irvana even has its own shorthand: "500 channels of television" is the term used to mean a future media world of essentially unlimited choices.
Such predictions often mix the various communication forms together in the way that visionaries see as possible without considering what is truly more likely and how different types of communication are used today. While video and computer data can be mixed in various ways, it seems clear that the two at present have different target consumers and that even where a consumer is a target in both realms, he or she is a target for computer data more at work and for video more at home. Many see the future pattern of consumption for video as mirroring the pattern of today rather than creating something truly different:
Despite the advanced capabilities of the proposed new electronic superhighways, communications executives concede that a large portion of the early business will consist simply of viewers calling up movies and other television shows on demand. Current pay per view services offered by Rogers and other Canadian
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