mshelle54

Reading for 10/27 October 27, 2008

For this posting I’m going to mix it up a bit, and go from the end of the reading to the beginning (inventive, I know!) I have to make this commit first, on page 213 of Lister, in the case study 3.2 Time-Warner and AOL: the world’s biggest merger (so far). This “so far” I feel hits the whole idea of anything and everything having to do with the Internet on the head. Everything that happens within that world is more then likely going to change. Just looking at the beginning of the Internet to now. Talk about 10 million steps forward. Where is the whole thing going to go? There is no way to tell or even imagine.

People thought that they were going to be able to make money off the Internet forever, but that was a bad idea. On page 209 Lister writes, “A particular problem has been how to secure an income stream in the absence of control over distribution, an expectation that by users the wed should be free…” Now the companies that were going after the money stream have realized that there is almost nothing that can be done. Look at the television studios. Even before they had the great idea to put their TV shows on line for free, there were already people out there doing it for us. Once these studio’s realized that there were losing money, they all quickly put their shows on line, and some even when as far as creating sites like Hulu.com. The Internet not only affected their viewer ship which then of course affected add sales, they say their new opportunity.

Lister quotes Manuel Castells on page 188 as saying “The internet is the fabric of out lives.” Earlier Lister says, “…online is thoroughly entwined with the embodied and material conditions of our social and everyday lives” (181). These two statements I feel are not off the mark at all, if the Internet is apart of your life. Having given up the Internet for a few days, I can easily say that yes it is ingrained in our lives, in very aspect. It has almost become as essential as breathing we need it. It has become a necessity not a want.

Could people really give up the Internet?

What would happen if we went back to a time with no Internet?

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002382.html

http://www.centernetworks.com/news-corp-nbc-names-jason-kilar-ceo