10.1 Knowledge is Power

Blueprints are useful. Describing blueprints verbally is painful. A picture is worth a thousand words. Just saying. Also, I'm delighted to see Nakamura actually mention the difficulties and complications new terminology brings to the table. It seems in some cases that is the theme of some of the material that we read; for all the topics on communication, the way they're presented can easily hamper interpretation.

I couldn't help but think of the internet as a whole after reading Panopticism, which I'm assuming is the point I was supposed to get. Everything is recorded, equally divided, and uninterrupted work links the outside and the inside; this seems so familiar, but the internet as we've come to know it hardly seems like a disciplinary mechanism.

The paragraph on lepers seems reminiscent of the divided cultures on the internet. While not literally exiled to their leper colonies, individuals do isolate their presence online and tend to limit it to specific frequented sites and areas. In an escapist sort of way, people driven away by events or groups in reality are almost guaranteed to find like-minded individuals online. For some reason I'm envisioning Chevy Chase and Dan Akroyd in the slightly modified Lepers Like Us.

In many ways the internet does seem like a great asylum, dividing us by our characteristics and fetishes. The strange thing now is the fact that every individual is a spectator in the central chamber and an inmate; we have the potential to witness those around us and we are becomingly increasingly visible online.

Though I also agree with Nakamura's assumption about previous media; we can't describe all the new means with old terms, since it frankly isn't the same. We tend to fall back on the accepted uses that have prevailed in previous media.

Over the course of last week I spent my time in Austin at the National College Media Convention, which was a fascinating experience on many levels. I have only been involved with campus media for a year, which means I'm nowhere near as experienced as the advisers presenting information and many of the students present. And I felt better off for it. After listening to a person with a doctorate tell me that online news would greatly decline after the economy recovers based on seven-year-old data, I worried the ignorance might be contagious but also felt pretty smart comparatively.

Though it may not be a good sign. The 'experts' in the field in many cases have trouble converting their expertise to fit with new media, and the technology is changing at a rate where newly appointed experts have mastered outdated material. Mentioning the seven-year-old data is only important because so much has happened just in that span of time. The groups that are surviving and thriving in college media aren't necessarily professionals, but they certainly are adaptable, and that is far more useful than possessing a wealth of outdated information.

But I digress. For all the advertisements that bombard my screen every time I peruse the internet, it never occurred to me that there is a correlation between some of these advertisements and the virtual personas witnessing them. Teeth whitening ads and body-building advertisements seemed like just more spam, but they do cater to a particular interest and are more prevalent than most other types of advertisements. This probably should have struck me since I'm in advertising, though I suppose I'm not quite trained to think that way.

Though advertising now is at a peculiar crossroads. As many speakers at the NCMC confessed, their website had greater reach and potential but the advertising revenue from online was a incomparable besides the revenue from print ads. Part of this seems to be a result of something one of the speakers mentioned; many people don't understand why they pay for clicks on a banner. This goes back to the rate of change in technology over the past quarter of a century. Old ideas taken for granted clash with emerging concepts, and the results are... fascinating.