1. The
web is celebrated as the revolutionary technology that is great leveling of
humanity creating equal opportunity, equal access, and equal potential. However,
there are only a quarter of people on the earth who can use it. How do you explain
the controversial argument here? The
web has the potential to be reached by everyone. Eventually we all may be connected to the web
and it will fulfill its potential.
2. How is Wikipedia the best example to
implement the leveling ideas of the Web rooted in the cultural revolution of
1960s, namely the Libertarianism in the counter culture? How does it explain some
of the digital convergences? Wikipedia enables knowledge to be produced
from the ground up instead of from the top down. Knowledge retrieved from Wikipedia removes
the elitism of knowledge.
3. How does the Web make it possible for
different kinds of digital convergence?
The web is a free and open area making it available for anyone to add
content. This allows for the addition of
different media from many sources.
4. How can the Internet become a challenge for
traditional authority? Use the political landscape changes in some countries to
illustrate your answer. The Arab Spring
would be an example of the internet challenging traditional authority. Another example would be Kenyan blogger Ory
Okolloh creating the site Ushahidi after a contested election. By having this site available to the people
of Kenya they were able to keep a minute by minute tracking of the violent
fallout due to suspected ballot rigging.
Ushahidi was able to out-do the media in terms of coverage of the crisis
and gave people a voice.
5. Do you believe that getting information
free can set us free eventually? Why or Why not? Do you see any concerns of the
complete freedom or self-expression without limit on the Internet? Why or why
not? Access to information is
certainly a wonderful thing and it will open many opportunities for
people. This makes us free to access any
information we choose. The only problem
I can see with self-expression without limit is that sometimes people go
overboard and push the envelope for all of the wrong reasons. It is valuable to be able to have complete freedom,
but some people will abuse that and the affect could be detrimental.
6. In traditional media communication, it has
the “vertical” authority. In the Web communication, it becomes “horizontal?”
How do you explain the change? How does this create the possibility for digital
media convergence? In traditional
media information comes from the top and is disseminated down to the
masses. In web communication the masses
are able to create the content, which is than accessible by anyone. With the expansion of the web people realized
that they could become content creators and tell their side of the story,
instead of listening to what traditional media was telling them. The user created content opens the door for
all kinds of media to be added to the web, this along with the availability of traditional
media has created endless possibility for digital convergence.
7. Why is that the Web is free critical for
the success of the Web itself? How does that clash with the corporate business ideology?
How does that pose challenges for copyright issues at the same time? What will
happen if the Web is not free? The web
needs to be free to continue the horizontal communication and further digital
convergence. Free access to web allows
for anyone to become a part of the web and give or receive any desired content
or information. This obviously clashes
with corporate business ideology because there not making money off of web
access. Corporations would want to
charge fees for all web access, which would further commercialize the web and
detract from its current free state.
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