Last evening I watched a fairly dull game of football (or soccer, if you like baseball). My team got an away draw so I am quite happy. But this got me to thinking about the impact this new media world I am slowly being dragged into introduced to will have on the world’s favourite source of information and entertainment: television. Being a bit of a follower, where technology is concerned, I did not imagine the tele-media we take for granted was facing such a huge paradigm shift.
“Mainstream media companies will master blogs as an advertising tool and take over vast commercial stretches of the blogosphere. Over the next five years, this could well divide winners and losers in media. And in the process, mainstream media will start to look more and more like -- you guessed it -- blogs.” http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_18/b3931001_mz001.htm
Now from my point of view I have always though of television as the main method of getting information in-front of people, and thought of people who get most of their entertainment and information off the web as a niche audience of slightly quirky people (no offence intended). However, the natural follow through of this article is that we will all get lots of our entertainment and information from blogs or blog-like phenomena such as “MySpace” and “YouTube”.
The article has clearly been borne out to some extent. But I have to admit a time when the majority get their entertainment/information from blogs seems some way off. There is no doubt that this technology is being embraced in a big way. So what is the future for the BBC and ITV? Indeed do they have a future, perhaps that belongs to independent entertainers and programmers.
Given the statement that “social competence lags behind technological capability” I would imagine this is the beginning of the end for television as we know it. But at the same time it must be the start of truly global entertainment as the same programmes will be available on the web all over the world at the same time. The potential impact of which is massive for governments and programmers alike. I am not sure global un-censored television is a good thing.
On the up side, I may be able to watch all my teams games live for 20p a half as Peter suggested the other week – but then will people still go to the ground?
And, as an aside, who will be winning these in the future?
2 comments:
I want to take up your final comment: "On the up side, I may be able to watch all my teams games live for 20p a half as Peter suggested the other week – but then will people still go to the ground?".
Thus, not only is “social competence lag[ging] behind technological capability”, but there is an equally pressing issue as to how technology relates to the society in which it interacts with and contributes to.
It is very easy to set issues such as these up in a grand battle of ‘technology versus society’ – of scientific advances being pitted against social values – as if they are always in diametric opposition, with no room for any middle ground. Sometimes, this might be the case; particularly if one takes a rather absolute moral stance on issues. However, for most of the time, the issue will be significantly less straightforward and what one is searching for is, in fact, some commonsense integration between technology and society.
Because, on many issues, there are no absolutes; the utility or otherwise of technological advances are not pre-determined but will be very much dependent upon the extent to which they are mediated through community involvement and social acceptance.
But what does this actually mean? It is beyond this comment to even begin to scratch the surface of what is an immense and ongoing debate, but there are – I would tentatively suggest – at least four key criteria which should ordinarily be met if technology is to be considered successful. Though ‘success’ in this context is defined in terms of its social acceptance, social acceptance is playing an increasingly important role in determining the commercial viability of such technology.
So what might these criteria be? Simply stated, they are first, that technology should be acceptable to society. Second, that technology should not be incompatible with fundamental social values. Third, that technology should not harm other aspects of society. Fourth, that technology should build upon pre-existing social knowledge.
Whilst I agree with your statement that the utility of technological advances is a huge topic I am not convinced the tests you lay down are universally appropriate.
The first three that technology be compatible with society, acceptable to society and not harm any element of society must carry a caveat around society’s need to develop. Progress invariably means some elements of society are left behind and this may harm society.
The printing press did not help those hard working monks but clearly advanced society. The mechanisation of farming did great harm to rural communities and perhaps more topical the ability to hold vast amounts of individual data may be socially acceptable in the post 9/11 era, but is the loss of liberty acceptable and/or desirable?
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