BPN 1645 : Google starts e-book sales in the Netherlands (1)

Google sells e-books in the Netherlands

 

 

Google was already present in Europe, mainly in the larger states like UK, France Germany and Italy. Now Google has launched Books on Google Play in nine more European countries: The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Greece, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania.

The Dutch now have another channel to buy e-books from. So far they had the choice of local distributors like e-Books, Bol.com, the logistics book centre CB and the channels from abroad such as Amazon and iTunes.

Foreign channels for downloading e-books are not always the favourites of the Dutch. It is a hassle with credit cards, while orders through the Dutch channels can be handled through iDEAL, a direct banking channel. Despite cooperation with CB, Google Play Store is still handling orders through credit cards from Luxembourg.

Google Play Store offers the full international portfolio but has a range of 1000 Dutch e-books through CB, which has the major Dutch publishers in its database: WPG, Lannoo, Prometheus and House of Books. Interesting is to know what percentage the Dutch publishers offer to Google Play Store and what is the difference with Amazon. Of course Google Play Store has the advantage over its competitors of it wide copyright free collection.

For Europe Google Play Store operates from Luxembourg. This has its advantages. Contrary to printed books, which are surcharged with 6 per cent Value Added Tax, e-books so far are officially surcharged with the VAT in the higher bracket. As an e-book is part of an electronic service, it is put in the higher bracket. In the Netherlands it surcharged with 23 per cent. In France and Luxembourg, the VAT is following the VAT lower bracket of respectively 5,5 per cent and 3 per cent, much to the chagrin of the European Commission. So, Google Play Store operating from Luxembourg, is benefitting from this low VAT rate, as well as the Dutch customers having compared the prices of Dutch language e-books. A book like NW by Zadie Smith was for sale at Bol.com for 11,99 euro, but is available at the Google Play Store for 8,15 euro.

The books can be read in Google apps for Android and iOS. Besides they can be downloaded and stored in e-readers, PC,  tablets and mobile telephones. Google does not offer yet leasing books and reading books through Google. Once offered, you will need support for your browser from JavaScript. Google Play Store will also lease books in the future.

First negative comments have come on the usability. The American company does not understand the differences in languages and represents them indiscriminately in search results and listings; so you will find a list of results with French, Dutch and German results ad random. Also sorting on price is impossible for the time being.

With the arrival of Google Play Store e-book distribution channel a more competitive climate will arrive among the international (read US) players: Amazon, iTunes and Google. They all have differentiated USPs, products and prices. So it will be interesting to see which store will become the European darling. Local distributors will have their local advantages, but will have hard competition when it is for foreign e-books.

 

Big question will be: will Google Play Store have any impact on the Dutch e-book market? Stay tuned for our next posting.

5 more days to apply for the World Summit Youth Award.... ‪#‎TakeAction‬ ‪#‎WSYA

 

 

 

Last days to apply to the World Summit Youth Award 2013. Submit your projects before July 15th and win a trip to Sri Lanka. #TakeAction http://bit.ly/fMQqlI

BPN 1644: The Switch to Internet in The Netherlands (5)

How did the sudden switch to internet come about

Since the beginning of new media in the Netherlands at least five online technologies had been introduced and by 1997 only internet combined with e-mail had survived as proper online media, disregarding the one way television Teletekst service and CD-ROM as packaged bandwidth.

  






Illustration 2: Online technologies available in the Netherlands from 1980 onwards (Illustration produced by Chris Driessen Desktopping; Leiden, The Netherlands)

Commercial videotext services from 1980 till 1997 had only attracted 350.000 occasional users; however internet gathered almost a million users by the end of 1996. And within less than five years only three online technologies were left of the six, with only internet and e-mail as two way technologies. The technologies had gone through a wormhole, a term used in the Startrek TV series for a disturbance of the time/space-continuum.

Illustration 3: The wormhole of  technologies in The Netherlands (Illustration produced by Chris Driessen Desktopping; Leiden, The Netherlands)
 

So the question can be posed: what did internet have that videotext for example had not? Was it the technology of internet, the organisation of the services or the demography of the internet population or a combination?

- Technology of internet. When internet was introduced by 1991 the technology was not embraced by the telephone companies. They were busy promoting the seven layer OSI model. Internet technology however was originally embraced by university computer centres. So why did it spread fast? One of the explanations could be the disruptive technology theory by Clayton Christensen[i] . This Harvard professor observed that new technologies could wipe out great existing. He posed that big firms like IBM developed new technologies in line with the wishes of the clients. This leads to incremental and costly innovation. When another firm comes on to the market with a technology in the same field but more limited and less costly, a switch might set in. IBM in the seventies and beginning eighties was known for its room filling mainframes. It introduced in 1981 the PC which started to cannibalise the mainframe market. But also other companies started to develop PC’s and won the battle from IBM, which eventually sold its PC business to the Chinese company Lenovo. The same development started to show with internet. While the settled telephone companies were busy with their OSI seven layer model, the academic world was busy with their TCP/IP protocols, which turned out to be cheaper and more practical. So by 1993 TCP/IP started to succeed the OSI seven layer model on the Dutch academic network. From 1995 TCP/IP became a common standard in telecom.

- Organisation of the providers and services. The first online systems such as ASCII databases and videotex services started in the strict hierarchical systems. Dumb and intelligent monitors were linked to a mainframe or mini-computer. Then the distributed systems came en vogue and Bulletin Board Systems started to spread among amateurs. This lead to community usage of the BBS’s. One of the most famous ones was The Well, The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, best known for its fora, which was started in 1985 by Steward Brand and Larry Brilliant. The organisation of the BBS’s was not hierarchical, but more directed to virtual communities. Howard Rheingold , the guru of the virtual community, was in fact triggered by The Well. The free organisation of the The Well mirrors the later organisation of the internet. The Well happened in the USA. To a certain extent, a less hierarchical organisation of an information service could be seen in the French variant of the videotext systems. The Teletel/Minitel organisation was less hierarchical than the British Prestel organisation, which was being run by the British Post Office (BPO). The BPO controlled every aspect of the Prestel service from the network, the technology, the information service, the keyword administration, the marketing, the collection of subscriptions and fees and the marketing. The French PTT with Teletel/Minitel was more a network and technology provider, an information provider of the telephone directory as well as financial administrator. An information provider had more freedom in terms of running and marketing his service. - ASCII databases and videotext services could be seen as the digital equivalent of the printed media: information was going from the publisher to the reader. With internet this changed to interactivity between the publisher and reader and users amongst themselves.

- Demography. From 1980 there were two types of online services in The Netherlands: ASCII databases and videotext services. ASCII databases were seen as for business and scientific professionals. Videotex was seen as a Volkswagen, for traders and consumers. BBS’s were for computer amateurs. The number of new media users grew slowly, but with the CD-ROM it became interesting contentwise to buy a PC . However online users did not grow proportionally to the number of PC users.

On the other hand Dutch students were using PCs more than ever and in computer courses were required to have a PC of their own. Besides the Dutch academic network SURFnet started to play a role in teaching and research with free access to the network and network resources such as e-mail and access to libraries. They experienced problems when they finished their study and got a job in society. They no longer had automatically free access. So they became a thriving force to link to internet for business and in their private environment. With information providers such as XS4ALL, Euronet, Planet Internet and World Online coming up from 1994 onwards a new generation of experienced users was born. By 1996 the milestone of the first 1 million users was reached.  In 1995 internet users between 20-70 years formed 48 per cent of the internet users and 71 per cent of all internet users had online experience of less than 1 year.

Conclusions of this archaeological work can only be that:

a.      Internet was a disruptive technology for ASCII databases, videotext services and BBS’s;

b.      Contrary to the hierarchical organisation of ASCII databases and videotext services, internet

stimulated virtual communities;

c.      The academic environment trained students in the use of digital media and particularly internet.

d.      Dutch business and consumers caught on in the slipstream;

e.      It is clear that internet was a disruptive technology, which crept in through the universities and especially the university network and prepared students as precursors of internet for Dutch society.

---

[i] Christensen, Clayton (1997), The Innovator’s Dilemma. Harvard Business School Press.

Instalment 1: The Switch to Internet in The Netherlands

BPN 1643: The Switch to Internet in The Netherlands (4)

The sudden silent internet switch

However the developing new media industry sector hardly noticed, that internet slipped into the Dutch online scene through the universities. The academic network SURFnet had linked to the NSFnet, the American academic Network and administrator of internet, in 1989. Business in The Netherlands got access to internet by 1991 and in 1992 no less than 290 companies had registered.  By 1993 consumers got access through the ISP XS4ALL. By the end of 1996 there were more than one million internet users and the users of existing online technologies such as ASCII databases, videotext services, e-mail services and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) switched over to internet. By January 1st, 1997 the Dutch new media had lost their sustainability and digital media took over. In less than three years, between 1994 and 1997 internet, combined with e-mail had superseded new media such as ASCII databases, videotext services, separate e-mail services and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS).

Internet providers for consumers

One of the first consumer internet provider was XS4ALL, which offered its consumer services from May 1, 1993. The company used the Dutch railway telecom infrastructure to link up the broadcasting city of Hilversum and their Amsterdam offices.  In 1994 the company in co-operation with the social centre De Balie started Amsterdam project The Digital City, held in the framework of municipal elections. The project made internet immensely popular in a short time. This was the signal to start up internet services. In the same year the ISP EURONET*INTERNET was launched with posters on all Amsterdam billboards. The year after the ISP Planet Internet was started by publishers and KPN, the former state telecom company; it would grow very fast to become the largest ISP. In the slipstream of the success of Planet Internet, the ISP World Online started up. By January 1, 1997 Internet had more than one million users, while the number ASCII and videotex users drastically went down.

Illustration 1: The growth of internet users in The Netherlands and the decline of videotex users.

The unexpected switch

From 1990 till 1997 the Dutch online world was in confusion. On the one hand the online information services were busy to professionalise, but at the same time they did not see internet coming up. While the producers of ASCII databases, videotext services and CD-ROM products were busy understanding the differences between the various technologies, seeking the proper markets and in many cases busy with surviving, internet slipped into The Netherlands through the academic world. The academic network SURFnet gave access to the employees of universities and all students, wherever they were. Once students had graduated they expected access  in their first job. It stimulated employers to link up to internet and they did. In 1996 Internet got a stimulus, when Microsoft (at last) launched an internet browser. By giving the Internet Explorer away for free, Microsoft overtook the existing free browser Netscape.

Between 1994 and 1997 the confusion about the technologies (ASCII, videotext, e-mail, BBS and internet) was complete. But year by year it became clear that internet was going to be the winner. Words as World Wide Web, server and e-mail became common words.  Internet subscribers increased fast, while ASCII, videotext and e-mail subscribers numbers went down. In less than three years the number of internet subscribers tripled the highest number of videotext users ever.

Instalment 5: How did the sudden switch to internet come about

BPN 1642: The Switch to Internet in The Netherlands (3)

Commercial online services and offline products

The year 1980 was a very prosperous year for the new media in The Netherlands as Kluwer commercialised its legal database and the Dutch PTT launched its videotex service under the name Viditel. Both services were the first commercial online services in The Netherlands. They grew slowly but also experienced a slowdown, when CD-ROM for textual and numerical databases was introduced. 

Database services
On April 1, 1980 Kluwer launched its legal database. Predictions were made about the number of its users. Kluwer knew the legal market for its print products and could make a cautious calculation. With 4000 lawyers distributed over 1200 offices, let alone the government officials, the prospects were good; certainly with the future lawyers who would use the assistance of a computer. Making it a profitable service was a long haul, but possible[i].

The launch of the Kluwer Legal Database, triggered the production of a number of databases. When in 1988 the first inventory of online databases, either originally produced or foreign online databases sold in The Netherlands, was produced, the amount came up to 60[ii]. Attempts were made to establish information services, nationally and internationally. In 1982 Building & Townplanning, started working in the construction sector; however the service went bankrupt in 1995. In the same year the publisher ICU started up the international information service Samsom Data Service with maritime databases MARNA and SHIPDES and other databases by Dutch and foreign information providers. The service was killed in 1984 due to the economic climate. In 1990 another attempt was made to start up a national information service  by merging the national governmental computer centre to be privatised RCC with the private database service IVEV, bringing governmental databases together with business databases such as marketing, environmental and news ones into the Informatiebank. But by 1994 the plug was pulled out due to the economic recession and the absence of a feeling about internet.

E-mail services

The ASCII information services usually had no e-mail service alongside. E-mail services were exploited as separate services. Computer companies like IBM and GEC had e-mail services, also for third parties such as Easylink and Low Cost Linking. The Dutch PTT also launched an e-mail service, based on Dialcom software. This service had e-mail software aboard, but also database software to store newsletters. The Dutch PTT experimented in 1984 with the service named Memocom within its own organisation and with journalists reporting from the European Soccer Championship. By 1987 commercial initiatives were developed such as a newsletters for Dutch people abroad, which was distributed by fax,  and a daily computer newsletter by VNU, following the example of its sister publication IDB Online in London .

Videotex figures

Viditel was launched on August 7, 1980. Before its launch the project manager Ruiten had already forecasted a 100.000 subscribers by 1985. Asked on what research this figure was based, he pointed to the figures for the German equivalent Bildschirmtext. This service was predicted to have 1 million users by 1985; given that the population of Germany was five times the population of The Netherlands, the amount of subscribers would be 200.000, yet he chose the safe side of 100.00. But with no market experience in the online field the figures turned out to be completely wrong. After the first experimental year only 3.000 subscribers had joined the service and 130 information providers were presenting their products and services on the service. The television manufacturers got blamed, the PTT blamed the information providers and the PTT was broadcasted too optimistic figures, while the press saw the service as one big advertisement board without distinctive content.

It was quite clear that a large scale base of subscribers had to be created by other technological infrastructures and trigger services such as the telephone directory. As The Netherlands was one of the densest cabled countries in Europe, a solution was sought in two-way cable.  A long-term experiment was created in the south of The Netherlands, the South-Limburg project, with the support of governments and VNU, but it failed miserably. A third attempt was made in 1988, which resulted in the service Videotex Nederland. Usually telecom technology as well as a hybrid technology (telephone line for commands and cable for information) were used, while users were not forced to take out subscription. The new marketing had some success; at its height in 1994 the amount of occasional users reached 350.000. But from that year onwards the user figures diminished.

CD-ROM

But also the online technologies got competition from CD-ROM from 1985 onwards. The silver disc turned out to be packaged bandwidth, an information carrier for textual and numerical databases with a low updating rate. Databases which had been online could now be exploited on a disc, which was cheaper than keeping them online. The Royal Tropical Institute distributed the agricultural database TROPAG online. But once CD-ROM was available it had an easier distribution worldwide on disc. And also Kluwer started to experiment with CD-ROM. The legal publisher saw possibilities to bring down the costs for the service by combining online for the timely updated information and the disc for the archived information. An April 1989 inventory of CD-ROMs produced in The Netherlands listed 27 productions[iii]. By 1997 CD-ROM had proven to be a packaged bandwidth solution and disappeared as a textual information carrier.

Professionalisation

By 1989 the new media had developed to a developing industry sector. Some 185 companies were full time active in new media and companies were specialising, amongst others in video and audio. Outlets for CD-ROMs were found through petrol stations and bookshops.  Around these firms other supply companies sprang up such as marketing and conference companies. Also education picked up new media; in 1988 the first course interactive media designer was started at an applied university. And insight into the industry sector and its revenue capacity came from the first marketing research exercises; by 1994 the turnover of the new media industry sector, exclusively of internet, was 360 million guilders ( 175 million euro).

---

[i][i] Boumans, Jak (1982): Geen eind aan boeken – wel aan het zoeken. Boekblad 7/5/1982

[ii] Boumans, J.M. and C.N.A. Molenaar (1988): Marketing Informatie Systemen en Elektronische Informatie Bestanden. Self-publishing.

[iii] NVI/Electronic Media Reporting (1989), Lijst van optische media projekten. NVI.


Instalment 4: The sudden silent internet switch

BPN 1641: The Switch to Internet in The Netherlands (2)

Life before internet

It is surprising to notice that Dutch internet nomads think that before internet there was waste land as far as online is concerned. The memorial book at the occasion of the academic network SURFnet start its introduction, saying that The Netherlands was barren as far as networks was concerned before the introduction of the academic network [ii].  However, almost a history of more than twenty years of online activity has been forgotten either by the absence of the knowledge or by very selective perception of history.

The beginning of new media in 1967 in The Netherlands has been pinned down to the start of a study to use a computer in the editorial process of the international, scientific publishing house, Excerpta Medica, initiated by Dr Pierre Vinken (photograph: 3rd person from the left), a neurologist and later CEO of Reed-Elsevier. The editorial staff of Excerpta Medica abstracted articles and published them per medical discipline in magazines, provided with keywords, which were fitted in a hierarchical keyword system on cards, a thesaurus. The computer was seen as an assistant in processing the editorial workflow and the consistency of keywords and it would speed up the printing process. Besides for the future it would offer the creation of new abstract magazines and digital derivatives such as magnetic tape services and online information services. By 1969 the system was up and running, while the knowledge gained by the computer department was used in a large reference work project The Great Spectrum Encyclopaedia[iii] and, partly, in the academic library project PICA.

Searching

Search in the Kluwer legal database (ASCII)

From 1967 onwards it was a period of experimenting in a developing online world. Computer technology and telecom technology were combined into services, offering access to text and numerical databases by keyboards and dumb terminals. Central computer systems with databases could be remotely accessed and searched. As transfer protocol between the central computer and the devices, the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) was used; searching in the databases was command driven. The technology for database services were developed were developed in the USA in the early seventies of last century and the technology was transferred to Europe soon after.
Commercial information services for business analysts and scientists such as SDC and Dialog came into existence and Excerpta Medica as well as some Dutch governmental services started to deliver (ASCII) abstract databases and updates to those services.  By 1975 the first serious investment into database publishing was made by the publishing company Kluwer, which started to develop a legal database from 1975 onwards.

Videotex

The ASCII database services were centred around mini-computers, computer devices and from 1977 onwards on personal computers. In Europe however another online technology, named videotext[iv], was developed by the British Post Office (BPO). By using the television set as a delivery station, access was gained to a central computer. While ASCII databases were line driven, videotex was page oriented, presenting a screen page of 24 lines of 40 digits, delivering text in seven colours. The information was structured like a tree with pages in numerical levels from 0 to 9. The use of television in combination with the telephone and the screen pages were seen as an advantage to reach small business enterprises and residential population. Stimulated by the emerging European Community, many postal organisations started to experiment with the technology.
In The Netherlands there was a first viewing of the system in 1976. It was only in 1978 that the technology was shown during a Dutch consumer electronics fair FIRATO and aroused some excitement among a number of companies. Given the reactions by companies the Dutch post organisation PTT announced the start of the service Viditel for 1980 later in the year. At the same time the Dutch publishing company VNU created a videotext consultancy TVS as it saw a threat for its jbo advertisements in the system for its controlled circulation weeklies.

PC services for amateurs

The trend of PC services for amateurs such as Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) and consumer ASCII services like CompuServe in the USA, well known for their e-mail services at the end of the seventies, did not catch on hold in The Netherland till the mid-eighties.

Professional users

From the early beginning of online information services worldwide Dutch professional users had started to use the services for mainly financial inquiries or scientific research. They used mainly American services like Reuters, Dialog, SDC and BRS. European scientific databases were made available by the European Space Agency as well as British and French services. These professionals were usually employed by and searching as an intermediary on behalf of multinational companies or universities. In 1977 they established a professional association of Dutch intermediaries (VOGIN), published a book on search techniques in 1981 and set up a training program.

---

[i]   Geert Lovinck (2011), My First Recession: Critical Internet Cultures in Transition. Nai Publishers.

[ii]  Verhoog, Jeroen (2008), SURFnet 1988-2008: twintig jaar grensverleggend netwerken. SURFnet.

[iii] The Great Spectrum Encyclopaedia by the publishing house Het Spectrum, a VNU subsidiary, prepared format for the Academic American Encyclopaedia, published in print and experimentally online in 1980 by Arête Publishing, a VNU subsidiary. In 1982 an interactive version was published on a videodisk and shown at the Frankfurt Book Fair. By 1985 the  Academic American Encyclopaedia was sold to the US publisher Grolier and produced in print and an on CD-ROM.

[iv] Videotex is the general term for the technology initially using a television set as delivery station. The term viewdata has also been used early in the development but had to be cancelled due to a brand name registration conflict.  

Instalment 3:  Commercial online services and offline products

BPN 1640: The Switch to Internet in The Netherlands (1)

During during the coming days I will publish a serialised article on the silent and sudden switch to Internet in the Netherlands. The article will exists of five installments. Jak. 

In 2011 my book on the pre-internet era in The Netherlands[i] was published. The book describes the period of new media, online as well as offline in The Netherlands between 1967 and 1997.

Three conclusions can be drawn from the book:

1.  There was life way before internet; new media started to develop itself some 25 years before the introduction of internet;
2.  Before the introduction of internet services there were commercial online services and offline products since 1980;
3.  Despite a professional information infrastructure and a million guilders annual turn-over of commercial information services, there was a silent and sudden switch in favour of internet by Dutch consumer in less than three years, from 1994 to 1997.

In this series of blogs the development and commercialisation of new media in The Netherlands will be sketched and the question will be posed why internet could take over the existing online world in less than three years: was it the technology, was it the organisation, was it a new user group or was it a combination of these factors?

---

[i] Jak Boumans (2011): Toen digitale media nog nieuw waren – Pre-internet in de polder (1967-1997).
Translation title: When digital media were still brand-new - Pre-Internet in the polder (1967-1997)
Media Update ; ISBN 9789078730057. Design cover: Chiara Boeri; graphic design: Collage.
The book is in The Dutch language. Most likely there will be no translation in the English language. This article is a summary of the 320 page book. This is the Table of Content (TOC): 

Introduction: New media present themselves
Part 1: The search (1945-1980)
Chapter 1: US, the cradle of online
Chapter 2: Online differently
Chapter 3: New media in the polder

Part 2: Two stream country in the commercial online

Chapter 4: Commercial ASCII services and databases

Chapter 5: Teletext and videotex

Chapter 6: Packaged bandwidth

Part 3: Disturbed growth

Chapter 7: Growing professionalism

Chapter 8: Internet

Chapter 9: The end for new media, silent switch

Sources

-           Inventory used sources

-           Illustrations

-           Dutch timeline

-           Business and persons’ index

-           Author’s biography 

Instalment 2: Life before Internet

BPN 1639: Obituary Mauro Francaviglia

Mauro Francaviglia was born in Torino, on 22 june 1953 and passed away in Cosenza on 24 June 2013. He obtained his degree in Mathematics at the University of Torino in 1975 and he was a Full Professor at the University of Torino. He has held this position since 1980, when he was 27 years old.   His scientific interests covered a wide range of topics, including the application of Differential Geometry in Mathematical Physics, Classical Mechanics, General Relativity and Field Theories, Calculus of Variations, Symmetries and Conservation Laws, Quantization and Thermodynamics. Over 300 lectures held at various Institutions in Italy and abroad. He directed several national and international research projects.

Author of over 250 papers, three monographs, 11 encyclopaedia long entries, Editor of 19 volumes of Proceedings and Director of two CIME Courses. He organized 20 national and international conferences, among which several national conferences in General Relativity and the World Conference GR14 in Florence (1995).

Member of the Scientific Council of CNR-GNFM (1980-1996). Co-founder
(1984) and Managing Editor of “Journal of Geometry and Physics”. Life member of the GRG Society, founder (1990) and President (1990-1996 and 2008-2012) of the Italian Society for General Relativity and Gravitation (SIGRAV), he also served as a member of the Board of the International Society for General Relativity and Gravitation (GRG) for nine years (1986-1995). Associate Editor of the “Journal of General Relativity and Gravitation” since 1999 and Managing Editor of the “International Journal of Geometrical Methods in Modern Physics”.

Prof. Salvatore Capozziello, PhD
 
I had the luck to know Mauro Francaviglia and to work with him in the EU project SCIENAR. I am sorry to hear about his death. I had hoped to meet him again during the Bridge conference in Enschede coming August.
With him a mathematician by discipline, but a lover of art has passed away. May he rest in peace and  I wish his wife Marcella Giulia Lorenzi all the best. Have a look at the final presentation, which he gave in the framework of SCIENAR Mauro:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/40744260/Overview-project-SCIENAR-by-Dr-Mauro-Francaviglia-Universities-of-Calabria-and-Torino-Italy

BPN 1638: Robot ethics

I could start this blog posting with a sexist sentence: she is young, she is pretty and she is smart. But from now on she will be unique for her new position in robot ethics in Australia. Dr Christy Dena has been awarded Australia’s first ever digital writing residency to explore robot ethics at Queensland University of Technology's using high-end technology suites like The Cube, the world-leading, large scale, high-definition interactive display environment. She will be the creator of a project called Robot University. Unusual is also that as a writer in residence she will be assisted by a team of technicians and artists and draw on research done for inspiration. There is a lot of expectation as she will have to take the science fiction of Asimov in six months to another level.

It is surprising and interesting to see that Dr Christy Dena has been selected. Her background could be qualified as one in digital media, ranging from cross media to transmedia. I met her at a conference in the North of Sweden in 2007, where we had a long and fierce discussion on cross-media and its implications. After that she took up an invitation to visit The Netherlands and present a guest lecture at the NHL at Leeuwarden. In 2009 she wrote her thesis on:  Transmedia Practice: Theorising the Practice of Expressing a Fictional World across Distinct Media and Environments. Superficially this could indicate a future in cross-media and more specifically in gaming. But her interest is deeper. In gaming she is confronted with robot characters, which are representations of present and future life.

Robots are becoming part of our lives. If you are really ahead of the troops you have a robot hoover or a robot grass mower at home. Employees in car factories have become familiar with robot machines. In warfare and surveillance drones are becoming more common. In research robot are used to collect for example ocean data, while in classrooms lectures are being delivered and foreign languages taught. Of course robots themselves are subject to cognitive studies. In health and medical healthcare robots are used in difficult surgical procedures.

We are presently in the phase of domestication of robot machines. They are still steered by people. But with drones the discussion has already started on the decision capability of drones; they recognise an object and start automatically to fire on it. This type of decisions leads to ethical discussions. And as robots are becoming part of our society and will assist people at the bedside, we should be sure that they harbour some good characteristics and do not start beating up slow pensionados.
 

But robots have also started to penetrate in entertainment. Besides using them for edutainment, we have seen customer robots like cuddly Furby (left) and Aibo (right) to play with. More robots have appeared in games and are used as good and bad robots, following the division of a black and white world. In this environment Dr Christy Dena will do her work. In fact she takes it as her task to challenge our perceptions of robots by exploring our responsibility to build ethical and mutually-beneficial relationships with them.

It is not entirely surprising that she as a game pro was appointed to this positio. Yet its a heavy assignment, which will be in good hands with her and worthwhile to be followed closely. Of course her mission will be really successful if the Robot University is eventually started and she becomes a professor.