FOR 300 million viewers out there, the theme of this year's Eurovision Song Contest was: Cyberspace - the final frontier (and Ireland's part in it).
As the press office in Montrose explained, the set design at the Point would be "almost futuristic", with "colourful, stylish cyberpunk graphics". All very ZooTV with its 100 sizzling screens and bare scaffolding. Then there were the video "post cards" between the songs, snapshots of everywhere from Arthouse and IMMA to the Armagh Observatory and TCD's Book of Kells.
The chief graphic designer was given the following key words for the show's 80 second opening sequence: "exciting", "dynamic", "modern" and "telecommunications".
"With this year's set we are making a statement as well as providing a unique presentation for each of the performers," executive producer Noel Curran said. But what exactly was this "statement", what was the common theme of these words and images - besides the fact that RTE can "put on a good show" for £2.3 million?
As the press packs put it, Eurovision would showcase "a contemporary, youthful Ireland which stands at the forefront of communications, technology, popular culture and the arts in the greater community of Europe". The main gist was that Ireland had the best of both worlds: as both traditional and modern, both craft industry and hightech, both artistic and scientific - it was all this, and to the fore of Europe's "digital cultural revolution" too. Pat Kenny's TV commentary reinforced this: "Now we're into the age of telecommunications. Where once the monks spread their word through manuscripts throughout Europe, now it's all digitised, as we embrace the information age through Telecom Eireann - who are, by the way, our telecommunication sponsors tonight. Ireland, up to speed in the fast changing world. And of course television technology is all about digital technology too.
Forget who writes this gush - what does it all mean? In the "cyberspace race" - is this country really "up to speed"?
THE Information Society Steering Committee has a very different perspective to RTE's "virtual Ireland". Its recently published report argued that "only small minorities of Irish citizens are familiar with the key technologies deemed essential to the full development of an Information Society". A survey conducted for the committee found that:
. last year only one in 20 adults used the Internet or similar online services;
. in Connaught/Ulster, the ratio was one in 50 people;
. Two thirds of Ireland's senior managers hadn't heard of the Information Society;
. The ratio of students to personal computers in secondary schools was extremely high. In 1995 one PC - often an old one, "unsuitable for running modern multimedia applications" - would be shared by an average of 33 pupils. How much more impersonal can a personal computer get?
Theme are the real statistics, usually overshadowed by the success stories and interesting initiatives, and the hyperventilating PR puff of the computer industry. The same Information Society report quoted one league table, about how prepared countries were for the information society. Ireland was ranked lower than a dozen other European countries. We are down with the "nul points" brigade, in what the study politely calls Group III. In other words, we're in the third division.
These are not my figures: these are from an official Government sponsored report. A universe away from Eurovision's superficial words and images. OK, so it's just a song contest, an entertainment vehicle which also happens to project some positive images of Ireland as an idyllic place, where the artistic and the scientific, the digital and pastoral all collide in a sort of high tech nirvana at the crossroads of the Internet, and we all live happily ever after.
But forget the fairytales. What is RTE's real, long term role in all of this?
In its actual, day to day programming, it has an ambivalent attitude towards the information society: it uses computers to make things, but rarely makes things about computers.
RTE's programme makers use digital technologies to build elaborate sets for special events such as Eurovision. They use computers to run popular Web sites about their programmes. Yet RTE doesn't make programmes about computers.
It has reports here and interviews there, but it doesn't produce a single computer show. Not one single series about the practical stuff of how to use computers and networks. Not one series about the big issues either, about the very shape of the information society that its viewers might want to build.
Indeed, RTE television doesn't make any science or technology series on TV, though radio fares slightly better: Radio 1 has a 15 minute science slot on Wednesday nights, while Soundbyte keeps an eye on some digital issues such as Internet censorship, online publishing and digital television.
As computers and computer networks become ever more important in our society and economy and imagination spaces, Ireland's largest programme maker doesn't make TV series about them. And then it has the nerve to tell us that we're at the forefront of it all.
WHAT theme will the BBC come up with for next year's Eurovision? At least the Beeb has a long track record of computer series, from The Net on BBC 2 to the laddish Big Byte on Radio 5 Live. Radio 4's schedule has over an hour and a half of science and computer programmes tomorrow evening alone, including Science Now (at 8 p.m.), The Network (8.30 p.m.) and astronomer Patrick Moore.
Other British stations have computer related shows, from cyber.cafe on ITV to Gamesmaster on Channel 4, and then there's Super's MSNBC - The Site, five hours a week.
While RTE might be complacent, other public service broadcasters such as BBC Northern Ireland can clear the decks or bend their usual schedules, to make timely and relevant programmes for their citizens and societies.
Next Saturday, for example, Radio Ulster begins its "Computers Don't Bite" campaign, aimed at the "great unmoused". The shows include On Your Behalf and How We Built The Future (both on Saturday), and all five of John Bennett's weekday morning shows and of Across The Line. That's approaching 20 hours of programming about computers and the Net. In one week. RTE take note.
THE Information Society Steering Committee's report is the subject of a public meeting to be held by the Flux discussion group at Arthouse in Dublin's Temple Bar next Wednesday.
The panel looking at the report's analysis and recommendations includes David Algeo (TCD Department of Computer Science), Barbara Dooley (UCD Department of Psychology), Ellen Hazelkorn (DIT Department of Communications) and Terry Landers (Forfas, the Secretary to report's Steering Committee). Free, all welcome, starts 7 p.m.
SO the computer in the IBM chess challenge is beating the human. Or rather, the team of software and hardware people, with their chips and algorithms, have tired Grand Master Garry Kasparov into submission. Expect more silly stories to follow that daft one in a certain Sunday newspaper yesterday, headlined "Computer cheats at chess says champ".
Computers don't cheat. Nor is it really a major victory for "machine intelligence". But the competition is a good showcase for (a) computers as number crunchers, and (b) Web events. Check out IBM's site (at www.chess.ibm.com), now handling a million chess fans an hour.
The people at IBM were doling out plenty of other stats about the two players last week, including the following:
The sypercomputer
Name: IBM's Deep Blue
Height: 6' 5"
Weight: 1.4 tons
Age: 4 years
Birthplace: Yorktown, New York
Power source: electrical
Moves/second: 200 million
Processors: 32 P2SC Processors
The human
Name: Garry Kaparov:
Height: 5' 10"
Weight: 176 lbs
Age: 34 years
Birthplace: Azerbajian
Power source: electrical/chemical
Moves/second: 2
Processors: 50 billion neurons
NOW that the English Premier League is over, how did the soccer clubs fare in cyberspace? How many mentions and sites do they have on the World Wide Web? To find out, we put the clubs' names into several leading Web search engines, but quickly ran into problems...
For example, you can't simply look for the word "Chelsea". This turns up 47,000 pages on the Hotbot search engine, but many of them have nothing to do with Ruud Gullit or Chopper Harris. The first 20 alone included references to (a) Elvis Costello's song, (b) a rose variety, (c) Chelsea Clinton and (d) an exotic dancer. Typing "Chelsea soccer" or "Chelsea FC" or "Chelsea football" narrows it down to 1,500 to 4,500 pages.
Even so, the results at either end of our Web league table were fairly conclusive: Manchester United were runaway champions (over 49,000 hits in Hotbot), followed by Newcastle United (31,389). At the other end, poor Middlesbrough were relegated not just in real life but in cyberspace too (7,447 for the word Middlesbrough, but narrowed down to 2,058 for "Middlesbrough football").
As for that other controversy, over which Man United era was the best, the AltaVista search engine has about 900 hits for Eric Cantona (as a phrase), and only 300 for George Best. Hotbot has a similar ratio. Yes, Schmeichel was right.