Hi, basically I�m a student and I want to present my knowledge. Not all of it, just the bits that might get me marks. I�m going to talk about the dawn of Cyberdemocracy and the promise of a new information age. How radical alternatives to media fits in to this new technology in terms of distribution and access. It sounds dull but I can guarentee you........it is. -----------link------------------------------- We all know about Habermass, cos he�s a dude. The concept of a sphere of public consiousness is genius and I reckon he shines with Beethovan, Bach and the Honey monster. The concept relies on information to shine a torch around the murky cellers, uncovering phantoms that can be discussed. People who are fed on lies cannot regurgitate the truth. Citizens in an informal public arena or behind closed doors spewing knowledge over each other, exchanging ideas and inforcing democracy, need to be nourished by hard facts. �Distribution of Information is essential for people to be free�. (Joanna Buick, 1995) In regimes such as totalitarian societies supress or the knowedge of the people, the public sphere is a tiny bunch of paranoid individuals on the verge of being carted away to a concentration camp. The masses are misinformed, supressed issues mislead and everyone follows. �If nobody tells me, I don�t know; I can�t solve it if I can�t see it. If people don�t know, they can�t act. Knowledge can provoke action, and only action can provoke change.� (FRASER CAMPBELL, last night.) Therefore I conclude that SLIDE: Information�s quality! At the present time (look at watch and say time) the bulk of information fed to the invisible public arena of debate usually arrives from a few set paths; television, radio and print media. These conventional and widely accepted forms of media are most influential in our society, the mainstream. Masses of information filters through the network of ownership deals, large quantities of it at the mercy of consortiums, ruthlessly defending their own interests. They�re caged by frameworks of government and censorship but the tiger will always roar. There would be no need for legislation if the delivered messages had no influence on the resipient. All media has an agenda, some honourable, some selfish. As a result the public sphere can be polluted by untruth and distorted by spin. This corporate manipulation of the information provided is why alternatives to media exist. When the individual�s specific needs not being met by what they find. Is their choice when the choices are the same? And why select when you can create? Club together with similar minded individuals to form what they want, to say what they want to say, that isn�t being said by the main channels. Pirate radio stations, undercurrents alternative news, radical alternatives to media! --------------------------------------------------------------- Fraser Campbell on Cyber democracy The Internet isn�t just about porn. Sure�some of it�s quite good but the invention has wider connotations than millions of intriguing pictures viewed when your parents are out. The medium is a rich source of information, a global forum and does more than weakening marriages and making lonely people happy. Many, many, people can express many purposes and ideas to almost unlimited scores of other people. The public sphere, therefore democracy as a whole, looks set to benefit from a healthy dollop of this new resource, as well as lonely adolescents who daren�t reach for the top shelf. The medium is seen by some as the rising sun of a dawning golden information age. Such optimism is familiar and such claims have been made for it�s technological predecessors, television arose as a burst of enlightened glory, then faded, evaporating into a commercial haze. How many inventions have followed a similar path, each failing to deliver like a midwife who suspects someone is about to give birth to a glowing child saviour, but it turns out to be a big fart. The Internet has some advantages over its predecessors. The key differences lie with it�s interactive nature. Mainstream methods of transmission offer limited feedback via, say the phone in format. People who get past the switchboard are allowed to communicate to a mass audience for a limited amount of time. Newspapers publish letters but these are often pruned, censored or chopped. Compared this to an Internet noticeboard anyone can write anything they please, unedited and any one else can reply. The Internet has potentially a big role to play in this. Start up costs are minimal compared to other mediums. If JD can have a website then, that�s enough proof. Although welcome and intriguing, the JD TV channel or JD FM, would be unlikely to be feasible. Transmitters and satellites are expensive and hard to maintain. As would Ryan Bracha Telegraph with news on the dude - bogey output reaches all time maximum. Making a newspaper involves production costs and printing on paper, so the world is being deprived. The Internet involves a standard PC, patience and a phoneline. Then world is at our fingertips. Possibly our thumbs, too. Some people might type with their legs. A computer is becoming a more and more influential being on the landscape, gaining and threatening to swallow up it�s rivals. There is an argument about the differences between the information rich and the information poor. People without computers or access to them can�t go on the Internet, they are excluded from the revolution, waiting. But it is na�ve to think this will stay the same forever. With the increased convergence between telecommunications, television and computers, households will not be able to keep the Internet at bay for much longer. It�s like the first telephone network, or seeing television before the coronation. It is on the increase and considering mobile phones are about to break into a third generation, an Internet generation. We all know how popular these mobile communication units have become. It�s only a matter of time before not having Internet access will be like not having a television. With the analogue transmitters set to be turned off in 2010 digital is the way of the future. The Gavyn Davies report suggests that in fifteen years time approximately half of the population will have �fully converged digital TV and web devices. Fully portability and mobility. Full interactively and archive access�. Television, mobile communications and computing will become intertwined, through the Internet. A time where everyone has the Internet, apart from the blind. Let�s have the Internet in Braille. The Internet would become a tool, but most of this is potential. It�s fate lies in the hands of its holders. If everyone went on line just to doss around and look at porn or whatever, then it�s potential is just a superhigh virtual brothel, if people want to use it as an increased circle to exchange ideas, then it can be used as such. Jurgan Habermass would be pleased. As anyone can have a web page this increases the diversity and choice in the new media frontier. The rules of censorship will come crashing down and any material can be posted and downloaded, and rarely traced. The Ku Klux Klan have a web site, very soon they could have a TV channel. Feeding their propaganda down the Internet to our televisions. Webcasts will easily side step the blockade of censorship and, for better or worse, the public sphere will be vibrant and buzzing with a tune of millions of opinions. Alternatives will be voiced. But will they be listened to? Words only have power when they are read. The brightest idea in the world is no good if it nestles in the head of a coma victim. There are millions of pages out there with only one hit (MrQuilt�s webpage) or a devoted number of fans seeking updates. The concept of masses of people being informed by a single page of web information, even finding the same page and devoting enough time to read it, seems far fetched. This is a lot of the argument towards �power to the people�. The corporations will try to rule the phonelines. The odd voice screaming for attention like a single name in the phone directory. Internet people It�s na�ve to think that a network of home PCs can rival massive corporations in terms of resources at least. The mass companies are trying to gobble up cybersapace and control it. But the Internets nature means it isn�t a single As websites become more advanced and more complicated they will cost more to run. This means that advertisers will have more Undercurrents has folded. It was run by a small, highly dedicated band of visionaries who succumb to the pressures of our commercial world. The lack of finances in the pressure of big business. It takes a resistance movement determined and willing to work long hours, battling for resources and swimming against the commercial tide. Through web communities however, people from around the world can discuss any topic they share an interest in. This is often more close knit than in the 3 dimentional universe as it works on more of an interlectual level, with thoughts being flattened into words on the screen without the distortion of and defying time and space. . �The attention of those drawn through cypersurfing through hypermedia, is drawn more to the message than the medium� Messages is Douglas Englebat (who invented the mouse) said: �Nurturing creativity and the body alongside extended imagination and access to the unconscious, cyberspace is a gift to western civilisation, a return to humanity� Western civilisation, it is said. It may be hard for us in our pleasant capitalist Yorkshire bubble to peel back our taken for granted global position and think of the world as a whole. Although the Western ideals are closing in on the world there are desert countries where people are more concerned about clean water than Jurgan Habermass. The battered and drained landscape under a naked and scorching sky. Although the Internet�s conquest of our world looks inevitable, these people having access to a range of computers and software is down on the shopping list. Likewise with sections of society that can�t afford a house, are to be left behind in this Cultural Revolution. In many ways it increases the gap between the West and the east, the rich and poor, the have�s and have nots. It may be a return to humanity, but where is humanity going? |