Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
arrival of the cinema and television marked a point of no return not only in
the way human beings communicated, but also in the way people lived and
related to one another. People were no longer reading static text or listening to
faceless voices but could visualize the sounds and information they received
through viewing others in motion. They were visually stimulated beyond
imagination and their creativity was stretched to unimaginable levels, leading
to news and entertainments of different forms. After sixty years of television
came another invention that would once again change the course of communi-
cations in unexpected ways - the computer and its first-born, the Internet.
Created in 1989 by Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau as a
form of collaborative sharing for scientific and military projects, the Internet
has, since its founding, changed the face of the earth and shifted the behav-
ior, attitudes and interests of entire generations in ways that are apparent but
remain unclear in consensus. The patterns of behavior that have emerged from
twenty years of interacting with the Internet are as far afield as the study of
behavioral science itself. The unique difference, however, is that while the
inventions of the past were focused on “channels”, in other words the means of
communications, today's communication is as much about channels as about
the “exchanges” provided within the channels. The newspaper and magazine,
which are the most impersonal of media channels, brought a one-way stand-off
communication mode where the reader was “diffused” with news and informa-
tion. The radio, another impersonal media channel, followed the same pattern
of one-way information diffusion, although in recent years an element of inter-
activity has been injected through dial-in programs. Television also began with
one-way information dissemination and together with the cinema has remained
very impersonal over the last centuries. Today, the television is viewed by
many as more of a channel of interruption than a channel of communications.
The arrival of the computer and the Internet brought a personal touch to
media communications for the first time and set off the wave of innovation in
interactivity across the other media channels. For the first time, people were
able to control what they saw and were able to choose the information they
wanted to access without it being imposed on them. They were able to make
news and information come to them with the control of the mouse. They
were also able to generate their own content through input and feedback. At
last there was a channel that enabled them to be recognized. They suddenly
counted and mattered. This level of interaction made the contents of the news
more personal and made communications more relevant to them. The arrival
of the mobile phone and its ability to stream data from the Internet as well as
enable input and feedback finally broke down all the boundaries of imper-
sonal communications, and took the control of media communications from
the publishers and media companies to the individual. This third wave of this
control movement is currently being felt through the social web and web 2.0,
platforms existing online where everyone has the ability not only to control
but to influence millions of people around the world through online content.
