Transportation v communication: the fight for control of the new frontiers
The author of this article ponders if virtual reality is merely an anecdotal episode in a much larger story about who controls how things get from one place to another. McAlister looks back to the early-20th century when reproducing pianos nearly became big business. The Aeolian Company’s Duo-Art, for example, was so good that they were used in concert pianos.
Orchestras around the world could perform as if Rachmaninov or Gershwin were virtually playing the Steinway right there on stage with them. Of course, piano manufacturers were threatened by the on-demand concert machine in your home. They decided to embrace the upstarts, though it was more of a squeeze in reality, a time-tested strategy often used today, requiring exclusivity contracts for use of a known brand and proven sales and distribution channel. More recently, Virtual reality, drones and 3D printing have gained currency but McAlister argues they too may all merge into something that reintroduces those ideas from 100 years ago by bringing distant times and places into our real life experiences again. Looking forward he believes the reality distortion that will really shake up everything as we understand isn’t virtual at all but very real. As future modes of transport will travel from point A to point B with efficiencies we can barely fathom at present, virtual reality may just become a temporary historical footnote in the story of transportation. So, is there a communications technology versus transportation technology battle going on?
Technology revolutions often have little to do with technology. It’s the lawyers and lobbyists and political campaigning folks that will set the agenda. And they are simply fighting over who controls what gets distributed. Nobody can predict where this will all go, but it would be a good bet that by the time we get to some truly blended reality where time and space are just dials on some dashboard the people in power will be those who control distribution. Those who provide the experiences may be influential, but the technologies underpinning the way experiences are delivered will still be calling the shots.