Moral panics and concerns with online technology.

The main social concern that sorounds the evolution of digital technology is that there will no longer be a global village. Instead, there will be a divide between people who do have access to these technologies, and people who don't. However, this article has some interesting information about an organization the united nations are setting up which concentrates on funding less developed countries with enough money to gain access to not only computers, but the internet too. The organization is called 'Digital Soliditary Fund'.
The evolution of these technologies has also had an effect on the way we interact with other people online. for example, the availability of networking sites such as Bebo and Facebook have given us ways of 'selling ourselves' not only to our friends, but also anyone else who choses to visit your profile and read all about you. On the other hand, some people interact with friends more cautiously because of the rising numbers of people who use these sites to 'stalk' people and the rising number of cases such as the 'MySpace killer'.
The fact the the WWW is so huge makes it incredibly difficult to monitor everything that goes on. This is why people say 'the only place we have any freedom is on the web' - because nobody can tell penalise you on the web. However, this is becoming a problem not only on local levels for the police but also on national levels for th government. The fact that the internet is so open means that killers and terrorists can use the internet to communicate information securely. These sorts of things can not yet be sensored or moderated. Also, the small number of sites that can be moderated are so easy to violate and hack, that people are finding ways of getting around these regulations and moderators.

Tell me the future...

1. Chris Wolfe is the co founder of MySpace and he says that these online networking sites are fast eveolving into a social web. He says that he expects it to become infinitely more personal portable and collabarative. He also says that the expectations of the users of these social websites are growing rapidly - they expect to be able to use these sites more often, more easily and more safely. Portable technology will fufill these expectations and ultimately make this phenomenon even more popular.
2. Chad hurley is the co founder of YouTube and his goal is to make this video site available to every person on the planet by making videos easier to upload and to access. He is an extremely positive technology determinist because he is predicting his comapnys technology to develop into ore complex, widely accessible and informative within the next five years.
3. Maurice Levy says that advertising companies will have to be much more creative to catch our eye as more and more people use digital technology. She says that this is because of the 'explosion of media channels'. The difference bwtween linear and liquid media is that in liquid, you can move in and out of settings. (You don't have to follow as many rules - you have more freedom)
4. Norvig is saying that when Edison invented electricity, he had no idea that this invention would lead to things like MP3 players and T.Vs, this is the case with online technology as well - people now use the internet for nearly all their needs: shopping, socializing, gaming, communicating. Norvig seems to convey the idea that the impact the internet is having is so great, that it may one day be as significant as the impact electricity has had on our lives.
5. The impact of technology on the economy is that less developed countries are being provided with less power, cables, etc. If this continues, there will be a huge digital divide between deceloped countries and undeveloped countries as some people will have the internet whereas others won't.

Characteristics of new media

1) Digitality is the binery code which all programmes and softwares are based on. It consists of a series of on and off pulses which are responsible for running anything on your computer, i-pod, T.V etc.

2) Interactivity refers to all the different ways in which people 'stream' This nlcudes satelllite dishes, broadband, cable T.V etc. Recently, this interactivity has been compressed to be able to fit more information into one 'bandwidth'. This basically means that it is more efficient as more information can be communicated and faster. Another feature of interactivity is that it is a two way process. i.e. you can respond to what your media tachnology says - you can interact with it.

3) Hypertextuality is the study of how texts are organised and structured. It is not as linear as it used to be and this has increased the competition between different media texts as it allows you to 'jump' between different texts.

4) Dispersal deals with how different types of information is shared between people and organizations. The fat that there has been more and more dispersal in the past few years has increased the market for producers.

5) The study of virtuality is very similar to iconography as it deals with how cartoons etc are representations of how real something is. There is a debate which asks the question 'are these animations and cartoons a representing or mimicking real life situations.'

6) Convergance refers to the idea that new media technologies are merging old technologies into smaller devices which can do more that one thing. Examples include mobile phones with cameras and the internet, mp3 players with video playing and photo viewing capabilities etc. The debate in this section is 'have these new media technologies gone too far?'