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Culture: The Digital Age
Qilai! Qilai!
A history of Modern China
The world famous IBM Personal Computer XT from 1983, a legacy piece of hardware remembered as having kickstarted the modern age of personal computing, even if it was not the first PC.
The Digital Age - 1983 to present day
A history of Modern China
The world famous IBM Personal Computer XT from 1983, a legacy piece of hardware remembered as having kickstarted the modern age of personal computing, even if it was not the first PC.
The Digital Age - 1983 to present day
Despite the ongoings of war, the 21st century's innovation was ripping and roaring, ready to nip at the heels of humanity, and push them into a new age; and over the last 20 years, progress has been made to propel the American nation forward.
"Americans must have a choice," -- famous words uttered by President Terry Sanford (D-SC) on September 8, 1983, on the steps of the U.S. Capitol building, with the leaders of both the Republican and Democratic Congressional Caucuses. It was in this speech that the President announced that with the cooperation of Congress, America would have a choice once more.
The Bell System was broken up by the U.S. government effective October 1983 -- from it, many companies broke loose, scattering into the wind -- these companies included, but were not limited to: Ameritech, BellSouth, Bell Atlantic, NYNEX, Pacific Telesis, Southwestern Bell, and US West.
By the dawn of the 1990s, these companies had consolidated -- slightly. Ameritech and US West had been bought out by Southwestern Bell -- now going by their acronym, SBC; and Bell Atlantic had purchased NYNEX. This lead to legislation pushed into Congress in 1991, banning the Baby Bells from buying each other, or merging by decision of the Boards of Directors.
So by 1991, the Baby Bells had narrowed to BellSouth, SBC, Pacific Telesis, and Bell Atlantic -- and each one began to invest heavily in the world around them. During the 1990s, BellSouth, Pacific Telesis and Bell Atlantic became heavily invested in the mobile phone and world wide web craze -- leading to the establishment of the 3COM-BellSouth partnership of 1993, which sought to offer "low-cost internet service" to homes that were wired into BellSouth's telephone network. This lead to the creation of the 3COM-BellSouth-Prodigy Alliance in 1994.
Pacific Telesis, with the backing of major TV networks, founded Pacific Cable, the largest cable provider in the western United States, in 1992. They partnered for a short time with some local early dial-up providers, but largely remained non-committed to the game of internet service until the launch of Pacific DSL/Pacific Broadband in 2001, and the eventual sale of the service to GTE; whom then partnered with them in 2005, with the launch of GTE FiOS.
And Bell Atlantic, attempting to get into the game, gathered a number of engineers and created Atlantic Wireless, and then followed shortly after by becoming a majority shareholder in American Online, and packaging AOL into their domestic telephone service. Every Bell Atlantic customer could order an AOL account for a discounted price, and an additional $20 surcharge for the purchase of a dial-up modem (later DSL modem).
As of 2016, BellSouth, Pacific Telesis, GTE, and Bell Atlantic have evolved, and are still providing what is often touted as "quality service" -- with the high competition of dozens of municipal, state or regional broadband companies trying to fight for dominance, nobody can afford to be too stingy.
SBC has largely stagnated, remaining focused on land-line telephone services; in 2009, they launched SBC Wireless, a flag-ship competitor against Atlantic Wireless, T-Mobile, Sprint, Nextel, Cingular (sub. of BellSouth), and GTE Wireless; SBC lost several million dollars in profit during FY 2015.
CompuServe represents independence to many. Free of the various competing Baby Bells, CompuServe has, for now over 40 years, provided networking services to dozens of homes across America. The CompuServe Desktop software provides a consolidated method of accessing mail, internet, stocks, and weather -- but is entirely optional.
CompuServe's newsgroups remain popular today; although of course, forums, IRC and other "instant" methods of communication are largely more popular -- but CompuServe has gained a significant following of both typical daily users, and "graybeards": advanced users and aficionados of the various newsgroups and software APIs used by CompuServe.
As well, CompuServe offers cheaper services than AOL. For a CompuServe account, you can get one for free -- while the CompuServe Desktop software costs $2.99/mo -- AOL is otherwise $9.99/mo for an account, unless you're a Bell Atlantic customer, at which point, you recieve a $5.00/mo discount -- totalling $4.99/mo.
Other competitors for control of the email and internet market include Microsoft, with their flag-ship "network software" -- the Microsoft Network (MSN); Google with their Google+ Network (Google, GMail, GNews, GStocks, GWeather, YouTube...); and Baidu's "Global Network" (Baidu Search, BaiduMail, Baidu News, Baidu Stock Tracker, Baidu Weather, Vimeo and DailyMotion...); which are all achieving a varying level of popularity considering that Baidu and Google offer completely free services (with opportunities to expand storage capacity over the Cloud for a small fee), and MSN offers it for as low as $0.99/mo.
In China, at the very least, Baidu controls a lion's share of the market; packaging tightly with Amiga computers released in the present day; Amiga users are given a free size upgrade to their cloud services, and six months free subscription to Baidu Music, a peer-to-peer musical streaming service, largely drawn from Napster, an American torrenting application that gained infamy for copyright infringement.
The three Napster developers were hired by Baidu to assist in developing this new enterprise; with Amiga slowly piloting the ship from behind.
In the television world, things were a little bloodier.
During the Islamic War, Viacom, a large organization of various network conglomerates, became the focus of negative public attentions, following a series of negotiations on the continuation of it's numerous networks on American cable television at the end of 2004. Where as in normal years, this negotiation was a regular thing, and simply meant the media provider got more money from the cable company, something snapped.
After the cable companies walked away from the table on December 29, 2004, Nickelodeon, along with several other cable channels (including TV Land and MTV to name two) went off the air effective January 1, 2005. The dead air had, largely, broken the attempt to shield the children of America from the horrific bloodshed of the Islamic War, and to keep morale high -- particularly where animated series' were beginning to pick up the slack of propaganda, much like Looney Tunes in World War II.
Viacom became an immensely unpopular corporation, leading to angry, almost vicious public protests against "Viacom's greed", which drew in politicians, public speakers, and even members of the company itself -- the President of Nickelodeon condemned the move on January 8th, saying that Viacom was "really only in it for the money".
Viacom's untenable public position came to a head when the U.S. Congress decided to whack Viacom with the same stick they had beaten AT&T with in the 1980s -- invoking anti-monopoly regulations, Viacom was forced to divest and break-up their assets, effective May 9th, 2005.
Nickelodeon was one of the main companies to emerge as a "Babycom" (much like the Baby Bells). Inheriting significant media assets, Nickelodeon returned to air on May 10th, 2005, with a short "educational announcement" to explain to children the lengthy blackout of their favorite cartoons. A combined "animation and real life" public service announcement, it had the incumbent cast of Nickelodeon's SNL-equivalent; All That, talking with some of Nickelodeon's more popular cartoon icons, discussing what the blackout meant, and how they hoped they could win back the hearts of kids.
In the 11 years since the Viacom Blackout, Nickelodeon has seen immense profit as an independent network. The President of Nickelodeon under Viacom remained the leader of the network, and piloted it towards what he called "the right kind of formula for our network."
However, this also came with some admitted points of contention -- like SpongeBob, the network also axed Fairly OddParents in the Summer of 2007, with "Fairly OddFinale". This episode saw Timmy grow up -- remaining miserable. Eventually, when he becomes too old for fairies, he eventually decides to become a fairy forever, to stay Wanda and Cosmo's child.
Some groups made an effort to point out that the show's finale made clear that sometimes, families are made by emotion, not by blood; and that neglectful parents were no better than abusive ones; and became the center of discussion for some months.
Danni Phantom replaced Fairly OddParents on the Nickelodeon schedule. Butch Hartman, in an interview given in 2009, had stated that the show was "originally intended" to air back in 2004, but due to numerous factors, including both the War in the Middle East, and the Viacom Blackout, he had shelved the idea until the Nickelodeon CEO had called him into his office, reviewing old pilots that had been "shelved" -- and had ordered him to make another pilot of "Danny Phantom"; with minor changes. While in the original, the main character was a 14 year old boy named Daniel, the second pilot had changed the main character's gender, and had made her an orphan of the war; something that many American children could relate to by this point.
While the show was less "cheerful" than Fairly OddParents, obviously aimed at an older demographic, the show was immensely popular, and concluded with Phantom Planet, which aired in April 2010. The episode involved Danni saving the Earth from a destructive asteroid, and becoming accepted as a hero of humanity and ghosts alike.
Similarly, shows on Nickelodeon after the Viacom Blackout began to emphasize the hero qualities of average people; a large number of protagonists and allies on Danni Phantom were average people, whose strength derived from their emotional capacity, and their intelligence.
The show All That, as well, has spawned a significant number of spin-off TV shows starring the actors and actresses who appeared in that skit show. While most of the shows were put on hold during the Viacom Blackout and the Islamic War due to either actors of legal age being drafted, or teenage celebrities volunteering to do USO shows in the Middle East, or participating in volunteer activities on the homefront; many shows still managed to do something with their time.
The Amanda Show (1999-2004; 2006-2008) was one such show; similar to All That, it was a skit show headed by Amanda Bynes. The show largely revolved around Amanda, her "#1 fan" Penelope, and various friends as they did skits. Often times, the show would break the 4th Wall.
While the show went on hiatus in 2004, it was revived two years later, and concluded with a proper series finale in 2008.
Other shows include Drake and Josh, Kenan and Kel, Zoey 101, and the less successful Just Jordan. One of the driving forces behind All That, a back-room writer named Dan Schneider, would form an "empire of shows" on Nickelodeon before his termination due to allegations of misconduct; he was a large force behind shows such as Zoey 101, iCarly, and Victorious.
References to the world's struggles which connected with audiences at home also included one episode where Drake's mother brings up his father, and Drake is uncomfortable talking about -- after Josh approaches the subject numerous times, Drake eventually reveals that his father didn't abandon his family -- he was killed in the San Diego attacks in 2002, and that he didn't really know how to cope.
In Victorious, most of the students at the school in Los Angeles are victims of the attacks, and have lost family members or were witnesses to the attacks themselves; and in Zoey 101, the school has a memorial to the PCA students who died during the 2002 bombings.
As of 2016, Nickelodeon has largely kept their fidelity and good-grace as an animation network first. All That, largely and universally praised as "the kids version of SNL" has become a significant "beating heart" for young talent to flow through -- the show is currently on its 22nd season as of 2016.
"Americans must have a choice," -- famous words uttered by President Terry Sanford (D-SC) on September 8, 1983, on the steps of the U.S. Capitol building, with the leaders of both the Republican and Democratic Congressional Caucuses. It was in this speech that the President announced that with the cooperation of Congress, America would have a choice once more.
The Bell System was broken up by the U.S. government effective October 1983 -- from it, many companies broke loose, scattering into the wind -- these companies included, but were not limited to: Ameritech, BellSouth, Bell Atlantic, NYNEX, Pacific Telesis, Southwestern Bell, and US West.
By the dawn of the 1990s, these companies had consolidated -- slightly. Ameritech and US West had been bought out by Southwestern Bell -- now going by their acronym, SBC; and Bell Atlantic had purchased NYNEX. This lead to legislation pushed into Congress in 1991, banning the Baby Bells from buying each other, or merging by decision of the Boards of Directors.
So by 1991, the Baby Bells had narrowed to BellSouth, SBC, Pacific Telesis, and Bell Atlantic -- and each one began to invest heavily in the world around them. During the 1990s, BellSouth, Pacific Telesis and Bell Atlantic became heavily invested in the mobile phone and world wide web craze -- leading to the establishment of the 3COM-BellSouth partnership of 1993, which sought to offer "low-cost internet service" to homes that were wired into BellSouth's telephone network. This lead to the creation of the 3COM-BellSouth-Prodigy Alliance in 1994.
Pacific Telesis, with the backing of major TV networks, founded Pacific Cable, the largest cable provider in the western United States, in 1992. They partnered for a short time with some local early dial-up providers, but largely remained non-committed to the game of internet service until the launch of Pacific DSL/Pacific Broadband in 2001, and the eventual sale of the service to GTE; whom then partnered with them in 2005, with the launch of GTE FiOS.
And Bell Atlantic, attempting to get into the game, gathered a number of engineers and created Atlantic Wireless, and then followed shortly after by becoming a majority shareholder in American Online, and packaging AOL into their domestic telephone service. Every Bell Atlantic customer could order an AOL account for a discounted price, and an additional $20 surcharge for the purchase of a dial-up modem (later DSL modem).
As of 2016, BellSouth, Pacific Telesis, GTE, and Bell Atlantic have evolved, and are still providing what is often touted as "quality service" -- with the high competition of dozens of municipal, state or regional broadband companies trying to fight for dominance, nobody can afford to be too stingy.
SBC has largely stagnated, remaining focused on land-line telephone services; in 2009, they launched SBC Wireless, a flag-ship competitor against Atlantic Wireless, T-Mobile, Sprint, Nextel, Cingular (sub. of BellSouth), and GTE Wireless; SBC lost several million dollars in profit during FY 2015.
CompuServe represents independence to many. Free of the various competing Baby Bells, CompuServe has, for now over 40 years, provided networking services to dozens of homes across America. The CompuServe Desktop software provides a consolidated method of accessing mail, internet, stocks, and weather -- but is entirely optional.
CompuServe's newsgroups remain popular today; although of course, forums, IRC and other "instant" methods of communication are largely more popular -- but CompuServe has gained a significant following of both typical daily users, and "graybeards": advanced users and aficionados of the various newsgroups and software APIs used by CompuServe.
As well, CompuServe offers cheaper services than AOL. For a CompuServe account, you can get one for free -- while the CompuServe Desktop software costs $2.99/mo -- AOL is otherwise $9.99/mo for an account, unless you're a Bell Atlantic customer, at which point, you recieve a $5.00/mo discount -- totalling $4.99/mo.
Other competitors for control of the email and internet market include Microsoft, with their flag-ship "network software" -- the Microsoft Network (MSN); Google with their Google+ Network (Google, GMail, GNews, GStocks, GWeather, YouTube...); and Baidu's "Global Network" (Baidu Search, BaiduMail, Baidu News, Baidu Stock Tracker, Baidu Weather, Vimeo and DailyMotion...); which are all achieving a varying level of popularity considering that Baidu and Google offer completely free services (with opportunities to expand storage capacity over the Cloud for a small fee), and MSN offers it for as low as $0.99/mo.
In China, at the very least, Baidu controls a lion's share of the market; packaging tightly with Amiga computers released in the present day; Amiga users are given a free size upgrade to their cloud services, and six months free subscription to Baidu Music, a peer-to-peer musical streaming service, largely drawn from Napster, an American torrenting application that gained infamy for copyright infringement.
The three Napster developers were hired by Baidu to assist in developing this new enterprise; with Amiga slowly piloting the ship from behind.
In the television world, things were a little bloodier.
During the Islamic War, Viacom, a large organization of various network conglomerates, became the focus of negative public attentions, following a series of negotiations on the continuation of it's numerous networks on American cable television at the end of 2004. Where as in normal years, this negotiation was a regular thing, and simply meant the media provider got more money from the cable company, something snapped.
After the cable companies walked away from the table on December 29, 2004, Nickelodeon, along with several other cable channels (including TV Land and MTV to name two) went off the air effective January 1, 2005. The dead air had, largely, broken the attempt to shield the children of America from the horrific bloodshed of the Islamic War, and to keep morale high -- particularly where animated series' were beginning to pick up the slack of propaganda, much like Looney Tunes in World War II.
Viacom became an immensely unpopular corporation, leading to angry, almost vicious public protests against "Viacom's greed", which drew in politicians, public speakers, and even members of the company itself -- the President of Nickelodeon condemned the move on January 8th, saying that Viacom was "really only in it for the money".
Viacom's untenable public position came to a head when the U.S. Congress decided to whack Viacom with the same stick they had beaten AT&T with in the 1980s -- invoking anti-monopoly regulations, Viacom was forced to divest and break-up their assets, effective May 9th, 2005.
Nickelodeon was one of the main companies to emerge as a "Babycom" (much like the Baby Bells). Inheriting significant media assets, Nickelodeon returned to air on May 10th, 2005, with a short "educational announcement" to explain to children the lengthy blackout of their favorite cartoons. A combined "animation and real life" public service announcement, it had the incumbent cast of Nickelodeon's SNL-equivalent; All That, talking with some of Nickelodeon's more popular cartoon icons, discussing what the blackout meant, and how they hoped they could win back the hearts of kids.
In the 11 years since the Viacom Blackout, Nickelodeon has seen immense profit as an independent network. The President of Nickelodeon under Viacom remained the leader of the network, and piloted it towards what he called "the right kind of formula for our network."
However, this also came with some admitted points of contention -- like SpongeBob, the network also axed Fairly OddParents in the Summer of 2007, with "Fairly OddFinale". This episode saw Timmy grow up -- remaining miserable. Eventually, when he becomes too old for fairies, he eventually decides to become a fairy forever, to stay Wanda and Cosmo's child.
Some groups made an effort to point out that the show's finale made clear that sometimes, families are made by emotion, not by blood; and that neglectful parents were no better than abusive ones; and became the center of discussion for some months.
Danni Phantom replaced Fairly OddParents on the Nickelodeon schedule. Butch Hartman, in an interview given in 2009, had stated that the show was "originally intended" to air back in 2004, but due to numerous factors, including both the War in the Middle East, and the Viacom Blackout, he had shelved the idea until the Nickelodeon CEO had called him into his office, reviewing old pilots that had been "shelved" -- and had ordered him to make another pilot of "Danny Phantom"; with minor changes. While in the original, the main character was a 14 year old boy named Daniel, the second pilot had changed the main character's gender, and had made her an orphan of the war; something that many American children could relate to by this point.
While the show was less "cheerful" than Fairly OddParents, obviously aimed at an older demographic, the show was immensely popular, and concluded with Phantom Planet, which aired in April 2010. The episode involved Danni saving the Earth from a destructive asteroid, and becoming accepted as a hero of humanity and ghosts alike.
Similarly, shows on Nickelodeon after the Viacom Blackout began to emphasize the hero qualities of average people; a large number of protagonists and allies on Danni Phantom were average people, whose strength derived from their emotional capacity, and their intelligence.
The show All That, as well, has spawned a significant number of spin-off TV shows starring the actors and actresses who appeared in that skit show. While most of the shows were put on hold during the Viacom Blackout and the Islamic War due to either actors of legal age being drafted, or teenage celebrities volunteering to do USO shows in the Middle East, or participating in volunteer activities on the homefront; many shows still managed to do something with their time.
The Amanda Show (1999-2004; 2006-2008) was one such show; similar to All That, it was a skit show headed by Amanda Bynes. The show largely revolved around Amanda, her "#1 fan" Penelope, and various friends as they did skits. Often times, the show would break the 4th Wall.
While the show went on hiatus in 2004, it was revived two years later, and concluded with a proper series finale in 2008.
Other shows include Drake and Josh, Kenan and Kel, Zoey 101, and the less successful Just Jordan. One of the driving forces behind All That, a back-room writer named Dan Schneider, would form an "empire of shows" on Nickelodeon before his termination due to allegations of misconduct; he was a large force behind shows such as Zoey 101, iCarly, and Victorious.
References to the world's struggles which connected with audiences at home also included one episode where Drake's mother brings up his father, and Drake is uncomfortable talking about -- after Josh approaches the subject numerous times, Drake eventually reveals that his father didn't abandon his family -- he was killed in the San Diego attacks in 2002, and that he didn't really know how to cope.
In Victorious, most of the students at the school in Los Angeles are victims of the attacks, and have lost family members or were witnesses to the attacks themselves; and in Zoey 101, the school has a memorial to the PCA students who died during the 2002 bombings.
As of 2016, Nickelodeon has largely kept their fidelity and good-grace as an animation network first. All That, largely and universally praised as "the kids version of SNL" has become a significant "beating heart" for young talent to flow through -- the show is currently on its 22nd season as of 2016.
- Asami
- Word Count: 2k