It's amazing how accessible the internet is today as we all know it. By accessing the internet, we seek for information, to be exact, we seek for new and valuable information to be spread around. What makes it more interesting is that most of the information we seek for is free and available just a click away. There are also other ways available to obtain the information we seek for even if it's restricted/block on the website. One of the solution is, Money. I like the saying "the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits" by Kevin Kelly. This shows that the money will flow in the path of where the information is at its hit, things that people search the most for, and talk about the most.
On the other hand, the music industry; almost all of the songs that are heard are available for downloading on the internet. But why do we still want to pay that extra money to buy a CD which we could easily download it from the internet and most importantly, for free? I myself had actually bought several CDs' in the past, for reasons such as, owning the 'real thing', and for the sake of authenticity, such as getting a free poster/ printed lyrics in a booklet provided inside the CD cover. Plus, knowing that the money I paid for that CD will be paid to the artists themselves. We now live in a society where information wants to run free, and we can't stop that from happening. "When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable." It amazes me that even when information is free, we could still find ways to sell them. But why do we do that? Why can't we just let it be free (for example, not limiting what you can/ cannot download) since it is already in such an abundance.
The difference between the traditional media and the internet is at its opposite sides. To publish something on the newspaper or simply a print media, requires a quality filter. This is to make sure that the material/information publish out to the public is reliable, and that it's not false information. Not only is it risky, it also costs a lot of money for publication. Whereas, posting information on the internet is totally free. And I did not realized this until I heard this in the lecture; there is no quality filter! And it is true, things that we post, such as what I'm doing now, blogging, there is no such thing as a quality filter that restricts me on the information that I wish to post online. It is because there's no quality check on the internet that makes it not a 100% safe; or rather, the information obtain from the internet is not 100% reliable. But we still do it though. Why? It's because we alter the information, and we only see things the way we want it to be.
We say there is no quality filter on the internet, and for a part I’d agree – there is nothing stopping me from typing anything. For another part I would state that we do have a quality but in different terms to what we previously understood.
ReplyDeleteThe content we are posting is being read at the moment because it’s compulsory for the blogs (check your hit stats and see how many you think could be attributed to other things), but in terms of larger blogs they undergo a quality filter of public interest. A blog can be 100% correct, but unless it has a lot of hits then the public do not see it, much like boring news isn’t included in the press. Likewise poorly written work will also fade away into obscurity.
The only issue that exists would then become that of fact checking online as opposed to current forms of media, but even this can be called into question. How many of us have heard the terrible examples of Fox News in America, which is seen to constantly be promoting political and corporate agendas? This is kind of what it’s like on the internet, where people will care about quality to a point, but the most popular piece of information will be relayed around the internet regardless of how accurate it is.
Watch this http://youtu.be/ibJaqXVaOaI its Jekins and his brilliance again he talks about how today with the internet's accessibility citizens are reclaiming their right to creative freedom, stating we have moving away from “a society based on a small number of companies controlling the story telling apparatus" and moving into "a much more complex media scape, where average citizens have the ability to seize control over the media technology and tell their own stories in powerful new ways” Creative freedom i love it!
ReplyDeletei mean Jenkins
ReplyDelete