Sun Microsystems Inc’s secretive FirstPerson unit, unable to refrain from adding its twopenneth’ to all the clamour about the information superhighway, interactive television and other kinds of gizmology, has recently shed a little more light on its operation. The sector FirstPerson is seeking to corner is the devices that will control access to and from digital networks, and ultimately, what the consumer experiences. It is developing what is said to be an architecture-neutral object-oriented operating system to be used, for example, in the television set-top boxes that will link a new crop of fibre network-based services to homes and offices. With so much being staked on what’s touted as the brave new interactive world round the corner, it is not surprising that FirstPerson, headed by Wayne Rosing, has been so tight-lipped. A large number of computer firms are building different kinds of (mostly incompatible) delivery systems for the networks, and are also competing to provide hardware and software for the set-top boxes that the network operators will give or rent to customers. And the battle to control the set-top will be bloody, Rosing claims in a recent Economist discussion, because everyone sees the set-top as a way of controlling what the viewer experiences. The content providers (of films, programming, shopping) are wary however, that network service providers will use proprietary standards to limit their access to viewers so that set-top boxes become a toll-booth (rather than a gateway) through which they can pass only by making a deal to put their content on the network provider’s brand of server. FirstPerson is not alone in its aims
Microsoft Corp as relentless contenders.
