For movies, in many cases the production has
been beyond the scope of small organizations or
individuals, although even this is changing. But
for music, and even more for books, anyone with
talent and some fairly modest equipment can produce
and can electronically distribute.
I would think that there's a real opening for a
new class of agents, that know how to wheel and
deal with Amazon, B&N, and other online distributors. Given that, the traditional
publishers and distributors _ought_ to die IMO,
and make room for a more efficient system that
does less gatekeeping on the many authors and
artists with real talent but little name
recognition; and one that, at least once they
gain some recognition, puts a lot more of the
profits in the hands of the creator (and the
agent that directly serves them) rather than
in the hands of traditional physical publishers
that just don't add enough value to justify their
costs.
The AT&T 7300 (aka "Unix PC") from the '80s could take messages as email attachments, if it had the "Voice Power" (voice-grade digital audio and touch-tone recognition) board and accompanying software installed. I don't think it did Caller-ID (indeed, I think it predated widespread availability of Caller-ID), but it certainly provided random acess to messages.
I would expect that commercial call center equipment and software has had such capabilities (including something like Caller-ID) well before they were widely available to the consumer.
It _is_ commieware - with one notable difference: it's voluntary, there's no central authority forcing participation. The ideologues might want to keep that in mind...
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For movies, in many cases the production has been beyond the scope of small organizations or individuals, although even this is changing. But for music, and even more for books, anyone with talent and some fairly modest equipment can produce and can electronically distribute. I would think that there's a real opening for a new class of agents, that know how to wheel and deal with Amazon, B&N, and other online distributors. Given that, the traditional publishers and distributors _ought_ to die IMO, and make room for a more efficient system that does less gatekeeping on the many authors and artists with real talent but little name recognition; and one that, at least once they gain some recognition, puts a lot more of the profits in the hands of the creator (and the agent that directly serves them) rather than in the hands of traditional physical publishers that just don't add enough value to justify their costs.
The AT&T 7300 (aka "Unix PC") from the '80s could take messages as email attachments,
if it had the "Voice Power" (voice-grade digital audio and touch-tone recognition)
board and accompanying software installed. I don't think it did Caller-ID (indeed,
I think it predated widespread availability of Caller-ID), but it certainly provided
random acess to messages.
I would expect that commercial call center equipment and software has had such capabilities
(including something like Caller-ID) well before they were widely available to the consumer.
It _is_ commieware - with one notable difference: it's voluntary, there's
no central authority forcing participation. The ideologues might want to
keep that in mind...