We all have passions. We all have that certain thing that we love to do each and every day. Whether it be listening to music, playing a video game, or watching baseball, these are things that millions of other people also love to do. And now, through the miracle of the internet, we are all able to share our passions with the world in many forms; through writing on discussion boards and blogs, adding pictures, audio through things like podcasts, and video on websites like Youtube. With the internet, a novice can teach something to a professional, and vice-versa. It is clear that we are in a internet-based “revolution,” and it’s great that we understand it’s place in our history and the gradual changes this revolution is having over time. Old and new media are definitely colliding, but this is a good thing as it pushes us to a greater level of teaching and knowledge.

I SEE IT CLEARLY
From the time of the Industrial Revolution in the 1800’s to the current Web Revolution we see today, there has been many changes in the way our society realizes the impact a revolution has on us. With the realization of this revolution at hand, more people are able to embrace it and add to it in their own way. J. Beniger wrote in his 1986 article Cultural Revolution that many people are more distracted by trends that have an immediate impact, rather than things that may be lasting in significance (2). This may have been true in the past, but today our Web Revolution is being utilized by nearly everyone in modern society. Where I do agree with Beniger is when he goes on to talk about how more recent generations have been better at realizing revolutions, and how they are more sensitive to the possible impact of technological and social change (3). With this realization, we are able to create policies and values, and see their upsides and downsides from a clearer point of view.

OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW? HOW ABOUT A COMPROMISE BETWEEN THE TWO
The newspaper may be dying, but this doesn’t mean that we can’t tie this old media in with the Web Revolution. More and more papers are going digital as readership declines. This allows the reader to access articles that they want to read at the click of a button. And newspapers aren’t restricting themselves when it comes to the digitalization process. We don’t just have articles anymore, we have blogs, videos and podcasts that help to add to the learning and media experience. These are all things a traditional print newspaper couldn’t do, and while the internet may be helping to aide in the destruction of it, it is also pushing to make journalism better.
In the article Convergence Culture by H. Jenkins, he makes an outstanding point about this “convergence” of old and new. He writes, “In the 1990’s rhetoric about a coming digital revolution contained an implicit and often explicit assumption that new media was going to push aside old media, that the Internet was going to displace broadcasting, and that all of this would enable consumers to more easily access media content that was personally meaningful to them” (5). In reality, new media has not pushed aside old media but changed it to make it better and more personal for the reader, listener, or viewer. Jenkins continues to write, “The computer industry is converging with the television industry in the same sense that the automobile converged with the horse, the TV converged with the nickelodeon, the word-processing system converged with the typewriter, the CAD program converged with the drafting board, and digital desktop publishing converged with the linotype machine and the letterpress” (5).
This leads me to an example of how TV is converging with the Internet. We now have Hulu, where individuals are able to watch their favorite television shows from a video archive at their own convenience. And it’s not just television shows, it extends to movies and other forms of media. Will this lead people away from their television sets at night? Probably not. Old media is not being displaced, but their functions are being changed as we develop new technologies. Jenkins continues in his article, “Printed words did not kill spoken words. Cinema did not kill theater. Television did not kill radio. Each old medium was forced to coexist with emerging media” (14). With digital print journalism, we are now able to comment on articles and share our knowledge on things where people can learn and interact with one another from any spot on the globe.
WHAT COMES NEXT?
Technology is always changing for the better; allowing us to better communicate with one another and share new things. Even an XBOX allows us to communicate digitally in a unique way. Now I don’t own an XBOX because I’d become addicted if I did, but I have used them before and what you can do on them is truly remarkable. It’s not just playing video games anymore. It’s watching movies, tv shows, playing a game against someone from across the globe, or going on Facebook through a fairly small little black box. The only thing is we can’t take this along with us when we leave our living rooms. The new Apple iPad is what some are calling the future of how we communicate. Roughly the size of a notebook, it acts kind of as a tweener between a laptop and a cell phone. Here you are able to have the internet at your finger tips, and surf the web using your hands. Could this be a new form of technology that saves the newspaper industry? I’m sure it won’t hurt it, as it’s almost like you’ll be flipping through an actual paper. Other forms of new technology like the “Photosynth” demo will help to change the way we view images, combining everyones photos from across the world.  Sooner than later, we will all be able to walk around with all of our “stuff,” as a classmate of mine put it in his blog. This is truly an interesting time where we are mixing old with new, and where we go from here is truly up to you.  As Harvard scholar Yochai Benkler put it, “How these battles turn out over the next decade or so will likely have a significant effect on how we come to know what is going on in the world we occupy, and to what extent and in what forms we will be able- as autonomous individuals, as citizens, and as participants in cultures and communities- to affect how we and others see the world as it is and as it might be” (1).  

Resources:

Beniger, J. (1986). Control Revolution, Introduction (pp. 1-27). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Benkler, Y. (2006). Wealth of Networks, Introduction. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture, Introduction: “Worship at the alter of convergence” (pp. 1-24). New York: NYU Press

Blaise Aguera y Arcas Photosynth demo at TED

www.hulu.com
www.apple.com/ipad