PCs Aren't TVs: We Use Them To Connect, Not Consume
from the the-changing-face-of-the-internet dept
This is nothing new to regular readers around here, but the increasing push towards making the internet into a "broadcast" medium is finally starting to raise some eyebrows. I'm actually a bit surprise to see a smart editorial on the subject pointing out that PCs aren't TVs on the website of a mainstream newspaper. The entertainment industry, with their locked up content, has done a good job convincing some politicians that we're all just here to consume information rather than to connect and create. However, most people intuitively realize the true benefit in the internet isn't that it's the second coming of television. We're not concerned about getting more slickly produced broadcast content delivered to our screens. We want to use the interactive nature of the medium to create something new - which is exactly what people have been doing online for years. Yet, the continued push for better "control" to make it easier to push their repurposed broadcast content has the effect of killing off that ability, while giving us all something we don't want. We've already got a TV. Let us create our own content and services online.
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One of the many who have been saying...
And yet they're making deals to run 30 sec. commercials on MSN, and so on.
Sad how clueless some marketers can be.
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And as you've pointed out many times
But of course the article is stronger, and not entirely inaccurate, to play up the fear.
Regardless, any use of the computer as media-player will always just be one small aspect of the power of the internet.
There's also a lot of new content collabration that's happening now, with camera phones and people posting their own music mixes, etc. In fact, in some ways that's also a threat to the "established" media.
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From the Cluetrain Manifesto department...
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No Subject Given
I've had a TV tuner card installed in the PC's I've owed over the past 8 years.
I don't own a stand alone TV and see little difference between a monitor & a TV.
They are both just there to serve me the streams of media I want.
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