The Big Picture:Where Web Entertainment is Going
By Chris Baker

Anyone visiting the Austin Convention Center this week was treated to a chilling preview of life in the 21st century—it will be a nightmarish dystopia in which a measly can of soda costs a whole dollar. But I won’t complain about that as long as Big Brother swiftly abolishes the phrase, "No one really knows what’s going to happen next week, let alone next year."

And while there was little unqualified prognostication and not much consensus in this spirited and thoroughly enjoyable free-for-all rap session, it was easilythe most challenging and entertaining discussion of the day, a discussion in which what wasn’t discussed was just as telling as what was.

Moderator Luc Hatlestad asserted at the outset that the web business model had all but engulfed entertainment, and panelists generally confined discussion to how the web will affect traditional entertainment industries like news, publishing, music, film, and television. No one disagreed or seemed particularly distraught when David Pescovitz predicted a much greater blurring of the line between content and advertising in both entertainment and education, a la The Truman Show.

Pescovitz, who writes the Reality Check column for Wired, quickly emerged as the panel’s gadfly. Though he occasionally bogged down the discussion with egregious one-outmanship, willfully thinking around whatever framework someone had just imposed on the debate, he also made many of the more interesting and provocative assertions of the afternoon. Pescovitz repeatedly stressed that web entertainment will have to get A LOT better (in every respect) before people are actually willing to pay for it; that MP3 will not harm the music biz as much as it will harm the musicians (and the black marketeers); and that the web’s promise of a limitless supply of totally unfiltered text, underground video, and previously unrealeased audio tracks will quickly foster a renewed respect and appreciation for the editorial restraints imposed by old media.