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WHAT'S OLD ABOUT THE NEW MEDIA
By Daria Morgendorffer
Content Provider
As an internet pundit known to be on the cutting edge of the cutting edge (ouch! that's sharp!), I suppose I can't completely ignore the phenomenon known as New Media (I tried hiding under the covers but I eventually ran out of crackers and flashlight batteries). Not that I object to technological innovation; I like the idea that my words can be read by people all over the world at any time of the day or night (a special hello to my Polynesian friends with insomnia!). Yet I dread the day the printed word is finally rendered completely obsolete by interactive broadband digital communication. It's so much easier to throw a book at your sister.
The big talk these days is of convergence: will television, the internet, DVD, and videogames join together to create a giant, breathtaking Uber-Media, or just a super shovelful of crap? Is the paradigm shifting, or do I just need a new prescription for my glasses? And how will these developments affect copyright law, privacy rights, and lame home pages featuring way too many pictures of someone's cat?
Sure, new media is sexy, flashy, and more lively than a stone tablet, but what the bright-eyed and demon-spawned high-tech cheerleaders leave out is the fact that in many ways the New Media is exactly like the Old Media. So be on the lookout for these perpetual truths:
1. Most of what's out there is crap.
2. While individuals do things for any number of reasons, companies just want to make money. Corporate-sponsored websites are nothing more than used-car lots without the flags. Pop-up ads? Those are the flags.
3. When some google-eyed caffeine freak is trying to convince you that working for his dot-com company will be great because of the eighty-hour weeks, remember the First Law of Glamour Jobs: the president of the company always makes at least a hundred times more than the guy in the mailroom. And goes home early on Fridays.
4. Most of what's out there is crap.
5. The less valuable a job is to society, the more complicated the words used to describe it. Why say "getting people to watch" when "aggregating eyeballs" is so much more jargonlicious?
6. New or Old, remember that you can't spell 'media' without a bunch of the letters from 'mediocre,' plus an 'a.'
7. Most of what's out there is crap.
8. And most important: Whether the media is streaming or static, you can turn it off.
In fact, maybe you should try that right now. And shouldn't I be writing a business plan for a vertically integrated interactive gaming site with cross-platform personalized shopping content? Everyone else is.
Yours tURLy,
Daria
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