|
|
|
|
beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
 Posted - 09/07/2006 : 02:35:07
|
receivers.
I heard this fascinating point on a POV film about the work of two folk music professors.
Alan Lomax Radio was the title of the program. It was wonderful. These guys went around the country and later the world and collected/documented incredible folk music. Their scientific work on the subject was dismissed at first but I think it was eventually received as valid science in the end.
Anyway, One of them made a fascinating comment about the music they collected and that which was played on the radio. He said transmitters cost millions while radios cost almost nothing. That makes communication a one directional event, with only a few transmitters and millions of receivers. It had profound implications about the perception of the folk music the researchers recorded.
And I thought how different the computer and the Internet are making that very idea. Now transmitters and receivers cost the same. And while a computer costs a bit more than a radio, in the industrialized world computers are fairly accessible. So the discrepancy exists between transmitters and receivers in the poorer places on the planet but it is disappearing here. UTube in particular now makes transmitters available to all those folk music producers (producing as in singing into a tape/digital recorder).
It also has good implications regarding the million dollar transmitters of the major broadcasting networks. No longer are a few holding the same power over communication as they did when there were only million dollar transmitters. Just a little more time and the 'only TV/no computer' crowd is going to die out and the 'computer first/TV secondary or not at all' crowd will replace them. Thank goodness, because this is occurring just as the science of marketing and propaganda has advanced into the most dangerous territory.
We need to be real careful not to allow an insidious monopoly manage to exert control over those millions of transmitters. You can bet they will try.
|
Edited by - beskeptigal on 09/07/2006 02:50:57
|
|
|
JohnOAS
SFN Regular
Australia
800 Posts |
Posted - 09/07/2006 : 15:47:04 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Originally posted by beskeptigal
receivers.
I heard this fascinating point on a POV film about the work of two folk music professors.
Alan Lomax Radio was the title of the program. It was wonderful...
Very interesting.
While I wouldn't want to actually go back to the way it was, the new situation has introduced some new problems for the end users, namely, how to identify good content.
Taking science/skeptical content as examples, it used to be the case that they were generally scarce enough that anything you could get your hands/ears on was probably worth a listen. Now, there's just so much to choose from you could spend every waking moment listening to podcasts and watching video on google/youtube and still not get anywhere near getting it all.
The same thing applies to more interactive media, like SFN. I have a few other forums I used to frequent far more often, but these days I find that most of the limited time I have to spend in forums is spent here, and I'm a pretty insignificant poster in the grand scheme of things.
quote:
Originally posted by beskeptigal
We need to be real careful not to allow an insidious monopoly manage to exert control over those millions of transmitters. You can bet they will try.
Monopolies don't concern me greatly, there's just too much independant content for this to be the major threat. However, content with hidden agenda's or posing as non-partisan is somewhat more insidious, and I guess this could be the sort of control you're referring to. |
John's just this guy, you know. |
 |
|
|
beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 09/08/2006 : 12:02:05 [Permalink]
|
The monopoly I spoke of was the attempt of big companies to grab the Internet infrastructure in the same way they grabbed the airwaves and own the phone lines. Hard to say what they could do from there to control information.
The new problems you note are no different than the old problems. People have the same problems when the information transmitters transmit errors, lies, oversimplified versions and so on. I think there is a thousandfold more factual information coming from the Internet than came from the million dollar transmitters in the last few decades. And not enough people were getting their information from written materials before the computer.
|
| Edited by - beskeptigal on 09/08/2006 12:10:44 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Topic Locked
