Innovating For The Future and How Classroom Interconnectivity Began in 1999 - A Historic Textbook First
The number of internet users has increased tenfold from 1999 to 2013. In 1999 there were only about 248 million internet users where today there is over 3 billion.
In 1994 I first came up with the idea of Scan Commerce and Scan To Connect. The idea was simple. If Domain Names really masked IP addresses, and IP addresses are actually numbers, then couldn't everyday numbers be used to point people to specific places on the Internet? Of course they could. Q Codes were born.
We had already accomplished many first as a team on the razors edge of Internet evangelization. We put the very first URL on a national ad campaign. Built the single largest ISP in a single city in the USA. Introduced Internet connectivity by the monthly fee versus the AOL model of connectivity by the minute.
We did the first TV show about the Internet, the first Infomercial selling the idea of the Internet and even the very first TV program to combine TV, Radio and Internet streaming- and the "Triplecast" was born, i.e.,NetTalk Live is a broadcasting history case study in merged media and interactivity and developed into a Syndicated program that aired over 244 Original episodes over the course of an amazing TV syndication run of 19 original TV seasons.
However, there was another first we were most proud of.
We knew the adoption and maximization of the Internet would be in the hands of the young and what the young could do with it. We also knew it would over take all other forms of information and and that the various media needed to merge and engage with that which was "online" to just survive.
Here today it is easy and obvious, but back then - especially from 1994 to 1999, it was hard and everyone thought I was nuts and was very angered each time I told them the system needed to change in order to survive.
In an exit interview a few years ago with the Chairman of Belo Corp, years after the demise of Digital Convergence and just before his retirement in September of 2013; Robert Decherd and I met and reviewed that which was Digital Convergence, Q Codes, Scan To Connect, Scan Commerce and our initial scanning device CurCat. Here is what he told me: (NOTE: Robert is the Former Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of A.H. Belo Corporation, one of my large investors in introducing the technology)
"Jovan, when you showed us your scanning technology and the ability to connect the physical world to the virtual world, we knew you were ushering in the future. The problem is your were also telling all the old system journalists and newspaper men they were outdated and their craft would die if they did not embrace interactivity and the Internet. They hated you for that and they hated change and you took the brunt of it in the press and what they would write demonizing you. But look at it today, 13 years later (this was a 2013 conversation) there is not a single journalist or newspaper person who does not have an email, engage and publish online and is not involved in blogging and social media. You saw they future and now it is here, they just hated you were telling them to change or die."
WE WANTED TO CHANGE THE WAY PEOPLE GOT INFORMATION AND LEARNED
Newspapers are great and Belo paved the way, but one of our most ardent goals was to change the way that young minds learned and that meant we needed to make the classroom and the textbooks used become Internet Enhanced and become interactive.
We were selling a "Connected Future" vision and one text book publishers stepped up to the plate with us - seeing and embracing that future we envisioned over 18 years go.
The following photos are an accomplishment all of us who were Digital Convergence are very proud of - The Creation and deployment of the very first fully interactive College Text Books.
Enjoy the historic photos and know that what started as a simple idea in 1994, deployed in 1999 to much ridicule is now standard practice globally and has over 11.9 Billion users.
