=^O

Like the printing press, it will be a major contributor to changes in governments and social structures. We’re just starting to see the beginning of these effects now.

The comparisons you make do make me wonder if we indeed over-rate the net as revolutionary force. The informational catallaxy factor is obviously the most notable difference where news is concerned.

Millions of readers can instantaneously junk some notion or political outlook; with the conventional media that was always a slower and iffier prospect. Information – including on matters related to high politics – has undoubtedly been democratised.

On a more personal front, I think the radio star killed by the internet’s video store has been posted correspondence. As more than one person has pointed out, primary research for historians of the future will be a dry affair with no letters to draw on.

And an email will never beat a letter for romance – the stamps, the ink, the effort, the perfume (if you’re lucky). People treasure a billet doux; they delete even the most touching email.

I’ve been saying this kind of stuff about the Internet since the late eighties. It’s a genuine revolution in communication, and it is profoundly different from what has come before.

And that’s just the lower bound of the likely outcomes. At the upper bounds of speculation, we have things like Vernor Vinge’s Singularity:
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html

Many new technologies have similar periods of utopianism, I think, usually marked by a similar wing of dystopianism. There are parallels between the reception of early cinema and the way that digital cinema is viewed now (my wife Lisa Bode, was just awarded her PhD from UNSW studying this very topic).

That’s where the traditionalist academics and “Centres for Critical and Cultural Studies” stand now. They can dimly see a rising wave that will make them as obsolete as the skilled manuscript illuminators of the 12th century, and they can only retreat to a kind of hopeful denial.

Yes it is patchy, full of blind spots, overwhelmed by noise and pullulating with liars. But it is still amaaaaaazing.

The blogosphere is less stable. At the moment we are all hacking away giggling with delighted energy. But a few more years of hits, no money, increasing competition and a slow motion mudsludge of bad sites from self opinionated ego maniacs inspired (horrors!) by the glories of us (even EP) might make this less attractive.

The early adopters have kept going because they got famous. Cut through for the rest of us is a lot harder.

And an archival shutdown by the world’s press proprietors might dent us severely.

Which reminds me, robotwisdom is back. YAY.

Still no aircon then?

The biggest advantage of the internet is multi-media. Bringing in media we could get elsewhere to one point of access such as the text form we are using now, through to online TV or Voice/video communication

That is, gaining access to material we could already get today. It’s not like the media revolutions of the Printing Press and Television which brought written word and vision into houses for the first time.

The Internet will probably end up as a conglomeration of all current mediums, accessible all at one station. (Something like a screen, speakers & keyboard be it on a desk or mounted to a wall, or carried in your pocket)

The internet doesn’t change what material or mediums we can get, just the ease of getting them.
I’m sure we will increasingly depend on such a source but only because of the speed, not the substance. People will still read books in paper and talk in person. We could be having this very conversation in mail or down at the coffee shop. We have not substantially changed anything by using the net.

Of course internet democracy could play some role, that’s’ far down the line, but would allow significant citizen interaction with Parliamentary bodies.

I think it’s wise to not overplay the internets role. It’s not a new media, just a new way to access such forms.

Beyond the importance of combining traditional media forms, it breaks traditional media barriers by allowing anyone to be a publisher. The gatekeepers of collective knowledge and opinion are being bypassed.

The priests and ruling classes lost control of the written word after Gutenberg — and eventually they lost control of religion and political power as well. Today’s media moguls and politicians are now facing a similar shift of power as their stranglehold on public communication is breaking.