The Mass Media and the Public Sphere

Video Clip: http://youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

This video clip produced by a professor at Kansas State University highlights the coming issues and controversies that may confront us as a result of Web 2.0, possibly sooner than we expect. From what I got, the video clip basically argues that the “machine” is either us, using us, or both. In making this argument, one must acknowledge the creative use of various typing techniques, video editing and recording, and innovative use of texts, windows, and nearly everything related to web-browsing. Well presented, the clip states controversially that as consumers and users of the Internet, we may be consumed by it and possibly controlled. Throughout the clip, it is already scary how quickly images can be made to change. Already from the beginning, the contrast between the written words and the typed words and the speed with which the words are typed as opposed to speed of being written by hand highlights the ever-changing, nearly unpredictably frenetic pace of the change of the Internet and essentially everything on it, including news, blogs, forums, most popular searches, and all information and content available.

In what I felt to be a key part of the video, the part in which the user clicks the screen, opens the code, and modifies it, one begins to understand the magnitude of not only how easy it is to make changes on that level, but how easy it is for anyone to make any sort of changes quickly, easily, and from the looks of it, at their convenience. The pros to this are that participatory culture may become larger and more popular and possibly even replace aspects of traditional culture, including traditional forms of media and communication, such as television, radio, and possibly in the distant future, phones. This new or increasingly popular development has the potential to jumpstart a revolution.

In the last section of the video, words such as privacy, family, and ethics pass by quickly, implying that the meanings and use of these words may change, along with the meaning we have traditionally meant for them to mean. These flashing words only cause questions; for example, what will happen to not only these words, but all words in the future? As words are interconnected and have the potential to change, what will change first, the definition of the word of the actual object or idea the word has come to embody itself? Though these questions may currently seem far-fetched, with the current rapid pace of technological change in invention, the answers to these questions and the issues they relate to may only become even more complex.