Paper or LCD Screen?

Which do you prefer? I am torn between old school and new school, inky hands and strained eyes, extra recycling and hundreds of blog subscriptions. I struggle between my love for a tangible piece of graphic design and the ability to get a specific story brought right to my finger tips any time day or night. In this week’s readings the authors discuss online news and how new technology has affected our society.

The article “All about the “Daily Me” written by Walter Bender talks journalism and the Internet. He questions whether the Internet’s ability to give users instantaneous information to any topic they would like is actually hindering or enhancing our personal lives. He discusses electronic systems that would provide news based on the users interests and how would that affect users ability to get news and information. He states, “The goal was to more deeply engage the reader in the news, ordering priorities and expanding scope rather than restricting it.” These electronic systems were intended to enhance the users lives and I do believe that they succeed in doing that however they also restrict users from experiencing culture outside their normal realm. I am the perfect example of this. I go on the Internet for many different reasons, to look up information, to shop for something, or to just kill time. Most of the time I do not go to the BBC website to catch up on current events (even though it is on my bloglines), I usually will end up wasting sometime looking up some celebrity gossip at Perezhilton.com (its like junk food, not good for you but sooo yummy!). I don’t think that the Internet is responsible for restricting my scope. I believe that in this case I the user am responsible for restricting my scope. The Internet offers me the opportunity to engage on many different topics, I just choose not to read them. This is not an Internet phenomenon either because when I am a bookstore I do the same thing. But this brings up my next question, if the pop culture news that I get from Perez or the other sites were limited would I go to find and read other things? Where in culture today can we expand our horizons and get involved with something new? The Internet makes it easy to learn about new things however we have to want to do it. I think that is what Walter means when he says the internet restricts us, I am comfortable in what I like to read about and engage in and the internet makes it easy for me to stay in those comfort zones.

Dane Cook

In Axel Bruns, article Wikinews: The Next Generation of Alternative Online News? he talks about produsers,

“Overall, it is notable that most alternative online news sites rely heavily on their user communities for their coverage of news and current events. In contrast to a traditional producer/consumer dichotomy, on most of these sites users are able to participate directly as producers of content (whether by submitting or editing news stories – often based on gatewatched content – or by providing extensive commentary and discussion) – they become user-producers or, as we might call them, produsers (Bruns 2005b).”

After reading this portion of the article I could not help but to think about Dane Cook’s stand up routine about a car accident and everyone wanting to be a part of the police investigation. Basically everyone is saying the same useless thing and just talking so they can be apart of the event. This is not true for every news event and sometimes there are great produsers video from their cell phones that get aired on MSNBC or Fox but most of the time is not well done and often looks like crap. (the video is kind of lame but its for the skit not the annimation!)

Final thought…

I do believe that the newspaper will always be around, I think people like its aesthetic quality and the coupons. The Internet is a great tool to use but until to we become a less self-involved society I think it will restrict our cultural growth.