Hey, I’m Dan Goldstein. I’m a Sophomore Communication major, minoring in AEM. I’m from Merrick, NY, on Long Island. I love watching Friends, Seinfeld, and Fresh Prince. The only current TV shows I watch are Entourage and Flight of the Conchords. I’ll watch any sport, but I really only follow basketball. March Madness is my favorite time of year. Kind of off topic, but anyone who hasn’t seen Superbad needs to go see it. Pronto.
One thing that interests me about the Internet is how easy it is to share your own media content. Through websites like YouTube, PureVolume, Freewebs, and blogs like the one we’re currently using, anyone can create and publish media content, whether it’s music, movies, podcasts, writing, art, websites, or anything else. Even Wikipedia lets us create content in the form of history, news, and other information.
While large corporations that own publishing companies, film studios, and other media sources still produce what we might consider the best quality media, or make the most money, or be the most widely known, the fact that any single person could potentially be a creator of media content shows how far the Internet has brought our society. It used to be that these companies were the only option. Now, the common people have a louder voice.
While these opportunities aren’t news to anyone, I still find them worth talking about and exploring. I would love to learn more about the history and development of this Internet trend of large scale self-production, and I would be very interested to watch how it transforms and how it affects society as it continues to grow.
Right now, sites like YouTube and PureVolume are basically just a platform for people to share completed material. It’ll be interesting if these sights, or new sights that develop, start providing tools to create the content as part of the experience.
There are many directions this trend of widespread media production can go. Advancements will probably be made that we cannot even imagine now. That is one of the beautiful things about the Internet: the possibilities are endless. There were points in time where there was no electricity, computers, or Internet. Now, we are at a point in time where there is no ___. What will fill in that blank is yet to be seen, but when it comes, we won’t be able to remember what it was like when we didn’t have it.
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Hi Dan, your topic is a very interesting and important one. Personal media production and generation does not have obviously apparent psychological effects— Internet users do not merely browse or “surf” the web anymore: we edit, create, and distribute content. The psychological impact of this capability must be vast.
Do you think this power of unregulated creation and customization is empowering the people? Time Magazine certainly thought so last year when the named “You” (in context of YouTube) the “Person of the Year”. In summary, the magazine stated that the increased opportunity to have one’s voice heard led to an increased state of democracy. Your post made me think of that concept.
But I’m also curious; you mention that the future holds limitless possibilities, what are some of your predictions? Do you think all this easy access to put one’s self “out there” can have any negative consequences? I guess we’ll all find out in the coming years.
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