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June 10, 2006
The age of participation
In looking for a site containing Marshall McLuhan's First Law of Media ("The first content of new media is old media"), I bumped into the Economist's series on New Media
In a section called "The age of participation", the article observes:
Last November, the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 57% of American teenagers create content for the internet—from text to pictures, music and video. In this new-media culture, says Paul Saffo, a director at the Institute for the Future in California, people no longer passively “consume” media (and thus advertising, its main revenue source) but actively participate in them, which usually means creating content, in whatever form and on whatever scale. This does not have to mean that “people write their own newspaper”, says Jeremy Zawodny, a prominent blogger and software engineer at Yahoo!, an internet portal. “It could be as simple as rating the restaurants they went to or the movie they saw,” or as sophisticated as shooting a home video.
This has profound implications for traditional business models in the media industry, which are based on aggregating large passive audiences and holding them captive during advertising interruptions. [...] This points to the very heart of the coming era of participatory media. It must be understood, says Mr Weinberger, “not as a publishing phenomenon but a social phenomenon”.
No matter how one appreciates the shifts and contours of a consumer society, the implications of changing communication patterns affect us all - producers of goods, producers of knowledge, producers of culture.
Notes:
Marshall McLuhan, 1964. Understanding Media. The Extentions of Man. [My attribution of the "first law" to Understanding Media is mistaken. The link to the whole book is via the Google Book Program, and a search for various combinations of "new media" and "old media" (e.g. "content of new media") fail to locate the phrase. Google does, however, find an earlier citation - also by me :( -. I guess this must be a part of The Medium is the Massage, Making new media by massaging the old stuff sounds appropriate.]
Image: iThe Economist, Apr 20th 2006. http://www.economist.com/images/20060422/D1606SU2.jpg
Survey : New Media. Among the audience, The Economist, Apr 20th 2006. http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6794156
Survey : New Media. It's the links, stupid, Blogging is just another word for having conversations. The Economist, Apr 20th 2006. http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6794172
Survey : New Media. Compose yourself. Journalism too is becoming interactive, and maybe better. The Economist. Apr 20th 2006. http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6794240
Survey : New Media. The wiki principle. Are many minds better than a few? The Economist, Apr 20th 2006. http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6794228
Survey : New Media. Heard on the street. Podcasting will change radio, not kill it. The Economist, Apr 20th 2006. http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6794210
Survey : New Media. The gazillion-dollar question, So what is a media company? The Economist, Apr 20th 2006. http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6794282
Survey : New Media. What sort of revolution? Both good and bad—but it's too early to say in what proportions. The Economist, Apr 20th 2006. http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6794256
http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6794256
Survey : New Media. Sources and acknowledgements, The Economist, Apr 20th 2006. http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6794184
Posted by sjc at June 10, 2006 10:40 AM
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