Slashdot Mirror
The Commercialization Of the Internet
YorickFinn writes "Common Dreams recently posted an article by Norman Solomon on "Denial and the Ravaging of Cyberspace." In short, Solomon argues that the commonly held view of the net as the last bastion of truly democratic mass communication is, in fact, a myth. For instance, he points out that "Websites operated by just four corporations account for 50.4 percent of the time that U.S. users of the Web are now spending online...." Ultimately, Solomon claims that the net may become more like "interactive digital TV," with the decline in the use of browsers and the increasing prominence of technology such as MTV.(The "M" is for Microsoft, formerly WebTV.) All told, his forecast is somewhat bleak, but not entirely unfounded. Worth the read."
While most people might spend most of their time on commercial sites, that doesn't mean everyone does. It also doen't mean that they are forced to. If a user feels like spending his time on commercial sites, it isn't my problem.
The whole point of the internet (ok theres not really one point to the internet) is to ALLOW everyone to be able to have their own sites or visit the sites they want. This doesn't mean that everyone should be forced to go to the "underground" sites. If someone wants to go to a sanitized news source, that does not hurt me in any way. I've never understood the problem with letting people use the internet how they want. There will always be an "underground" on the net for people who want to go there.
80% of the wealth is controled by 10% of the population. If we have 50% of the web controled by 1% of the population, that's a little bit better in some respects.
The thing that scares me is that we have so many opinion sites that are advocating new products and they arn't revealing their affilations. A good example is Tom's Hardware. And while this is a guy who had a bias from the start (and the bias isn't that bad), what happens when we have only a few media companies and everything is spawn by them? You might read some reviews on yahoo, unable to know they are owned by the company that is releasing the products. And while not directly lying about what's good and bad, they might put the 'good' reviews of their own products closer to the top.
Eventually, you'll have things like "AT&T would like you to get 3 months of free cable modem service, but only if you go see the great movie 'Plotless'!" The ideas of cross promotions are only just starting to be explored on the internet. Or imagine that search engines tend to exclude items. It just goes down hill from there.
This is why grassroots sites will always be helpful, until places start astroturfing. The question is, where does slashdot fall in this range?
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
The net has always had an access cost -- you had to have a machine, you had to have a connection. In the "ideal" net of late 80's and early 90's, it wasn't necessarily more democratic. Only people with computers and net connections had access.
With commercialization came lower costs and greater access. So while the proportion of content has become less democratic, the number of people who have been given the opportunity to access it has become more.
No, it's not the wacky little connection of home grown websites that it used to be, but it's not necessarily a bad thing that more people have been given access either.
The Internet doesn't need to be 100% free of corporations to be "the last bastion". People still spend 49.6% of their time at sites not run by the 4 biggest corporations. When that number drops to zero, it will be dead. Until then, it's mixed.
4 corporations account for 50.4% of web traffic.. sounds like 50.4% of web users 'vote' for those sites with their usage. That doesnt mean those are the best websites, or the most worthy of their attention, just that most people use them. I guess that has some vague notion of democracy.
however-
democracy != freedom
As long as we're free to go to whatever websites we want to, and free to communicate with whoever we want to, the web will be free. It doesnt matter if one website gets 99.9% of all web traffic (democracy in action there) as long as the other 0.1% can look at something else.
Democracy is about majority rule. Freedom is about no one, not even a majority, having the right to tell one what to do.
So, sometimes freedom and democracy overlap, and sometimes they collide.
-J5K
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
Ok, let me get this straight; the internet is democratic mass communication only if everybody picks the "right" web sites?
There's no chance at all that the reason 50% of people's time is spent on web sites belonging to four companies is because those four companies are providing a service that Americans feel is worth spending 50% of their time reading?
Freedom of choice means freedom to make bad choices, and freedom of the press includes freedom to print crap.
The fact that more than half of internet time is at the top four companies sites doesn't have anything to do with free speach. That's like saying Americans lack a basic freedom to live where they want because most people live in big cities. The only important issue is can I publish any ideas or beliefs that I want. From what I can tell I can on the net easier than I can any other way. Whether or not my views capture the interest of anyone else is a different issue.
So what? The volme of commercial traffic probably funds most of the development of road infrastructure (including gas stations, insurance companies, snow removal, etc., etc....).
As long as that "commercial" traffic doesn't prevent me from making use of the roads for whatever purpose I see fit (like going for a drive on the country, or going out for a spin on my bicycle), then I can't see how that hurts me.
(True, the Internet isn't what it used to be, but I don't see that the original ideals of free, global communication have gone away... if you take the time to look for them. The "unwashed masses" may still be duped by the forces of commercialism, but that will always be true. The Internet isn't going to "Save the World" any more than any other technology is.)
Your Servant, B. Baggins
I don't even know where I'd begin to try to launch a niche TV station. But I know it'd cost a hell of a lot more.
The "democratizing" impact of hte Internet is the very low entry barrier. It's not about where most people spend there time. Most people only watch four TV stations; we don't realy care about them.
What we care about is that even though 99% of the people may not give two shits about some topic or other, that 1% will still have a presence. That's what matters! The information will be there, with little regard for your desire for it to be there.
Carl G. Jung
--
"With one breath, with one flow, You will know Synchronicity" -La Policia
What on earth does AOL/Time Warner do that's 32% of the Internet? I visit CNN occasionally, but as far as I know that's about it for me and AOL/TW.
I suppose AOL users spend quite a bit of time at AOL/TW sites, and since they represent such a large percentage of Internet users, that skews the figures. But that's hardly fair to the rest of the net, since AOL itself is dedicated to giving people an experience that sticks with their services.
If you consider the argument that AOL users are AOL users first and Internet users second, the picture starts looking a lot less bleak, with Microsoft at 7.5% and Yahoo at 7.2%. The fourth company must have such pathetic market share they don't even tell us who it is! But we can tell - the total is 50.4%, so subtracting out AOL, MS and Yahoo we get a titanic 3.4% for number four, whoever it is.
This hardly strikes me as a good case for massive concentration, and certainly it doesn't show how Slashdotters use the net. It is true that I explore new sites just for the fun of it a great deal less than I did before, and I concentrate on specific sites I already know. But every query I type into a search engine exposes me to new places, and Slashdot does the same, and some of those will wind up in my mental list of cool sites to visit.
So the situation is not so bleak. The fellow who wrote this, however well-intentioned, has blinders on. He starts with the idea that anything controlled by private business is bad, and inevitably comes up with the same conclusions writers on the left always do.
He forgets about millions of personal home pages, including my own, whose owners develop an expertise on various issues they are happy to share. He forgets about community sites such as Slashdot, where people speak freely about what matters to them, and help evolve an uncontrolled consensus. The soul of the net is still alive and well.
Any mass medium develops a large variety of users. Some of those users are passive, others are active, as many of us are here. In the end, though, that's a choice made by each of us individually. And the mindless drones are drawn to heavily advertised sites, but that surely doesn't mean the sky is falling; if they weren't here, they'd probably be watching TV, which makes viewing any web site look like an intellectual exercise.
D
So all those pr0n sites are really just 4 companies? Weird.
Wait a minute -- on the one hand, the net is horrible because people can distribute copyrighted material, and on the other hand the net is horrible because big corporations control everything?
I think the 50% stat is a little misleading. People spend a lot of time using free web applicaitons that sites like MSN and Yahoo give them. But should a person's time on Hotmail really be counted as the same sort of thing as a person's time reading the NY Times? If AOL forces its users to hit their page first, how does that compare to a site like this one (/.), where people choose to view it?
The Drudge Report is a good example of what the net can do. It's one guy with a massive audience. Andrew Sullivan's site is another example of a single guy with a big audience. I think sites like Indy Media have big audiences as well. Even if they don't, when compared to Time/Warner/AOL, it's an enormously powerful tool for getting the word out.
I think there's a parallel here to Linux vs. MS. People started businesses, everyone started talking about "world domination" and all of a sudden Linux is failing if it can't compete on MS's home court, the corporate world. But that's not the way Linux started -- it was a great way to learn, it was something that allowed everyone to participate. It's still great for that stuff, and it always will be.
Debian can't be killed, it will probably go on for decades. Seriously -- what possible scenario could you think of that would cause it stop existing? Why isn't that the relevant fact, instead of the VA Linux stock price?
Alternative media don't have to compete with commercial media to succeed. They just have to survive and provide high quality information. The net makes that possible, and it's going to continue to make that possible. And the net's going to make sure that almost every family in America, and in most of the industrialized world, is going to have access to that information.
Sure, most people aren't going to bother with it. But what did anyone expect? That the net would change human nature? Most people don't care. But a lot of people are going to take the trouble. They already do. And those people can make a difference.
Don't you want a fast pipe to the internet? Well sign up here. OK, now that we have you, we've noticed that while a vast majority of you are happily hitting our cache of MSN, AOL, etc. there are some of you RUNNING SERVERS, using bandwidth, connecting to IRC, etc. Please stop that; we'll artificially limit your upstream speed to discourage that non-consumer activity. Oh, and we've decided to get rid of the Usenet newgroups that take up too much bandwidth, since the vast majority don't use them anyway. Oh, and your emails are getting lost but you should only be using @Home email for 'recreational purposes'.
And "go back to dialup" is NOT the answer.
We must be vigilant that the regular actions of the vast majority don't become the de facto standard and remove the abilities and freedoms we've come to know as the internet.
m00.
I remember checking my email and not a single solicited message, not one! I mean what fun's email if the only email you get is the stuff you want. Without junk mail, I'd have never got my University diploma, and would still be an uneducated idiot in a low paying job.
Seriously, I think we should discuss how ADVERTISING now owns the internet. Corporate control has definately become a problem as it has removed information to the internet and replaced it with sensation. Advertising has removed convenience and taste from the Internet and turned it into a cesspool of free porn and useless products (Internet tupperware).
I compare the Internet to a Lord of the Flies situation. Let them be animals and they will be animals. If Americans weren't so blindly protective of "Free Speech", we could regulate it like other information mediums and return to an Internet with CONTENT!
With the web, all you need is a $1000 computer, $20/month and a free-hosting site to publish.
I really don't care all that much that a significant fraction of the web is controlled by a tiny fraction of aggolmerations, as long as (1) the cost to publish remains as low as it is and (2) there are no barriers to prevent one from obtaining any outside of the agglomerates. (1) is pretty much going to remain as it is, but (2) may be questionable, with the suggestion that AOL-TW could effectively wall their garden in both directions, possibly allowing their members to only see sites they control, or prevent non-members to see their sites.
As long as the infomation is unwalled, people will visit a off-beat site if they believe the information is good. There are, for example, game review sites that have no corporate backing and are only in it for the fun, not the advertizing dollars, and their reviews are much less biased than one can read on the corporate review sites. Heck, USENET to some extent serves this same purpose.
So while agglomeration of content owners is somewhat distrubing, it's not a concern until they wall off their garden, at which point the barrier to web publishing goes up, and the death of the web would then be imminent.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Yes, once again we have a report that the net is dead, companies are taking over, we've all lost, etc. I've heard this in one form or another for about three years.
Guess what? It's not dead, it's changing. Everything changes. Did people think that companies would NOT see the massive opportunity? Of course not. Look above you - as I type I see a banner add.
So, it's changing. Everthing changes. The question is what are we going to do if we don't like it?
If you don't like it do something about it. Change it sneakily. Change it cleverly. Go down fighting at least and show some dignity.
The future is for those that will make something of it. Just showing up doesn't count.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
"Search engine optimization is the number one strategy for generating qualified traffic to your site," said a recent sales pitch offering prominence in search-engine listings."Eighty-five percent of all traffic is generated via search queries and over 90 percent of that traffic is driven to the top 30 results. If you're not in the top 30, you're not in a position to compete!"
The dot-com flameouts have sped up the Net's commercialization -- as quests for cash-flow, market share and multimedia synergy become more voracious.
The underlying assumption shared above is that traffic is important. The market moron is looking for profit. Sollomon seems to agree with WSJ analyist who state that "severe market dominance" is possible. Who cares?
Traffic is not important, access and control are. As long as you and I can serve freely, the old internet will continue to grow. People who bother to look will find it. New search engines will be made when old ones suck. The only thing that can kill the web as we know it are the companies who would own the physical media itself, and change it's standards to resemble broadcast toll roads.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I had to take a second look at this one...even MS isn't thickheaded enough to challenge MTV (Music Television) in a head-to-head trademark war. Even MSN TV may be too close for comfort for MTV. This trademark issue might become interesting - especially if MSN starts streaming music videos.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Am I correct in understanding that among that 50.4% are sites like Yahoo's Geocities and AOL personal pages? Which is to say, the sites are hosted by Yahoo and AOL, but the actual content is put there by individuals.
If that's so, then I'm not overly concerned at the moment. It's like saying that there's no free press because 90% of the paper in the US is manufactured by three corporations.
Okay, it's not exactly the same, because paper companies don't require you to agree not to print porn on their paper and they don't sell ads on letters to your grandma. But I think there's a wide difference between 50.4% of the sites being hosted by a few corporations, and 50.4% of the content being generated by those corporations.
If you don't want my koalas, baby, don't shake my eucalyptus tree.
It is nice article. Passage about search
engines reminded me that google started
inserting "Sponsored Link". I feel it is beginning
of demise. I stopped using Altavista when they started doing that. Time to look for new
search engine...
my favorite ""The most heavily trafficked sites are overwhelmingly devoted to commercial activities in one form or another, such as online shopping, financial services, investment, corporate-screened entertainment, travel deals and market research. ""
Any more commas and he would have covered 99% of what you can DO on the internet.
The internet has been sold as a means of buying stuff and finding information. It is pretty obvious to those who think for themselves that corporations are much better at selling themselves than individuals are. Nearly everyday I see the three companies he wrote about being mentioned in one form or another on different mediums. It is very hard to compete with entities that people encounter on the web, radio, tv, and print.
Is that bad? No, because as we have seen, no amount of advertising keeps a bad company on the net for long. People will go where they feel is suitable for their needs.
As for 50%+ of people's time being spent on only certain sites, I would like to see what constitutes "time spent". Are we refering to time actually using the resource of the site, or including idle time or just passing through time.
Last. People here and in the tech fields love to over estimate the intelligence and willingness of the common web surfer. Most would never know how to search, let alone where unless they were taken by the hand. Same goes for shopping, after all if its on AOL it must be safe! (ask my Grandmother why she shops where she does, and I have other relatives who are convinced QVC is the place - and why? BECAUSE)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The reason big companies can have so much web traffic is pretty obvious: they have the money to pay for the bandwidth.
It's easy enough to put up a web site off your DSL link or what have you, but once you get some serious traffic, such as the well-known slashdot effect, boom no one can get to your site any more. This is why no private individual that's not independently wealthy could ever try to compete toe-to-toe with cnn.com, say.
But that's not necessary. Very few people, with the exception of Matt Drudge of the self-named Drudge Report, want to compete with CNN. And it's much easier to compete on the web than it is in TV markets-- anyone can put up a web site overnight, but good luck starting a cable channel and getting cable TV carriers to carry it. The independent web is alive and well, and any talk of the death of it is greatly exaggerated.
The only thing that could possibly kill the web is control of the browser, which would be Microsoft. And you know that AOL-Time-Warner will fight them tooth and nail on that. Now if those two ever merge, then we should all be Very Very Afraid.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
I compare the Internet to a Lord of the Flies situation. Let them be animals and they will be animals. If Americans weren't so blindly protective of "Free Speech", we could regulate it like other information mediums and return to an Internet with CONTENT!
I disagree. Were the US to repeal it's first amendment rights, and regulate speech, who would get the shit end of the stick? The answer is the same people who get the shaft by Congress now. The American people. Corporations make a nice "campaign contribution" and buy whatever laws they want (DMCA, UCITA, etc...) -- whereas the average citizen doesn't have that kind of influence. Who is the Congressman going to side with? The side giving him the cookie, of course. THe only "cookie" his constituents can give him individually is their one vote - which in the grand scheme of things is pretty worthless, seeing as the media conveniently splits things into a 2 party system (forcing 3rd parties out of the picture) and promiting two people who probably aren't really the best ones for the job - but of course, noone knows that because those are the only two choices presented to them before they get to the voting booth. Once there, the see a long list of names -- most of which they've never heard about before (thanks media!) so of *course* they're not going to vote for them.
If Free Speech is regulated, it's not the corporations that will be silenced, and their content removed -- it's the independant sites who will be squelched - because they don't give nice cookies like the X10 people do.
The Wall Street Journal tilts toward the delusional on its ideology-laden editorial pages...
You've just got to love the irony of it.
See this? It's the smallest violin in the world, playing for the loss of the once ubiquitous "Hamster Dance" faction of the Internet.
The one real draw of the internet, the low cost of entry, still is true. You are still free to go and make your own sites, just go ahead and do it. Just don't blame people for not visiting it if it isn't interesting...
(On a slightly different note, did anyone notice that the "top 4" companies were all portals? Maybe people's web browsers have set those sites as thier home page, and they get a "free" hit every time the browser loads up.)
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
The adverts do bother me. It's up to us to make sites that suck less, and put those stupid bloated carcase sites like doubleclick out of business. If 50% of web traffic is going to those stupid sites, 49.9% of web traffic must be adverts.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
One is noting but a bunch of corporate whores, selling themselves out for just a little bit more power over its consumers, trying to claim status as a cultural icon and a driving force in Western societies and economies, while the other is operated by Microsoft.
We act like what is happening now is the final word for the Net. It's not even close -- someone just invented the horseless carriage, and we're really concerned because a couple of big companies have started making them.
Yes, those companies could be Ford and GM, but they also could be nobodies. We have only just begun; the technology is very young and very immature, and so are just about all the internet's users.
Don't worry yet. Worry in about 25 years.
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
If 50% of web time is to these sites, 49.9% of web traffic is adverts. That's bad. Getting those adverts from just a few overloaded sites is worse. My wife was wondering why certian suck sites took forever to load. It took me a while to figure out that the advert loading was the problem. She now surfs with images turned off. MSIE is an evil thing that will not let the user do that.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
80% of the wealth is controled by 10% of the population.
And 80% of the skill is possessed by 10% of the hackers. Why is this a problem?
Most of the wealthiest people in the US are also on the list of the highest income EARNERS. The rest got their wealth mostly because somebody earned it, then left it to them in his will.
Is it a bad thing if some folks work hard and successfully? Is it a bad thing if a man leaves his possessions to his kids when he dies?
The question is, where does slashdot fall in this range?
:)
Well, in my bookmarks it falls right between Sex Maniac and StileProject.
Now what does THAT say about the Internet, hmmmmm?
Its just because all the mainstream average everday people from real life have started using the Internet. Most of what these sort of people want to use the internet for can be easiest found on those 4 web sites.
All the techies and other people who use the internet for other stuff besides shopping and chatting still make use of a wide variety of sites and publish a wide variety of stuff just like they always have.
The stats are just skewed by the influx of lots of Joe Smiths.
One of the first things that jumps out at me after reading the article (try it sometime, it adds a new perspective to posting) was the comment about the 50% of the time being spent on four big commercial websites. Maybe this will be seemed as a troll, but quite possibly couldn't a lot of this time be credited to those folks that live and die in the chatrooms?
Also, he seems to be missing one important fact: online banner advertising is failing miserably. Click-through numbers are painfully low, pay rates are even lower (if the web admin gets paid at all), and banner companies are dropping like flies. And X10 is making more enemies than friends with their pop-under ads.
There will always be a large segment of society which will stick with what they feel is safe on the Internet and stay within the confines of the major providers. What makes the Internet truly great is the ability to get information out to the masses in a matter of hours when it used to take days, if not weeks.
I'm not as annoyed by those at most people; it's a lot better than the pop OVER ads I've seen. All I need to do is close the silly thing.
For what it's worth, I saw it at Fry's. Picture quality is beyond awful - you'd might as well be watching random video noise for all the good it does you.
Someone reviewed it and noted that they didn't like it but their 8-year old kid loved being able to watch fuzzy, out of focus, noisy images and would stare at it for hours. So perhaps it's not entirely useless, but I fear it's hardly competition for my Canon XL1.
Their home automation products are plasticky but do work, although sadly the built-in light dimming, which I had high hopes for, was not very effective. But for controlling hard to reach light fixtures, it's realistically hard to beat. From what I understand, the products that do it right (non-plasticky quality, nice dimming, etc) cost thousands of dollars.
D
The problem is that at the entry level you can put up a web site very cheaply ($10/month or less) On the other hand if you want to have interesting content you do need to spend time or money to create it. Yes for 1 hr of work and $10 a month I can put up a web site. But to have a large complex site costs money. Or someone being dedicated and doing it as a hobby. I've seen good and bad sites in both catagories.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
I think that's the point, and the flaw in the reasoning of the article. Just because the site is hosted by AOL doesn't mean AOL controls the content (although they probably exercise censorship in the form of "community standards").
So where do you draw the line? Just because a site is hosted by, or owned by, a mega-corp does not necessarily mean they control the content.CNN runs negative stories about AOL or Time-Warner, MSNBC runs negative stories about Microsoft, etc. I think the situation is a lot muddier than it appears.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
IMHO, based on my observations of the "average" internet user (ie, my in-laws), here are the "forces" that result in that traffic statistic:
* Many think AOL == WWW == Internet, so they only are aware of 1% of what's available. Someone will come up to me and ask "where's store X or how do I spell Y or how do I find out more about Z" and in 30 sec. I find it for them (mapquest.com, m-w.com, google.com). You then hear "wow, how did you do that dude?" If AOL doesn't lead them by the nose or if they don't hear about the site on TV, they will not find it. For example, my in-laws ALWAYS go to yahoo.com to find things (heard it from someone on TV), which may not be the best way to find something (it's one tool of many). Most people just don't know any better.
* Most people I know want to be passively entertained (except for AIM). It NEVER dawns on them that THEY can set up a web page! A lot of people I know have digital cameras, but they always send me one or two pictures by email. They can set up a web page and put ALL their pictures for ALL to see at once (http://balder.prohosting.com/~jkb0859/vacation.ht ml). My kid's teacher is blown away when I take pictures of the school's artwork and whip out a web page on it and kid's relatives from Australia see them.
* As everyone knows, it's not exactly easy to find things on the WWW, even with the search engines available. You need a different skill set (mind set) to "dig" for the information, as opposed to having it shoved in front of your face or having a comprehensive index. For most people I know, that means they just don't do it. My in-laws or wife would rather just ask me to find it than do it themselves.
Because of the lack of education (let's face it, not everyone wants to just sit there and explore or dig for things by themselves) and lack of easy to use tools, it's no wonder that most are going to a few sites. The fact that these sites are run by corporations is probably due to exposure by TV (news) or other popular media
50% is pretty low. Think about TV or Radio - in any given region for the top 4 networks to have only 50% of the audience leaves a hell of a lot for the others to pick up.
Most people don't surf small sites because most people don't have the need - people are sheep - small sites that satisfy the sheep become big sites and get bought by the big 4. That doesn't mean that the other small sites that just satisfy the few don't still exist - its just that they'll never figure in this kind of article individually.
In publishing some of the most successful and profitable magazines are tiny circulation niche journals run by a couple of people for a few thousand or tens of thousand readers. As these move online, if peope continue to PAY to see them, you'll get more and more of them as costs drop. They may pick up a few readers, but they are niche interest and so have a limited audience - doesn't stop them being profitable - true democracy! MARKET democracy!
I disagree with this view provided the barriers to entry on internet remain low. What I mean by this is that internet and the associated freedom of speech really took off because there was very little preventing anyone off the street from posting a page, an idea, or a thought. This allowed ideas (good and bad) to all have equal footing which is necessarily a Good Thing. (You have to have access to bad ideas to be able to see them for such.)
While 50% of web content may be owned by a few big corporations, there's still very little barring the average Joe throwing a race relations thesis online for others to comment on. While it may not get tonnes of traffic there has been no barrier to the free flow of information. So long as these barriers remain low, internet will remain Free. (You may not *like* the corporate sites, but they have as much right to existence as Joe's thesis.)
Things that could put this freedom at risk include rising web hosting costs that could potentially limit sites to only wealthy commercial ventures. ISP's that pull content at the slightest complaint are another risk. Content filters, especially politically-motivated ones are another risk (ie - Country-specific content banning). Even the spiralling complexity of markup languages and browsers could make it cost prohibitive to publish content. Not to mention proprietary extensions!
I don't think any of these possibilities have really hit us yet and the web is still quite free. After all, think of how easy it was for me to fill this space with my opinion! However these are the things that we need to watch most closely. As long as there remains simple means to share information (the new, ripped Britney Spears CD probably doesn't count!) on the web I think we remain free.
The only major hole in your argument is the assertion that the 3rd parties are forced out due to media capitalization on a 2 party system.
This simply isn't the case. The U.S. government was designed to be a 2 party system intentionally. The only way for a 3rd party to succeed, is for it to take the place of the dominant 2nd party. The reasoning behind this makes sense.
That said, it is true that media and corporate propaganda shape the minds of the constituency. You can hardly blame the media, though. It is the American people who have lost their vigilance, and are willing to swallow what they are fed.
How have you deduced this?
I believe that George Washington adamantly opposed the political parties, considering them to be a wedge that split democracy.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
One glorious day in the not too distant future I imagine that the mother of all bullshit-detectors will be born (oh, and it'll be "p2p networked" too--buzzbuzzbuzz. :-)
When a SlimyCorp(tm) or SlimyHuman(tm) attempts to pull the wool over your eyes -- and trustworthy sources have validated the stench of the BS -- a seemlessly integrated klaxon alarm will sound to notify the ignorant of the scam and offer up the 'truth' instead.
A few examples that would trigger The Bullshit Alarm(tm):
- When MSNBC downplays yet another "email virus" that only affects MS Outlook.
- When a karma whore gets moderated to +5 with opinion presented as fact.
- 99.9999999% of the time that the word "FREE" is used in any context (eventually people will learn and can disable this filter.)
- Anytime someone tries to sell you overpriced crap that you can buy cheaper from a less greedy merchant.
- When a search engine sellout boosts paid listings, but doesn't mark them as such, the BS detector will cover the culprits in shit for you.
- When a retail store announces a yet another sale, but shoppers failed to notice that prices had predictably inched upward for the past few weeks leading up to it.
- When Yet-Another-Diet-Pill-Scam begins to rev up it's marketing campaign. (input fewer calories/output more energy.)
- When a politican speaks.
- When a lawyer speaks.
- ...........When Krusty the Clown impersonates George Carlin...badly.
- When Austrailia claims that The BullShit Detector(tm) is liable for defamation..
- Too much other bullshit to list...
I didn't mean to go on and on like that. The simple point is to network experts, insider knowledge and uncommon-common-sense so that it's not as easy for reptiles to exploit the uninformed as it once was.(preemptive postscript: this whole post is bullshit -- ignorance is bliss -- mindless consumerism and entertainment-as-news is good for the economy!)
Power to the Peaceful
The masses are spoon-fed by corporations, and individuals looking for a voice or something different will seek and find it.
This is just like music, where 99.9% of the music out there is pushed by majors, paid off by song promoters, and bribed onto radio stations that play the same song over and over. You want Alejandro or the Vigilantes of Love? Too damn bad, right? No...you just have to look, listen, and use word of mouth to do an end-run around the business.
Why should web content be any different? Feed the masses, but leave the interesting underground sites and URL's. I'm smart, I'll find them, and I won't need an interactive portal with them.
RB
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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
I knew when I stated that Americans are blindly protective of Free Speech that I would be met with controversy (I was even outright called a moron by one of the replies). I am a Canadian, and in Canada, information mediums are (rather heavily) regulated.
In Canada, if I wanted to advertise a tiny camera that fits anywhere, so to imply I can use it for voyerism, on any medium, it would not be allowed. The CRTC monitors all forms of advertisement for taste and offensiveness. At times this can be invasive, but for the most part, it protects children and keeps broadcasting tasteful.
This is the regulation I am talking about. Does it violate Free Speech, perhaps (Free Speech is a very loose term). Am I a civil libertarian? No. Freedom comes with responsibilities, and if these mediums are not regulated, they are invaded by people purpotrating and penetrating it with tasteless junk. Ever browsed Slashdot at -1, I think this proves it.
The fear of corporate involvement is true now, but if you voted a president who can count to ten next time, maybe he'd have some political will.
As long as corporate control of large chunks of the net doesn't impact my own ability to both share and obtain unpopular information, I don't especially care about it. I'm far more worried about (e.g.) the potential for single-chokepoint content controls when there are only a half-dozen giant ISPs left.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
The key difference between the Internet and traditional mass media is that the Internet is not of fixed size. I can find (or create!) a site that caters to a small set of people, and offers them information and resources that they won't find easily in other mass media.
A perfect example: my new favourite web site, Equipped to Survive is the personal page of a guy who's done a lot of research on wilderness survival, particularly for pilots in remote areas. He has detailed essays on what makes a good survival kit, general emergency preparedness topics, and reviews on everything from Leatherman-type multitools to large inflatable life-rafts. The site design isn't flashy and polished, but it's extremely well-organized and well-written.
So the mass media outlets still do what they do best: sell sizzle to the masses. That doesn't make it any harder for me to find the REAL gems of the Internet: people scratching their own personal informational itches, and sharing the fruits of their learning with others.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
If you're an average joe/jane user and just wants to 'surf the web' with your new Dell and Cable modem but don't really know what you want, then sure, there are thousands of marketeers and mousekateers ready to take you by the hand and lead you to their store and tell you what to buy and how to be with the 'in' crowd and their fashion leaders.
On the other hand, if you know what you want, say, for example, a spec sheet for a 2N304 dual-gate mosfet UHF mixer transistor, a modern substitute number, and place a web order for 2 to be delivered in 3 days, then you can easily cut thru the crap, pop-ups, and freebies and find them, place your order, and get your parts, Bada-bing, bada-bang, bada-boom.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
No, we ban the advertisement for the cameras that obviously imply they are to be used for voyeurism. Showing a sexy girl and mentioning that you can hide this thing anywhere is directly implying that, and it is a quite inappropriate suggestion. The camera itself is not, and should not be illegal, simply advertising a product based on its illegal applications is, anymore then advertising a CD burner or internet connection on the basis that you'll never have to pay for music again.
If the advertisement is tasteful, then they can advertise all they want.
Certainly there were many ideas during the formation of the U.S. government.
What happens if you have 13 colonies and they each have their own political views and agendas?
Supposing each one has its own candidate - popular democracy suggests that the candidate with the most votes prevails. When a vote is split between more than two entities, there is a greater possibility that the majority submits to the minority. Even though one entity received the most votes, chances are the number of votes in that category still represents a substantial minority of the whole.
Hence the electoral college. The intent is to force the issues to the center, appealing to the largest number of people possible. When you only have two choices, there is no chance that a minority will get in power. The Constitution guarantees this "republican" form of government. Thus, it is not a true democracy.
Now, the original poster had pointed out that public perception of the issues is tainted by corporate agendas. This could be a reason why the smaller parties have not replaced the dominant Republicans and Democrats.
For example, I am personally incensed at the terrible DMCA legislation. The DMCA is an issue to me because of my background. The general public couldn't care less, so it isn't important to them if their candidate supports it or opposes it. Why doesn't the public care?
Well, I can go berating the system because I am enlightened about certain issues that the public is blind to, or I can realize that I represent a minority and that my government isn't optimized to satisfy my ideals.
The solution to good legislation isn't only to inform your elected officials, but to also inform your neighbors and friends. Their voices count more than yours alone.
Okay, so let me get this straight...
So these people are making a claim about the amount of time people spend on websites. I'm still hunting for the reference, but the question I ask myself is, how did they collect this data? I can think of at least three different ways.
I would doubt method three was used, as it would probably be a violation of rights, and I doubt most ISP's would give out that info without a court order. So that leaves us with at least two other possibilities, either direct observation or requesting logs from websites.
As I'm sure most will agree, neither of these methods is going to give you good data. In the first case, I guarantee people are not going to surf the same way being observed as they will unobserved. Who volunteers for this kind of survey and looks at pr0nography, stileproject and other disgusting sites, looks at pr0nography, illegaly downloads music and movies, looks at pr0nography, grabs spl0its for some kiddie h4x0ring, and looks at pr0nography while being observed? If they were actually observed in a lab, I would almost guess the researchers might have warned against illegal activity while surfing. If the subjects were interviewed, do you honestly think they would say this is how they spent their time surfing. If you were to ask Joe Sixpack on the street what websites he looked at, he will probably only remember the names of most of the major sites (because they are so visible), and wouldn't have the guts to name his favorite pr0n site.
The second method has its share of flaws too. The researchers are going to, of course, request the logs for all of the major (ie visibile) sites. But how can you get logs from the multitute of little known sites out there? You will never get them all; the best you can do is estimate, at which point you are making up your own data.
If someone can get find the reference for this "study" and post a link here, I would appreciate it. I think Jupiter Media Metrix web site is mediametrix.com but I can't get in with my non-Javascript enabled browser. :P
This sig is false.
Real communication is one person communicatiing with another. If I put a page up that touches another person then I have communicated. It only matter that yu drive massive trafic if you have a business plan that depends on it. Who cares if most of the traffic on the net is going to AOL to read gossip about this 15 minutes diva or sports jock. The fact that you and I can communicate is important and thus the net is relavent for our communication. If AOL & M$ run the business opertunities on the net into the ground, wll, so be it. I'll talk and listen to people who are thoughtfull and the net is still a good place to do that.
-Peace
They don't want everybody to make content, that's very dangerous.
OK, this is what we need: We need lots of people to make content, and it must be feasible to make a living from it. Only that way will a large part of the internet remain like we want it.
So, we need, public domain payment standards, for example for making micro-payments, and we need that fast!
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
IF you don't mind that nearly all 'information' on the web that people actually know about comes from 4 sources then fine. Likewise if you don't mind that one way or another those sources are biased by politics or economics or just plain ignorance then fine - it's all good. If you don't mind that there is little distinction between those 4 sources and sitting calmly in front of the TV then fine - this is the best of all possible worlds. If you don't mind that the economic forces usually work to marginalize that which does not agree with it then, fine. If you don't care if there is any difference between editorial agenda and actual news or if there was you couldn't tell the difference and it wouldn't make any difference to you anyway then once again I agree - all is fine.
It's the flip side of censorship in a way. Not active certainly not "hey you can't do that!!" No. But when most outlets are owned by the same few people then all they have to do is put up only what they approve of. Whatever your affiliation, do you actually think its a good thing to the development and maintenance of a critical society when every website is bland version of USAToday or every opinion is the same? It's like those stupid polls on ABC News like "Do you think McV should be fried or pulled apart by horses?" Or "Do you thing women who have abortions should be jailed or stoned to death?" It's that kind of censorship. Is that what you want?
From where I sit -- just look at Memepool -- the democratic, chaotic net is still alive and well. And my ad-free site from '93 is still around and still has no ads, even if 10 others have sprung up nearby.
Not a problem.. simply design and manufacture your own hardware. It's already happening. Most parts of a computer exist in open sourced plans these days. Eventually open hardware will be where open software is today.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
http://www.wcnet.org
Nice Phat pipe, really cheap accounts/hosting. even the Business class is cheap.
Carl G. Jung
--
"With one breath, with one flow, You will know Synchronicity" -La Policia
Why did we let them in in the first place? They thought they were gonna get rich and make billions of dollars from the web doing stuff like extracting personal and private information and forcing us to buy stuff from insecure and badly administered web sites. We knew this was not what the internet was about, and we (most of us) knew there wasn't that much money to be made on it. So why did we let them do it? Is it because we wanted to "stick it to the man" without him realizing until it was too late?
Why do we keep trying to make it easier for people of lower IQ to use computers, especially when it just makes computers less useful? Just look at all those "Dummies" books that popped up (must be a lot of dummies out there).
The sad part of "commercialization" is that it is necessary to attract the masses in order for the commercialization to be a success (in their goal of getting rich). I don't mind the commercialized aspect of it but I really hate the dumbing down it brings with it. Is there any possible hope of separating the two? Is there any way to commercially do anything on the internet strictly for smart people, and make at least a decent living at it, besides being an ISP (as if that even does it).
And then there's the troll issue on Slashdot.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
It can even be argued that we're entering the "Age of the Non-profit" (alongside with electronic governance) on the web, with open/free software being widely adopted (kind of all-of-a-sudden, from a public perspective) and the spotlight moving away from the dot-com's. Those "Business 2.0/Fast Company" magazines have to have something to write about! :)
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Security focus recently touched on this very subject. Except what they talked about were AV companies spreading virus paranoia to drive sales. If you think about it, there are a lot of parallels in the evil behind writing an inflamatory virus report to boost your ass out of the red and passing off an advertisement as an objective review. Maybe if this shakeout does enough damage to the payees, the backlash will carry over the payers.
BOSTON SUCKS!
Now who is doing the most important work. You, or the garbage man?
I am; the garbage man is doing something I could easily do for myself, for pocket change.
He couldn't come do my job. And if it weren't for people like me, the economy couldn't support paying him at all.
OK, so people get 51% of their web content from the same four companies. But put it in perspective: they get 95% or more of their movies from the same dozen or so companies. 95% of the music (published by 7 companies) is played on the radio stations owned by the same 5 companies. Most the "news" in your local paper comes from the two wire services. ALL mass media is dominated by a small number of insanely wealthy and powerful companies. The internet is still the one place where the rest of us can be heard. Granted the mainsteam McWeb may be dominated by a small clique, but small voices will always be able to make themselves heard, at least to the part of the population smart enough to look outside the McWeb for their information.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
That level of knowledge is not required. What "we" (I presume I agree with the poster) want is for the average person to know as much about computers as he does about cars, and as much about electronic information as he does about pen, paper and books. In other words, the rudimentary education that will save him from lots of trouble and grief. A society of illiterate savages cannot be a democratic republic. In such a society, the individual citizens lack the conceptual tools to effectively use their theoretical freedom.
We are entering an era when most human activity is mediated by computers, software and networks. The fact that the majority have almost no knowledge of these things, and are in fact plunged in the most profound superstition and ignorance is not a good omen.
Much of the prosperity of the 20th century was powered by widespread literacy. Learning to read and write is hard (much harder than the basics of computers) but as a society we've decided that everyone should have these skills. Yes, even those:
In a sense, the medical doctors have already succeeded in forcing a little of their knowledge on us: health class, or sexual education in high school. It doesn't make you an MD, but it's a reasonable distillation of parts of medical knowledge likely to affect a young person. I think we should draw up a corresponding curriculum of basic computer knowledge and urge its adoption.
And the "foreword" by Tom Tomorrow underscores the humorless earnestness of this crusade. I guess this pair needs it spelled out in 6" block letters:
But he's the one doing it.
So what? It'd take an hour to train a new person to do it, and that person doesn't need even a high-school education. Any 14-year-old kid big enough to lift the bags could take over his job tomorrow.
Mine takes years of experience and training to do.
A sub-healthy economy should always be able to support garbage men, software programmers on the other hand are more of a luxury...
Well, first off, you guessed wrong; system administrator focussing on security, actually.
However, yes, it's true, a sub-healthy economy can support garbage men. But a HEALTHY economy at our population level and technology level can't occur without programmers, and system administrators.
And those system administrators have to be competent, or problems like this one will cause even more damage.
The importance of a job can partially be measured by how much damage is done if it's done wrong, and the incomptence of the programmers at one company and a small fraction of the system administrators in the US has resulted in that $10 billion estimated loss to our economy. Are we paying the garbage men $10 billion in total?
The bottom line is that if the government decreed tomorrow that we all have to take our garbage to the landfill, and the garbagemen couldn't help, there wouldn't be chaos, there'd just be grumbling and some traffic jams at the landfills.
If they decreed tomorrow that everybody had to write their own programs and administrate their own systems, and the programmers and sysadmins couldn't help, the economy would collapse.
Of course, such a kneejerk reaction just shows that you're trolling me, so I think I'll abstain from continuing a pointless discussion./I.
Funny, you didn't think it was pointless when you started it; only when you started losing.
Anybody who's paying attention to this knows that you represent an organization that's anti-technology and thinks we'd all be better off grubbing for insects in rotting logs than driving down to the grocery store in our SUVs, so why don't you and Ned Ludd wander off into the forest and let the folks who don't consider death of old age by 30 to be "the good old days" continue the discussion.
Who do you have to thank for for having time to sit by your computer and waste time on /.
Myself. I worked long and hard to get here, instead of taking the easy out of just accepting manual labor for the rest of my life. Anybody can do the garbage man's job. I could take over his job tomorrow.
I don't need to be greatful he does his job; he needs to be greatful I pay him to do it, instead of doing it myself.
No, there would be a stink all over town.
Bzzzt. Wrong answer, thanks for playing. I have lived places where we had to take our own garbage to the dump. They were cleaner than the places serviced by the city garbage collection, actually, because people with enough pride in themselves to go out and learn to better themselves do a better job of cleaning up after themselves than high-school dropouts do cleaning up after others for pocket change.
Maybe it would, but then you seem to prioritize economy over sanitary conditions.
The sanitary conditions we have today are caused by our growing economy, not the other way around.
A healthy economy can pay the taxes that result in the ability to pay for luxuries like paying someone to pick up after you.
But of course, I can't help but see how an unhealthy society we have here in the west, grown out of sour attitudes towards life and human values.
In which we have more trees than we had when there were just Indians here, and in which we don't go murder the neighboring tribe when we've completely depleted all the food in an area.
In which we live to be 75, instead of 40.
In which we have time to do things like read and write, instead of spending 16+ hours a day scratching out a meager existence.
What a terrible thing we've built.