Saturday, February 27, 2010

Whats the point and how much will it cost?

Hi class,

Yet one more thought. Something was occurring to me a little while ago. The new new media is for the most part all about the internet, which was originally conceived of to make the dissemination of information easier. Yes, the internet has become a haven for advertising and money-making, there can be no disputing that fact. The question I have is how much technology companies are going to use the consumer’s reliance upon the internet and new new media to make more and more money.

I feel as though on the whole people have become so reliant on their connection to the web that they are willing to pay any price to stay connected. It seems as though everyone these days has an iphone, a blackberry, a pda, or some other way to wirelessly connected. I constantly see high school students and younger children with internet technology way beyond anything I own, could afford, or more specifically, would want. I can understand certain people needing these technologies in accordance with their job, but for the most part it seems to me as though technology companies are feeding the internet addiction latched onto the general populaces back as a method of making money. Personal internet technology has come to a point in which the purpose is more focused on as a status symbol and addiction rather than a tool used for the dissemination of meaningful information.

1 comment:

  1. Douglas Rushkoff makes this point in his chapter in Communication and Cyberspace, and there has been an ongoing conflict between the open source/information just wants to be free approach to new media, and the forces of commercialism, between communication and social interaction, and information and control.

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