As we continue to adapt to the social distancing measures brought about by the coronavirus pandemic, we find ourselves relying on audiovisual (AV) technology more than ever before in an effort to maintain relationships, keep up with learning and work commitments, and in a bid to support the museum and entertainment industries.
With the likelihood of Covid-19-induced closures in place for the remainder of the year, museums, concert venues and other places of public interest have turned to AV technologies in a bid to ensure their survival and longevity in a post-Covid world. Visitors can now check out some of the world’s most celebrated exhibits virtually – from the Tate Modern, to the Louvre, to the British Museum of London – and Smartify, the Shazam for art app, has even said it would make its museums’ audio tours free for a remainder of the year, offering virtual visitors the chance to admire more than two million artworks from across 120 museums and galleries.
Using AV technology people can now also go on virtual adventures – to Mars, Hawaii, inside of the world’s best national parks, even tour the Great Wall of China. Churches are also joining the virtual revolution. Using real-time signal transport and routing technology, the Cherry Hills Community Church in suburban Denver, Colorado is now operating a drive-in ministry in response to social distancing measures. Churchgoers can now attend Sunday services in the car park in their vehicles ” with technology providing reliable and expandable transport of all video, audio, and intercom signals between the control room and the outdoor stage, and with gatherings also streamed to social networks and OTT channels.
In these unprecedented times, technology is seen as a critical enabler for collaboration and communication in the business environment, public sector, broadcast industry and at home. Governments in the US and UK have deemed AV as an essential service, not just for health services but because everyone other than frontline workers is working remotely. Social-distancing measures have led to a huge shift to virtual event solutions; from audience-free studio productions and webcasting through to live streaming, virtualised edit kits and remote production to enable events to continue being delivered.
Around the world, students are receiving their lessons virtually from teaching staff, and professionals are collaborating via Zoom calls, parked in their living rooms with wireless headphones conversing with colleagues right around the world. But having the majority of the world concurrently depend on AV technology on a daily basis has revealed deep flaws in the technology’s capacity. Inefficient systems integration, irritating audio feedback, wireless headphones that rely on batteries, videos that fail, outdated softwares – the list of potential AV problems that could occur during an important presentation, and ruin it, is endless. But it seems likely that in a post-Covid world we will continue to rely on wireless AV technology, and so now is the time to truly nail the technology.
Could it be that blockchain is the solution?
Blockchain – the decentralised, trustless, distributed ledger technology that was popularised by the Bitcoin cryptocurrency platform – has certainly proven itself as an effective underlying technology to build decentralized networks, in its ability to provide an immutable audit trail to verify time and location of transactions. Already it has revolutionised the music, finance, health and manufacturing industries, and has reshaped the way organisations operate and deliver solutions. Could it be that blockchain could also help perfect audio visual technologies, so that we might rely on them for our everyday use in interacting and conducting transactions? The technology of blockchain is changing the way we see accountability through traceability. It is the front desk software of accountability. But unlike a software that allows you to track your visitors, blockchain allows you to check for discrepancies, you can stay informed, and best of all, it’s a free system.
The application of blockchain mechanisms in wireless access networks is already very promising, and, well, it couldn’t come at a better time really. In recent years, the number of wireless devices connected to the internet has grown to number billions and this number will only continue to grow over the coming years. Intel forecasts that there will be more than 20 billion connected devices by 2020. Until now, cloud computing has been considered the solution to processing all this data, but it doesn’t even remotely satisfy the security demands required by this technology. As the world becomes increasingly reliant on connected devices to store private and sensitive data, such as financial data and medical data, the need for a fully decentralised, peer-to-peer and secure technology solution has become more and more apparent. It appears blockchain technology is the much-needed solution we have been looking for.
We often consider blockchain as relevant only to the cryptocurrency domain, but this shared ledger technology also carries huge potential for AV applications such as AV-over-IP, the Internet of Things (IoT), and any interaction where AV assets are purely digital. Without going too much into detail, many of us are probably familiar with the key problem of IoT security: that one bad actor can compromise the entire chain, bringing the whole system down. This security vulnerability is probably why we haven’t yet seen the widespread adoption of IoT technologies.
Because we can’t trust everyone over the internet, the internet has filled up with a massive number of third parties. The function of these parties is to store and verify our information. Facebook, Google Adwords services, PayPal and Amazon are examples of third parties that have monetized our data. Unfortunately, the storage of our data by one central authority does have its disadvantages. The central authority becomes a target for hacks and misuse of customer data.
But with blockchain – a completely tamper-proof method of protecting data with built-in, adaptable safeguards – if digital information is the core of an AV over IP system, and blockchain guarantees the integrity of that system, perhaps blockchain is the answer to reliable security that we have been looking for.
Right now, we’re at a point with blockchain technology that’s about equal to where we were with the internet in the early 1990s. This was before Google, and even before Amazon. We knew that the world wide web existed, but few people understood how it worked, and people couldn’t do much on it. Now, of course, the internet has transformed our lives. Even though most people don’t understand how the internet works, our ability to perform all sorts of everyday activities depends on having internet access.
For most people, the blockchain is still shrouded in mystery. It’s not widely understood, and most people don’t use it. They’ve heard of bitcoin and maybe some other cryptocurrencies, but few understand how or why blockchains could be used everyday.
But blockchain applications have never been straightforward for the average user, and in the case of cryptocurrencies, they seem risky or even dangerous. Recently, however, a few forward-thinking companies have started to use blockchain technology in consumer applications. This is the first real step towards gaining mainstream acceptance for blockchain.
It is, however, important to be realistic. It’s very expensive and complicated to build a blockchain ecosystem full- stop, but especially for anything relating to digital asset management, content serving, video conferencing, digital signage, and anything that involves live content or real-time streaming. There is much to be done before blockchain becomes the digital enabler we hope for it to one day be.
