Rather than exalting mass culture, the teleputer will enhance individualism. Rather than cultivating passivity, the teleputer will promote creativity. Instead of a master-slave architecture, the teleputer will have an interactive architecture in which every receiver can function as a processor and transmitter of video images and other information. The teleputer will usher in a culture compatible with the immense powers of today's ascendant technology. Perhaps most important, the teleputer will enrich and strengthen democracy and capitalism around the world.

My point is simple: the broadcast model is what is failing. ‘On-demand’ is a much bigger concept than not-walking-out-in-the-rain or not-forgetting-a-rented-cassette-under-the-sofa-for-a-month. It's consumer pull versus media push, my time – the receiver's time – versus the transmitter's time. Beyond recalling an existing movie or playing any of today's (or yesterday's) TV around the world (roughly 15,000 concurrent channels), VOD could provide a new life for documentary films, even the dreaded ‘infomercial.’ The hairs of documentary filmmakers will stand on end when they hear this. But it is possible to have TV agents edit movies on the fly, much like a professor assembling an anthology using chapters from different books.