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My own interest in new media began in 1980 during a seminar about the future of newspapers. Its moderater was Dr. Benjamin Compaine, who was then executive director of Harvard University's Program on Information Resources Policy. The seminar talked about an era towards the end of the 20th Century when households would be wired with instant communications devices which could provide all the world's information instantly in text, audio, and video formats. One of the seminar handouts was entitled The Road to Wired City.
Most of that seminar's predictions proved true (or else you wouldn't be reading this). As for Ben Compaine, he became Bell Atlantic Professor of Telecommunications at Temple University, visiting professor in Communications at Penn State University, and later research and development consultant to the Massachusetts Institute ot Technology's Program on Internet & Telecoms Convergence. Whenever he and I correspond, I tease him that, for better or worse, he is to blame for getting me into this crazy business.
Because Professor Compaine has long been ahead of me, I'm wasn't surprised to discover that, weeks before Bob Cauthorn and I launched this Rebuilding Media blog, that my teach wrote in his own blog, Who Owns the Media?, about The Critical Need for Restructuring the Media Industry Before It’s Too Late.
In the spirit of Jonathan Swift's 'A Modest Proposal', Compaine splays the contention among some media traditionalists that giving consumers more choice in media is bad for society:
However, I believe that the mass media's ability to set a common agenda for the community has been merely a side effect that arose from the technological limitation of mass media. This limitation is that the analog production technologies of mass media required that a common edition (or common program in broadcast) be produced for all readers (or all listeners and viewers).
In other words, because an editor could produce only a single edition at a time for all readers, he had to choose stories according to the greatest common interests of all readers until all the space in that edition (or time in that broadcast program) was filled. A side effect of this production limitation was that his choices set a common reading agenda for the community.
During the past four centuries of the mass media's influence, media executives have grown so used to seeing this side effect that they've come to believe it is the mass media's original purpose, rather than an incidental result of technological limitations.
No wonder they're upset nowadays when the new media technologies are shattering that one-to-many technical limitation of mass media.
I cherish that shattering. I believe it is good because people's interests aren't common or generic. Although it is true that we all share some common interests (such as the weather), and that many people might share some quite individual interests (anyone for bonsai gardening and the films of Patrick McGoohan?), the fact is that each and every one of us is a unique mix of common and individual interests. We each don't have the same mix of interests (as much as the mass media might hope we do).
The new media technologies let each individual acquire whatever mix of content better matches his own individual mix of common and unique interests.
The mass media was excellent at satisfying common interests but lousy at satisfing individual interests. I think that's why more than 600 million people worldwide have gravitated onto the Internet, despite those people already having access to mass media. Fortunately, the new media can do all that the mass media did, satisfying common interests, plus satisfy individual interests.
I believe this to be natural and ineluctible evolution for media technologies. Today, most people have to satisfy their individual mix by visitinga number of websites, TV channels, publications, blogs, podcasts, etc.. Yet, I believe that as more individualized (i.e., 'personalized') media appear in the future, their individual mixes will be delivered to them. The role of media.
Media technologies are naturally evolving to match the common and individual interests of each person (if there is such a thing as naturally in technologies!) A result of this natural evolution is a shift in the ability to set community agenda. It's shifting more out of the media's hands. The media will never again be able to set common that agenda the way that mass media alone used to do.
Is that a good thing? Only time will tell.
For a quarter century, Ben Compaine has been my Jonathan Swift. He's helped form and stimulate my thinking, by sound teaching and, occasionally as with his blog entry on community agenda, sharp satire:
However, shouldn't each member of that community have the democratic right to use whatever new technologies are legally available to satisfy his mix of interests?
Should the community's agenda be set by media as the community's guiding light?
Or are the community's agenda something that should be formed by the incidental aggregation of all community members' mix of common and individual interests, with the media more and more just the reporters of the agenda?
Let us know what you think? (Do first read Ben's original posting because my excerpts omitted much.)
Most of that seminar's predictions proved true (or else you wouldn't be reading this). As for Ben Compaine, he became Bell Atlantic Professor of Telecommunications at Temple University, visiting professor in Communications at Penn State University, and later research and development consultant to the Massachusetts Institute ot Technology's Program on Internet & Telecoms Convergence. Whenever he and I correspond, I tease him that, for better or worse, he is to blame for getting me into this crazy business.
Because Professor Compaine has long been ahead of me, I'm wasn't surprised to discover that, weeks before Bob Cauthorn and I launched this Rebuilding Media blog, that my teach wrote in his own blog, Who Owns the Media?, about The Critical Need for Restructuring the Media Industry Before It’s Too Late.
In the spirit of Jonathan Swift's 'A Modest Proposal', Compaine splays the contention among some media traditionalists that giving consumers more choice in media is bad for society:
An unintended consequence of the information technologies that have become widely available in the last two decades is a dangerous fragmentation of culture and community....
There are so many choices of media—within print, video, audio, online, in the movie theater—that every old channel, every traditional mass audience publication, every network, every frequency has not been able to sustain the kind of unifying, common influence that used to provide a national common thread....
We are losing our homogeneity. Is that progress for American society?I increasingly hear that question asked by executives of mass media companies and professors of mass media.
The Internet creates new diversions like kudzu: 10 million blogs and counting. Podcasting. Streaming and archived radio. Peercasting is going to undermine the national desire for a very limited number of sources. We will not have a basis for common subjects for discussion over coffee at Starbucks.So lament many newspaper editors and journalism professors.
However, I believe that the mass media's ability to set a common agenda for the community has been merely a side effect that arose from the technological limitation of mass media. This limitation is that the analog production technologies of mass media required that a common edition (or common program in broadcast) be produced for all readers (or all listeners and viewers).
In other words, because an editor could produce only a single edition at a time for all readers, he had to choose stories according to the greatest common interests of all readers until all the space in that edition (or time in that broadcast program) was filled. A side effect of this production limitation was that his choices set a common reading agenda for the community.
During the past four centuries of the mass media's influence, media executives have grown so used to seeing this side effect that they've come to believe it is the mass media's original purpose, rather than an incidental result of technological limitations.
No wonder they're upset nowadays when the new media technologies are shattering that one-to-many technical limitation of mass media.
I cherish that shattering. I believe it is good because people's interests aren't common or generic. Although it is true that we all share some common interests (such as the weather), and that many people might share some quite individual interests (anyone for bonsai gardening and the films of Patrick McGoohan?), the fact is that each and every one of us is a unique mix of common and individual interests. We each don't have the same mix of interests (as much as the mass media might hope we do).
The new media technologies let each individual acquire whatever mix of content better matches his own individual mix of common and unique interests.
The mass media was excellent at satisfying common interests but lousy at satisfing individual interests. I think that's why more than 600 million people worldwide have gravitated onto the Internet, despite those people already having access to mass media. Fortunately, the new media can do all that the mass media did, satisfying common interests, plus satisfy individual interests.
I believe this to be natural and ineluctible evolution for media technologies. Today, most people have to satisfy their individual mix by visitinga number of websites, TV channels, publications, blogs, podcasts, etc.. Yet, I believe that as more individualized (i.e., 'personalized') media appear in the future, their individual mixes will be delivered to them. The role of media.
Media technologies are naturally evolving to match the common and individual interests of each person (if there is such a thing as naturally in technologies!) A result of this natural evolution is a shift in the ability to set community agenda. It's shifting more out of the media's hands. The media will never again be able to set common that agenda the way that mass media alone used to do.
Is that a good thing? Only time will tell.
For a quarter century, Ben Compaine has been my Jonathan Swift. He's helped form and stimulate my thinking, by sound teaching and, occasionally as with his blog entry on community agenda, sharp satire:
The media industry must be reformed. It needs the restructuring that only the federal government can undertake. Congress is certainly on the right track, having already handed out free digital spectrum to the incumbent broadcasters. Good thing they didn’t have it auctioned off to other players. The shrinking media companies must not be permitted to get any more fragmented. We must write to the FTC and Justice Department urging them not to permit further divestitures, such as the recently announced sale of big multinational Bertelsmann’s magazines to the much smaller publisher, Meredith. The FCC must be convinced to limit the bandwidth available for wireless services such as satellite radio, Wi-Max and the like so newer services cannot be initiated. And certainly we cannot allow any further news services to find room on the multichannel video providers. Even better would be to roll back to the conditions that existed before 1986, thus taking the Fox, WB and UPN networks off the air as well as removing Fox News and MSNBC from the cable line-up.
Only that way can we be sure that we have the base of shared values, shared views and shared culture that we had in the Golden Age of the media from the 1950s until the 1980s.Perhaps the mass media's traditional ability to form a common community agenda was beneficial?
However, shouldn't each member of that community have the democratic right to use whatever new technologies are legally available to satisfy his mix of interests?
Should the community's agenda be set by media as the community's guiding light?
Or are the community's agenda something that should be formed by the incidental aggregation of all community members' mix of common and individual interests, with the media more and more just the reporters of the agenda?
Let us know what you think? (Do first read Ben's original posting because my excerpts omitted much.)
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