TheFarWeb

Part of BillJoysSixWebs

aka "The Lean Back Web", "InteractiveTelevision" etc.

The Far Web is aimed at entertainment. You sit in an arm-chair at a distance of 2 to 3 metres and get entertained. Our current two big experiences of this genre, are television itself, and TV based video games. The surest looking bet for future development is the crossbreeding of these genres.

• Games in shared environments (including online quiz's etc.)
• Games based around shows - eg. gambling, voting for winners in talent shows.
• Shows that are games - gameshows, sports, competative challanges BroadCatching

• ...

One question which remains unclear is whether the Far Web retains the broadcast model of a few publishers speaking to a mass audience of viewers, or whether it will become as symmetrical ( NewMediaIsSymmetricalConversation ) as the other webs.

My bet is that symmetry is going to arrive here, just as everywhere else. Consider ...

• Playing as a character in a shared game world is an obvious way of contributing content.

• There isn't even a necessary asymmetry between creating the game-world and being in it. "Godgames" such as Dungeon Keeper expect players to invent worlds. There is no reason a game couldn't feature two kinds of players, those who create the worlds and those who live in them.

• Consider the popularity of viewer participation TV shows : "Big Brother", "You've Been Framed", "Crime-Watch".

• Since the advent of digital cameras, people are already starting to put their photo-albums on line. The next step is to do the same for home videos so that, proverbial grandmothers can watch videos of their family online. Video Mail (and Video Mail Management) could be the killer applications for the Far Web.

A final thought : with bandwidth so low, a distributed peer-to-peer network like Napster might be the answer to true video on demand. Imagine someone in your neighbourhood downloads a half hour programme onto their hard-disk based video recorder. It would be better from you to get it locally from her than to download it from a central server yourself. (Update : it happened : BitTorrent)

An interesting alternative is Adam Curry's last yard (http://adamcurry.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$219))