MC's blog

Week 2 Reading Response

It seems like the problem is capitalism in itself. One of my favorite youtube vloggers, Elexus Jionde, made a video about the role of new technologies of mass media, particularly television and mail, fueled the rise of a new conservative political movement in the 1970's. See here:

! Link to Elexus Jionde's channel Intelexual Media and video The Rise of a New Right in the 1970's (https://youtu.be/U_6VORGjRbc)

If we're looking at the internet from the perspective of a consumer, it shares many of the anxieties about the implications for "democracy" or the centralisation of eyeballs in the name of ad revenue that people felt around the rise of cable TV. If such similar concerns (and radical movements) arise with every new form of technology of mass communication, it seems like the root of the problem lies further underneath. Maybe it's a system that creates the concept of "intellectual property" and exploits workers while rewarding the owners of the servers and databases' and service providers and companies selling consumer-goods for their endless pursuit of profit????? Maybe.

One thing that does seem to be entirely new for the internet however, is the power (which Ford argues, is grossly underused and undermined) for consumers to become creators themselves, which I think is also what this course is trying to get at as well. It's exciting, especially in a time where I am almost forgetting that the web can be so much more beyond the apps that we use everyday. Once we step out of these apps, however, where "success" and impact are measured in terms of likes, saves, shares (all KPI's for a model that values high centralisation and "eyeballs in one direction," as detailed in Ford's argument), what are the metrics that we use to determine whether what we did is important, impactful, relevant? Another question. Does the power to create your own html website mean anything when the internet satellites, cables, and power grids are still owned by major corporations and governments only interested in benefiting these corporations? I guess the better question is, what is the most we do with this limited amount of power even IF the internet satellites, cables, and power grids...etc.