Bloggers, modern partisan in capitalism

The thriving of Weblogs is rattling conventional media. Media giants such as the three major networks and newspapers have many downsides due to their enormity. The episode concerning Trent Lott is a symbolic example. Bloggers all over the nation exposed Thurmond’s racist past which major media was reluctant to reveal. In a sense, existing media is a part of authority in society. It is inevitable for media giants to be influenced by the government to some degree. New trends of the Internet, including weblogs a variety of people, penetrate the rigid media structure. Bloggers today are, shall we say, a partisan of media world.

Gillmore introduced several interesting cases where bloggers drag up the facts, something that would not have happened before the Internet. The story about the bogus advertisement by Microsoft is a typical one. Staged advertisements like this must were probably very common in the past and went unnoticed. This is because the people who could have exposed sneaky marketing schemes like these simply had no place to make their findings public. Nowadays, corporations committing delusive acts is easily spread through weblogs and BBS.  It is truly a beauty of the Internet era.

Gillmore also points out the drawbacks of this new citizen power. The liberty that allows everyone speaks up, of course, brings up turmoil too. Libel, fake information and fraud will occur some of the time when no one is accountable.  Especially, Gilmore points out, attacks on journalists. As he describes, arguments among people on the Internet are not always productive. Sometimes dialogue exists as only paranoid persoanl hysteria. Gillmore admits that this is a necessary evil in order to retain a healthy Internet democracy. Questions

What will journalist’s roll be when so many insiders are providing valuable information?

To protect people from privacy invasion and libel, do we have to revise the current laws?

There is so much false information on the internet that is created only to make people disconcerted.  Should we or the authorities do something to control them?  Or, should we just overlook them to retain liberty in this new medium?

Draft proposal

New Technologies such as Tivo, and Apple TV, have changed television viewer’s  habits. The viewers no longer have to sit in front of the television set, or to set a timer to record a program on their VCR. Now, viewers can watch any program at anytime. Ten years ago, people had to schedule their time in front of the television if they wanted to watch a popular television series that everyone was talking about because there is no way to watch episodes viewers missed until they came out on DVD after the season was completed. Today, people have many options. For instance, they can watch the first episode of  “Heroes” on NBC’s home page. They can tune into their favorite show at their convenience.   This has changed people’s viewing habits. Kids today can watch television on their PC screen in their bedrooms. There will be no need to zap the remote to search for something interesting. On the other hand, the use of these new devises could be crucial to the future of the traditional television industry.  

Past

:In the 90’s, before the internet and Tivo came into existence, television stations enjoyed a striking level of prosperity because of healthy revenue from the ads. Present:

Present 

Television viewership is at a record low. In April, 2007, NBC set a record for the lowest viewer rating in the past twenty years. This is the least popular season for CBS’s　“Survivor”. The live audience of ABC’s “Lost” has become nearly half. This dramatic decline is attributed to “the habit of watching television”. According to Nielsen research, 17% of homes now use digital video recorders. In the Nielson rating system, they only count live viewer and those 17% with recorders are ignored. The more popular a show is, the higher the advertising fee can be.  

Future:

Television has made profit based on how many people watch a program at its regular time.  That idea is becoming obsolete. What is going to happen? How will the broadcast companies survive with dwindling resources?   What is the point of programming, if people can access any program at anytime? I will research what strategies the three major networks have developed and try to envision the future of the industry. 

* To my peer, I am going to explain to Kathy that I did not post this on time. So do not worry if you did not comment on Tue.  

Reading Reflection 4

Victorian Internet  Victorian Internet is surely a fascinating, thrilling book, about the telegraph that is full of anecdotes that inspired me. It is natural to overlap the turmoil the introduction of telegraph created and that of the dawn of the Internet. Standage says that the telegraph is the origin of the internet. This is a very persuasive conclusion. However, I have to say that he overlooked an important aspect of the Internet. The Internet is a huge memory storage of the intelligence of human beings, while the telegraph was just a way of communication. As Bush insisted, we were in need of organizing and sorting out the vast amount of information accumulated since the beginning of the civilization. In a sense, the internet accomplished this necessity. We already witnessed firsthand the world Bush predicted, when we tried to search citations for this class.  We can access an enormous quantity of data on hand. The internet is an infinite extension of human brain.    
Moore’s law
Christensen insists that the semi-conductor market overshooting started when the Pentium 4 was put on the market. I am still satisfied with the performance of Pentium-4 for net-surfing and Emailing even.though Intel developed Pentium D. The driving force of today’s technology is rather a result of aimless, self-directive research and engineers’ egos to accomplish the advancing technology, rather than a reflection of the people’s demand. Questions: 1,   Which version of CPU made you think it is an overshoot?
2,   How much of Bush’s vision has been accomplished today?
3,  Is there anything you are dissatisfied with today’s internet? Do you think technology    

advancement will solve it?

Reading reflection for week 3

I think that Rheingold’s 10 points are, in a sense, an interpretation of Christensen’s theory. Rheingold insists that the advantages and
disadvantages of new technologies are never distributed evenly among the population. Christensen explains this in more detailed way. 

Let’s take the early stage of the cellular phone market for example. When the “new market disruptive innovations” were introduced, those who were not satisfied with then popular car phones, high-end business people, jumped at using the cellular phone. In Christensen’s terminology, high-end businessmen are categorized as “undershot consumers”. They were those involved in business where quick communication is critical, such as media and financial businesses. Also, those high end businessmen mostly benefited by utilizing the mobile technology in the early stage, by making an immediate contact to stock brokers, or by sending a report from the scene.

Then, mobile phones spread to the “overshot customers”. Their motivation to acquire Cellular phones was rather more passive than that of people who adopted them in the initial stage. The overshot customer’s motive was mainly to catch up with the recent business or their social environment. Possessing the mobile phones was no longer a great advantage at this point in terms of business. I guess most of us, including myself, bought one at this phase.

There are still a large number of “non consumers” out there. So far, they have not been in need of the mobile environment.  They are mostly elders and impoverished people. For some of them, the propagation of mobile oriented services makes them lag behind in some aspects, such as doing business and subscribing to social services. Rheingold’s first point can be applied to this situation. “All technological change is a Faustian bargain.”

What types of non-market factors block innovation in today’s digital media environment?  The government is the biggest factor that can be a block of the market. Industry standard might come second. A couple of years ago, when I interviewed an executive of Fujitsu, he said the company was going to abandon the proprietary projects and focus on the world standard. I guess this is a right decision in terms of managing a company, but it hinders advancements of the products.
My questions are:

1, If Rheingold’s point number 1 is true, who will suffer most from today’s mobile technology? and how?

2, Who are Undershot customers in today’s mobile scene? And what function,
spec, or mobile environment are they looking for?

3, Through the U&G research, what is the most important factor for a site to
attract audiences? I made audience to plural. Is it correct? 

Term paper citation

Rappaport S(2007). Lessons from Online Practice: New advertising Models

Journal of Advertising Research. New York, 47(2) P138

Retrieved October 10,2007 from ABI/INFORM Database.

(Document ID 1288640541)

This article examines the latest situation of Tivo and its advertisement strategy. This will help me provide the basic idea of Tivo business model.

Week 2 Journal

First of all, I must confess that the reading of Winston was really painful. His article is full of academic terms which I am not used to seeing.  Yet, I tried to decipher the article and found some interesting points.

In his article, Winston insists that if prototypes are to be accepted in and spread to society they should fill the needs that a supervening necessity has created. In chapter 1 he refers to an episode where the first electrical telegraph system was denied by French government.  I knew this story beforehand and thought that this had taken place because of a lack of imagination which bureaucracy often falls into. However, now it is clear that the reason why this revolutionary invention was turned down was simply because Semaphores adopted by the French army at that time was much superior and more reliable.

Also, it is very interesting that when Alexander Graham Bell applied for a patent for his invention he did not have any vision of how it would be utilized.  I guess people at that time, including Bell, simply had no notion of wireless communication.  In Winston’s words, lots of subsequent “Ideation” by many brilliant inventors brought enormous inventions to realization. That reminds me of the dawn of the Internet when the term “multimedia” came up: most people did not know what the word really meant.

The article from The Economist is very interesting too.  In that, the author predicted that Skype would take over conventional phones in 5 years.  Now, three years after the article was written, Skype is still distant from dominating the market. One of the reasons, I think, is because Skype is a closed community and allows free calls only between its members. If people put their priority more on making random phone calls to whoever has a phone number, Skype does not meet the social necessity. On the other hand, since telephone fares are held relatively low, supervening necessity for free phone is not yet strong enough. However, I think, VOIP will definitely dominate the market.

*My question is, what is the best strategy for VOIP to dominate the market?

*What is the advantage of traditional telephony? Compared to VOIP?

*Is there any disruptive technology? Other than VOIP?