrier
- controls local and long distance lines
- controls telephone hardware to the last mile, including
telephone equipment
- prohibition over foreign attachments
- AT&T maintained position of
- universal service
- no interconnection with competition
- no foreign attachments by customers
- Anti-Trust Action, 1984
- Microwave Communications, Inc.
- new competitor for AT&T using microwave relay, 1963
- cheaper alternative to AT&T
- business service between St. Louis and Chicago
- Breakup of (“Ma”) Bell Monopoly
- 1970s belief in decentralization
- Seven regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs)
- AT&T retained control of long distance telephone
- Baby Bells took control of local telephone
- foreign attachments flourished
- RJ–45 (RJ–11)
- Hush-a-phone
- Carterphone
- Dennis Hayes built a 1977 modem
- fax machines
- innovations
- computing
- telephony
- networking
- New AT&T reborn as a dominant player
- Deregulation with Telecommunications Act 1996
- Baby Bells reconsolidated
- SBC was very aggressive in consolidation
- Ed Whitacre
- RBOCs
- SBC and the rebirth of AT&T
- New oligopoly in telecommunications
- AT&T: formerly Southwest Bell, SBC
- Verizon: merger between GTE, Bell Atlantic
- Qwest: formerly US West
- Film
- Studio System
- emerges from Independents and feature films
- vertical integration
- production
- distribution
- exhibition
- anti-competitive practices
- block booking
- blind bidding
- Big Five were vertically integrated
- Paramount
- Warner Brothers
- 20th Century-Fox
- MGM-Loews
- Radio-Keith-Orpheum
- Little Three controlled two aspects of vertical integration
- Columbia
- Universal
- United Artists
- Fall of the Studio System
- Anti-Trust Action of the 1940s
- Roosevelt era origins
- Thurman Arnold, lead prosecutor
- studios required to divest of theaters
- Cultural Factors
- post-World War II suburbanization
- rise of television
- Emergence of New Hollywood era
- influence of foreign films
- Production Code eliminated in 1966
- Ratings System adopted 1967
- greatest creative output in Hollywood’s history
- Conglomeration
- Heaven’s Gate
- end of the New Hollywood era
- “auteur film from hell”
- rise of media conglomerates
- Steven Ross
- Warner Communications
- synergy
- intellectual property development
- franchise films
- other revenues
- risk management
- minimize risk with predictable businesses
- less risky businesses absorb losses by box office bombs
- films made by corporations, not filmmakers or even film
studios
- Big Six Conglomerates
- Time-Warner
- CBS-Viacom
- Comcast NBC-Universal
- Sony
- News Corp
- Disney
- Television
- Network Oligopoly
- Three networks
- Networking technology
- AT&T
- NBC Red: NBC
- NBC Blue: ABC
- Western Union
- no other networking technologies existed
- Cable TV
- Ralph Lee Smith
- promised to bring an unlimited number of channels into the
home
- cable TV was limited to Community Antenna Television
- John Walson, Pennsylvania
- distant signal imports
- Kronos effect: broadcasters and film studios banded
together to bust cable
- FCC wanted to nurture UHF and banned cable in top 100
cities
- deregulation
- Nixon’s Cabinet Commission: repeal all regulatory blocks
on cable
- Open Skies: satellite
- promise of new competition with new networking technology
- Cable goes commercial
- Ted Turner
- buys WJRJ-TV in Atlanta
- envisions a new national network
- new superstation
- commercial model
- acquire cheap content
- broadcast sports teams (Braves)
- charge for retransmission to local cable companies
- sell advertising on a smaller scale than networks
- Computing
- Age of Mainframes
- large, room-sized computers
- punch cards as storage devices
- computers only for governments and large corporations
- IBM (“Big Blue”) was dominant player
- Personal Computing
- personalizing the computer
- Douglas Engelbert mouse video
- mouse
- keyboard
- Xerox Alto
- Altair
- build-your-own computer
- inexpensive
- hobbyists training ground
- Microsoft BASIC
- Apple I
- computer for the home
- personal
- easy-to-use
- IBM PC Jr.
- IBM enters personal computing market
- powerful
- inexpensive, business machine
- Macintosh
- graphical user interface
- consumer product not an open, customizable computer
- Internet
- packet switching: decentralized network
- designed by Paul Barran
- objections from AT&T
- TCP/IP
- Vincent Cerf
- common language for inter-networking
- Consolidation
- AOL-Time Warner merger
- Steven Case and Gerald Levin
- Cross pollination
- Walled garden
- Synergy
- It went from being a destination than a platform
- Net neutrality
- Apple
- Exclusive partner with AT&T in the US
- Closed architecture
- Walled garden
- Apple II was open, Mac was closed
- Integrated projects
- In an age of open standards
- Google
- metaphor of telephone girls connecting calls
- directory of the Internet
- PageRank
- switch of the web