ABSTRACT
The ongoing processes of digitization and the convergence of information and communication technologies has been accompanied by controversial visions, not least of the future of television, which is still the leading medium in most households, on a national and global scale. These processes are often discussed generally and at large, and from a technologically deterministic perspective. Well-known people like George Gilder ([1990]1994) and Nicholas Negroponte (1995) have been predicting the end of television for a long time. The most seductive argument is that the one-way-flow of mass-media communication, not least broadcasting, is, allegedly, refused by contemporary television users just waiting for the chance to ‘talk back’. Gilder has described this relation as a ‘“master–slave” architecture. A few broadcast centres originate programmes for millions of passive receivers, or ‘dumb terminals’ (Gilder 1994: 40). Thanks to new affordances provided by digital technology, audiences will finally be able to act, either by forgetting everything about television and using the networked computer 1 instead (the vision of Bill Gates) or by adopting new forms of participatory television and demanding more advanced interactive functions of the television set.
