During the dark days of 1977, when even the world of Stranger Things would have seemed daringly futuristic, an unusual box was delivered to 30,000 cable TV subscribers in and around Columbus, Ohio. Columbus is often used by US companies to test new products. Its population approximately mirrors that of the US as a whole, but the people on average are a little younger and a little better educated. Its citizens regularly leak news of mysterious new burgers, novel coffee blends and dubious home gizmos. Living there means living with at least one toe poking into the future. These cable TV boxes were part of a system called Qube, distributed by Warner Communications. They had 18 buttons, five of which could be used by viewers to input commands. These commands were collated by a central computer at the TV studio every six seconds, allowing viewers to take part in game shows, cast votes in televised town meetings and predict plays in gridiron football. It was a daring experiment in interactive television – a primitive echo of the modern internet. And seven years later, after losing millions of dollars and being forced by a criminal trial to release data on how many of its viewers were using it to watch porn, it was shut down for good. Recent history is littered with attempts at interactive TV which, like Qube, did not quite take off. Which makes what Netflix is doing right now particularly interesting.
You probably noticed when, over Christmas, Netflix released a special interactive episode of Charlie Brooker's science fiction show Black Mirror called Bandersnatch, accompanied by a big publicity blitz (including a popup video game shop). The episode allows viewers to control the decisions of its protagonist, Stefan, via an on-screen interface. Depending on what option you pick, it plays different footage. In theory, Netflix claims that there are more than one trillion possible combinations of choices, though in practice they cluster around five basic endings...