Let’s stop a tragedy

Dead is such a harsh term. It is so final, that’s it, once your dead your dead. I cringe when I think of print being dead just because newspapers, magazines and books are such a rich part of our history. You have to look at the facts and realize that print media is a dying breed. I don’t like this. It’s like The Rolling Stones breaking up or something along those lines. Something so old, so classic, yet they can’t stay afloat because kids these days would rather listen to The Jonas Brothers (though the internet is infinitely cooler than The Jonas Brothers).

According to Mark Dillen, the world is reading fewer newspapers and spending more time watching cable or satellite television or surfing the Web. Am I guilty of this? Probably. Are most people I know guilty of neglecting print? Most definitely. Intense readers of print spend about 5-8 hours a week reading print, where an average online user spends 14 hours surfing the Web. However, just because I spend more time online doesn’t mean I neglect print media.

One of my favorite things to do is to spend hours in Borders and just look at magazines. I think I could spend just about all day in a Borders. I also have multiple subscriptions to monthly magazines, all of which have Web sites that oddly  I never visit. I would much rather sit down and read a magazine, newspaper or a book than read off a screen. It’s just a different feeling. I can’t imagine what it would be like without print all together, and I hope it never comes to that.

Don’t settle for what’s on the screen

After much debate with those around me, I have come to the conclusion that nearly everything is on the Web. Name a book and I can almost guarantee that you can find it on the Web. How about a toothbrush, an international plane ticket, a wife? Yes. Yes. Yes. You can not even imagine how much money someone paid for a Yacht on eBay. Yes, this went down on the Web.

A little distraught by this, I sought out a small town in the Southern part of Italy, the place my grandfather was born and raised. I have been to Vallata three times and know there is not much to it, besides the 3,000 humble residents. I found Vallata. I was not too surprised to find the name, but I found more. In the town directory I found phone numbers and addresses of my family that still lives there. That freaked me out a little bit.

Tim Berners-Lee made a statement that rings true to a great extent, “If it isn’t on the Web, it doesn’t exist.” For some reason this bothers me. Sure, I like having such a great amount of information and resources within my reach all the time, but there is more out there. I hate the idea of people thinking just because you can see a picture of something or read about it online, it “exists” and that’s it. People need to get out there and witness everything for themselves, because words can’t describe the most beautiful sunset you have never seen.

Skills

My personal opinion about learning new Web skills is not very realistic. First of all I believe that learning basic Web skills are crucial and in this day and age it is important to know how to navigate the Web. Learning Web skills should be easy considering how much it is present in our lives, unfortunately I don’t believe this is how it works. My mom for example has had computers to work with for the past 20 years but has not turned her Web skills past mediocre.

I was fortunate enough to be almost raised with the development of the Web. I can remember like it was yesterday, turning on these ugly, off-white, odd looking boxes that when you punched letters on a key board they would turn up on the screen. The first internet I remember was so slow. I would say that it took at least two minutes to load a Web page. Now, if a Web page is not loaded in 30 seconds I am so frustrated at how slow the internet is working.

If only everyone could learn as much as I have in this short amount of time. One group of people who I think need to be up to date on Web use is politicians, this article brings up why it is important for them to understand technology.  My generation was given a gift that we take for granted. There may always be a technology gap because who knows what will be out there for my grandchildren to work with.

Take anything but my laptop

Traditional print media contains a picture, headline, maybe a subhead, and the story in its entirety. Modern online media has changed the way we see and read stories. Rarely do we read entire stories online, more likely is reading parts of the story that are appealing to us. A popular format helps this by placing bullet points at the top of the page, allowing readers to see what they are getting into. I see this as not only cheating yourself, but the writer and the subjects of the story also.

The Web is making things faster and cheaper. I have learned through one study in particular that we are no longer reading online, but scanning and skimming the content. The time has come that we started losing our core values and traditions. The idea of fast food has diminished family values of eating together. Reading on the Web  follows this trend of what we want, how we want it and when we want it: Now!

There are far too many pluses and minuses to go through on a small blog, I am thinking you would need a book for that. I do know that reading on the Web is changing how the next generation gets it’s information. This article and picture tell it all and I find it amusing. I remember growing up loving to sit down with my grandpa and look through an entire newspaper, things have changed. Now you turn on your computer and have limitless opportunities to get information fast, free and anytime you want it.

The Way Things Have Become

Steve Outing, a Poynter Online Journalist addresses some good ideas regarding what journalists can learn from bloggers. The writing in blogs is more unrestricted. This can obviously be a negative effect for many reasons, but on the positive side it allows blogs to be written faster and with more reader contribution and dialogue. Something else I think journalists can learn from bloggers is to use some personality in writings. Make your voice different, even in journalistic reports.

My thoughts on other lessons traditional media should gain is to converse more with the audience. Encourage readers to engage in the conversation, as Jeff Jarvis, president of Advance Internet said. “News is a conversation, not a lecture,” writes Jarvis.

Max strategy is the single most important thing that traditional media should perfect to retain existing audiences and gain new ones. Max strategy is the term coined by Chris Anderson in his book, ‘Free.’ It means, put your information everywhere. News organizations are already starting to do this. Who would have thought that CNN would have a Facebook page and a Twitter? You do not even need a TV anymore to watch major events because of this strategy.

Unfortunately, the concerns of neo-Luddites, sticks-and-bricks communities and the digital divide do not enter into this highly technological world, for different respective reasons. This is where we rely on current newspapers to keep up with the max strategy of big organizations, and report on them. Radio stations, local news and smaller newspapers should all be current with this new, high-tech way of spreading the news, and report to those who are not interested in finding friends on Facebook.

There Forever or Not?

Contradicting views are always fun to read. This is good training, from my perspective, to decyfer what is true and what may be outdated. After reading this weeks online readings I thought I had a pretty good understanding about the reality of posting news stories on the web. According to Mark Glaser’s online article, “When Web print stories disappear, the meaning of ‘archives’ fade,” there is not really a way to completely expunge online data, such as news stories.

So after all of this new information is stored in my head, fresh in my memory, I go looking for evidence. The first thing I find? A story with completely different views, stating that the Web as a historical record is fragile. What? I just read that once the Web has control over it, it’s not going away. Peter Abrahams writes that what was once written on the Web is now, in many cases, gone forever. So here is the catch, I think. Looking back at the top of the page, which should be done at the very beginning I know, is the date: May 2004! Five and a half years ago, mine as well have been on a different planet.

Abrahams could not have predicted what we are capable of now, or even thought it was possible. The deleted story about the violent goth kids and the vampire game is no longer in any archives, it has been deleted from the source of the story. But if you still want to read it you can apparently still find it on an Italian gaming site.

To me, community can be so many things. It can take place in a wide variety of places and deal with a huge group of people. These people don’t have to necessarily all be the same and share all the same opinions, but the thing that brings them all together is just one similar feeling or idea that they all have in common.

If we are talking about what makes the  community you live in, then bam you live in the same area and share that with others around you, some one thing in common, your community. Now that is pretty general and most people know about the community they live in, but in these days of technology communities have spread to online. The idea of online communities had to be invented when the technology allowed for online chat rooms and web sites such as friendster, myspace and facebook.

People from across the world could now come together in one place, one site to share there thoughts and feelings. As we discussed in class there is an online community about anything and everything. If you are thinking about it, then others are too. You need help or tips about parenting, what to do when your baby won’t stop crying, what to feed a one year old? Bada bing, bada boom there is an online community for you.

Back in 1999 the hot topics for online communities was apparently for health problems and electronic commerce (Online Communities). Now, I would say that facebook by far has the biggest community of the online world. What is next we can only imagine.

Freedoms I like, freedoms I want.

For the most part my views are pretty simple. If you want to be a web bum, then be a web bum. There is so much out there on the web that it is simply mind numbing. If you want it, then you can find it, that is the bottom line and that is the way I think it should be. All of this talk about authorities “filtering and protecting us” from what they think is bad is nonsense. If I want to waste my time watching a baby laugh on YouTube then I am going to waste my time watching a baby laugh on YouTube and I don’t want anyone to decide otherwise for me.

Yes, I get why it may be a wise choice to limit such idiocracies because I am not ignorant. It could be nice to have a lot of distractions limited to web users so productive things get done and you really learn about what is happening in the world. But imagine how horrible it would be if you went online and everyone’s homepage was Fox News, no thank you. I’d much rather be a moonbat than a puppet Mr. Keen. Now sure I wasn’t being a productive piece of society when I stumbled upon this, but seriously how cool is this! Point proven.

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