Girl, minus car phone (image courtesy of parenttalktoday.com)
A recent report by the International Telecommunications Union has revealed that over 2 billion people throughout the world will be online by the end of this year, and that around 90% of the population will have access to mobile networks (with 143 countries providing 3G services).
I remember the days when my Dad had a car phone- “for business use only, Kate, it’s expensive, no you can’t prank order a pizza to next-door”- and I used to think it was dead posh. So posh, that when we were caught in traffic on the way to my ballet class, I used to hold it against my ear and pretend to be chatting to some other equally as precocious ten-year-old on the other end. I’ve always been a trend-setter.
How interesting is it to see monks with mobiles on travels round Cambodia and Thailand? It’s great to notice these signs of the times. (And they make for killer holiday snaps….)
'Scuse me Sir, could you stand just to the right a little.... (courtesy of flickr)
Technology is taking over, but people generally seem to be happy about the invasion. A poll for BBC World Service shows that almost four out of five people believe that access to the internet is a fundamental human right. But does this mean unrestricted access, without filters or government control? (And if so, where does this leave countries like China with their heavy handed censorship?)
The possibilities are endless with handsfree (image courtesy of creativebusinessadventures.com)
The survey goes on to predict that the world will have collaboratively sent nearly 6.1trillion text messages by the end of 2010. That’s an awful lot of thumb action. In developed countries, there is an average of 116 mobile phone subscriptions per 100 people, meaning of course that a considerable number of people may have 2 or 3 mobile phone subscriptions, (like business people, or drug dealers).
By the end of the year, 71% of developed countries will be online, compared to just 21% of the population of developing countries. The report recognised that the growth in mobile phone networks in lower income countries was a catalyst for growth and marks a positive progression. Developing countries are certainly embracing a boom in mobile phones. Smarthouse magazine quotes the ITU’s Sami Al Basheer, who underlines the positive feeling: “Mobile phone penetration in developing countries now stands at 68 percent — higher than any other technology before. These countries have been innovative in adapting mobile technology to their particular needs and will be able to draw even greater benefits from broadband once adequate and affordable access is available.”
The future looks bright.
If feels like it won’t be long before we turn into the Jetsons; but ah well, they seemed happy enough.
We're turning into the Jetsons... but at least we'll be happy! (image courtesy of herospy.com)
These days we are swamped with new technology and even the most cynical amongst us has caved in to embrace the new era. My Mum is always on about ‘downloading’ things and even my Gran has a mobile phone, although she hasn’t quite grasped the concept of texting just yet. Quite frankly, I am getting tired of arguments about how the internet is making us lazy; conversely, it has opened up access to so many things we never had, and liberated us beyond our wildest dreams. Our reading habits may have altered to adapt to reading on screen, but this in itself has equipped us with a great new skill; we have become expert sifters, scanners, and connoisseurs of accessing what we want when we want it. Web writing reflects this. We need chunks, links, colour, image, video. Mundane blocks of text have had their day. Modern life just doesn’t leave us with the time to sit and digest other peoples’ waffle; unless it’s smothered in maple syrup, bananas and cream.
I was already shocked to read in the Sydney Morning Herald that ‘Handwriting Proves a Stretch for Computer-savvy Students.’ Then I noticed that the students in question were in Year 12. I couldn’t believe that a perfectly capable 16yr old would be so immersed in the tech-revolution, that she would have lost the ability to wield a pen with any gusto. The article is not talking about students who suffer from learning difficulties either. Plans for NSW students to sit a ‘limited number of exams online’ in 2012 marks the cumulative move to the digital age in schools; I don’t have a problem with that, (the very nature of a particular subject may lend itself to computer based assessment, but I am very glad to see that they are holding fire in subjects such as English). It really is a disgrace that positive progressions, like the ability to provide laptops to every student, are counterbalanced by the need to regress back to lessons in something as basic as handwriting. It certainly turns the good will of schemes such as ‘One Laptop Per Child’ in on itself. I am not discrediting OLPC, as it is a fantastic scheme, but students need to know the basics before they are given a laptop.
Teaching students to write fluently, spell, use grammar properly and understand syntax should be at the very core of any education system. Year 12 is too late. The core subjects should never be compromised in any age; of course it is important to educate students about technology, but you have to walk before you can run. It is a tragedy that a school in NSW had to employ occupational therapists to ensure that students’ writing was legible by the time they reached Year 12. I can’t even begin to imagine what sort of lesson plans are going to be constructed for teenagers handwriting practice; i’m sure they will need more to hold their attention than a quick brown fox and a lazy dog, (and I think that the majority will empathise with the latter rather than the former).
This is what my classroom would look like if I was a teacher (image courtesy of museumsincornwall.org.uk)
My handwriting is awful- not as in a doctor’s writing, which is illegible in an intelligent-scrolly way- no… my handwriting is unabashedly curly and girly. I sometimes regree to that terrible habit I cultivated in my teens to dot my i’s with a circle when i’m writing really quickly. Despite this, I am quite sure that you would have no problems reading my writing. Just imagining 1000 students in a sports hall bashing away at 1000 keyboards under exam conditions gives me a headache already. Literacy, alongside maths and science, should be an integral part of the curriculum before anything else. It is time that education systems went back to the basics.
“Now get back to your desk before I call your parents!”
Can you remember life before Facebook…. way back in the dusty portals of time, where you carefully selected photos of your travels to add to meticulously constructed group emails, and if you wanted to ‘make friends’ with someone, you would meet them in the pub for a glass of Sauv Blanc and a bowl of chips? Facebook is guilty of introducing new, unnecessary dilemmas to modern life; do I accept my boyfriend’s Mother on Facebook?- (answer: no) is it really wise to tag everyone getting up to no good in the Parklife photos? (answer: also no) and should you really confess to the world on your status that you ‘can’t believe how good the weather is in Tahiti‘ when you are Facebook friends with half the office, and your boss thinks you are laid up in bed with a lesser strain of dengue fever? (answer: oh come on, I shouldn’t really have to tell you….)
Really, Facebook is an insipid pit of voyeurism. It has exacerbated the human desire to catalogue the very minutaie of trivial life and created a platform from which others can snoop and pry, safe in the knowledge that their identity is kept a secret by the anonymity of the web. Gossip has been dredged, affairs have been uncovered, jobs have been lost, relationships have been terminated. Facebook is a panoptican eye; you forget who reads your late night ramblings, you forget that you accepted the friends requests of Auntie Ivy and Hugh from accounts. And then there is the problem of the impromtu status update. What may have seemed like a wise witticism at 5am pales into self-indulgent melancholia in the harsh light of a hungover day. Like big brother, Facebook’s unblinking eye is always watching. The private is made public- neon light public. Everyone can see the colour of your dirty underwear.
Mark Zuckerberg, the man who unleashed the beast, understands that his evil offspring is somewhat flawed, and he has responded to the identity crisis this week by introducing the Groups function, which allows users to control who has access to what information; protecting you from data related incrimination and allowing, in theory, only the people who you want to see images, status updates and late night lyricism. This addresses the problem of what Zuckerberg sees as the biggest issue in social networking, finding a way to translate the way we organise our social lives in real life online- (e.g the ability to call screen, ‘accidentally’ lose phone numbers or the free will to simply not call someone)… Various problems have been encountered concerning the effectiveness of the Groups function along with further questions of integrity. The Groups function seems to be more of a band-aid solution to the growing problem. Zuckerberg is still far from being the most trusted man in the universe.Nobody knows where they stand with Facebook, the rules about privacy settings are not laid out clearly enough and they are always changing without users’ consent.Perhaps the Groups feature will work to alleviate the problem, but it will never completely solve it.
Another problem is that when personal data was uploaded to Facebook in the old model, it became locked into the website and the user was unable to port it elsewhere. This is really unreasonable. Who is this guy anyway? What does he want with all of our information and what in the hell does he do with it? This week’s Facebook revamp has seen Zuckerberg formulate another ‘remedy’ in the not-so-snappily named ‘Download your Information’ tool, which does exactly what it says on the tin. Zuckerberg has finally conceded that ‘It is not our information. It is people’s information….. and they should be allowed to take it away if they want.’ Why did this not happen earlier?
I wonder if British Princess Eugenie of York has taken advantage of the privacy setting on the new Groups feature after the recent Facebook fiasco which embarrasingly revealed her to be ‘single and available’ and looking for ‘random play.’ She must make her parents so proud. Pictures of her looking less than regal carrying a packet of fags and looking a little bit worse for wear were recently posted on a friend’s Facebook page. Perhaps it was her somewhat influential grandmother that ordered Zuckerberg to make the changes. I guess we will never know.
Yorkshire; famous for the puddings that go with gravy and roast beef, proper cups of tea, rolling hills, rainy days and angry farmers in flat caps. It also happens to be where i’m from. And yes, the pace of life up there is a little slower than average. And possibly it does take us a little while to catch on to newfangled trends and ‘what av yer’…. but I have to say even I was shocked to find out that a flock of pigeons is actually speedier than the download speed in the fair dales.
By ‘eck!
The BBC reported last week that fellow Yorkshire-ite Tref Davies, co-founder of ISP Timico, an independent internet service provider, was extremely dissatisfied with his Yorkshire home broadband. Davies decided to set an experiment in motion to illustrate the inadequacies of his download speed by using a fleet of pigeons with micro SD cards attached to their legs to race a file that he was trying to download. I’m not really sure how scientifically sound it is to measure the speed of broadband against the flight of a pigeon, but regardless of convention, Davies still managed to push his message, and make headlines.
.
The turbo-pigeons made their ground-breaking journey from Davies’ farm in the dales all the way to sunny Skegness on the Yorkshire coast. As soon as the pigeons set off, Davies began downloading a 5 minute video. 75 minutes later, the pigeons had completed their journey, while only 24% of the 300MB file had downloaded. I would like to take this opportunity to stress that the pigeons in question were no different from the average carrier pigeon. They were not supplied with jet rockets, or on steroids.
It would seem the pigeons are accustomed to such speedy success, as a similar experiment was conducted last year, when Winston the pigeon was proved to be faster than a South African ADSL line.
My advice is to be on your guard the next time you offer up a little bird the remnants of your sandwich crusts in the future. You never know what they’re hiding……..
I have to say that while perusing available jobs and items for sale on Craigslist I have never actually noticed the elephant in the room with the thigh high boots on. But underneath the expansive grey and somewhat rudimentary Craigslist homepage; behind the seemingly innocent discussion forums and dead-end waitressing jobs lurks a seedy reality that has recently been forced out of its second hand closet and into the public eye.
I am of course referring to the ‘Adult’ link on Craigslist, which used to be a one way ticket to all manner of illicit encounters until recently. Following a barrage of opposition, Craigslist USA has pulled the plug on the tab, replacing it with a black and white bar that reads ‘Censored.’ This will be a bitter pill to swallow for the 15year old site, who, according to a study by aimgroup.com generated 30% of their revenue from the X-rated section of their site. And that figure was only expected to increase.
It must be noted that it is only the USA that has put a stop to Craigslist’s fledgling career as a pimp daddy. Across the rest of the world, it is still hustling away and stackin’ up the dirty cash. If you take the time to look at Craigslist Melbourne, the ‘Adult’ tab is still touting for business, (although I think it would be made much more effective in flashing neon). It is interesting that on closer inspection, it becomes apparent that a considerable amount of the content featured on Craigslist Melbourne is in fact X-rated. From the jobs advertised in the TV/film section to the kink and queer forums, it would seem that Craigslist actively embraces publicising the private. It would seem that the American Craigslists have retained these functions outside the ‘Adult’ tab too, so really, by introducing the Censored tab, the moral crusaders have not triumphed after all. Conversely, they may have even given Craigslist a boost in publicity, and thus traffic. And so what?
An article in Wired chronicles the lawsuits and backlashes that Craigslist has had to deal with and also points out, quite rightly, that they scrutinise all ads that are submitted, and have rejected over 700,000 due to inappropriateness. Despite this, claims have been thrown around by various sources accusing Craigslist of exacerbating child prostitution, trafficking and even being responsible for murder. CNN launched an investigation highlighting how easy it was to sell sex on Craigslist, and while it is a credible piece of journalism, I do think that Craigslist is one of many, and not by any means the worst offender.
It makes me a little bit mad. There are countless sites where people can gain access to adult services. I think that Craigslist is being scapegoated for the ills of many. The internet is by definition a place where freedom of speech is upheld as an integral value. Even squeaky clean Gumtree has adult themed sponsored links on its site. Putting a Censored button on the adult section of Craigslist is never going to put a stop to prostitution. There are only very rare cases when censorship actually works for the betterment of society. Like with Big Phil here…..
(I’m really sorry I just did that to you dear reader. Please come back next week.)
My Grandmother is 88 and over the last year, managed to give cancer a kicking. What a gal. I always go to see her bearing some gifts, a big shiny bunch of gerbera or a rather excessive cream cake; her bracelet that needed fixing or some new photos from my travels. Of course I don’t mind doing her shopping for her, but the last time I did it, she stopped me short as I pulled out a tub of her normal brand of butter. She was convinced that it was the root of all evil. It clogged your arteries, gave you deep vein thrombosis and funded Columbian drug rackets. Even though she spread the same brand across scones, crumpets and new potatoes for 88 years, from that day forth, it would never let it touch her lips again.
And who was responsible for laying it on so thick? Where had all this grease come from? It was all because she had read an article in the paper.
The Daily Mail (often referred to as the Daily Hate Mail) is often guilty of spoiling my pleasant afternoons with Grandma in the rose garden. For those who do not know, the Mail is responsible for instigating moral panic and firing up hate campaigns across the UK with a scary combination of leading headlines and sensationalised statistics. In the Mail’s world, all young families deal in drugs and wield machetes, and the beds that are not being overrun by bloodsucking bedbugs are the unholy places of fornication for gay priests and Nigerian models. Well at least the latter were about to get married….
Because of the Mail’s handiwork, my Grandma is convinced that the morals of the world are rotten to the core. Even Stan Over The Road becomes a suspected paedophile, and she always hides her handbag from the health visitor. Lord knows what she thinks i’m up to. I just hope she never sees my suspicious face grinning back at her on p.17…..
I came across a fantastic site the other day by Chris Applegate that takes all of the scare tactics out of the Mail and turns them into the big joke they really are with the genius that is the “Daily Mail Headline Generator’. Mail panic tags such as ‘single mothers’ and ‘homosexual’ are mashed up to create hilarious headlines such as ‘has the human rights act turned the Queen gay?’ and ‘will Dumbing Down give your pension Swine Flu?’ The frightening thing if you saw these headlines on the front of the Mail, you really wouldn’t bat an eyelid, (although my Gran would).
On further inspection, I was glad to find out that Chris Applegate is also a talented blogger; his site certainly warrants a click or five. I think it will make you laugh.
The Penguin Classics series has done a lot to revive the coolness stakes of classic literature. The affordable, orange and white collectables are as ubiquitous in bookshops as they are on once-empty bookshelves in people’s homes. To be honest, I like the fact that the advertising juggernaut is churning out as many retro mugs, bags, postcards and other orange and white monogrammed tie-ins as they can deliver to an eager public. I like standing on the tram next to someone with a ‘Great Gatsby’ tote bag or seeing someone reading ‘Dark Star Safari’ on a bench; it gives me renewed faith. People do read. Penguin’s retro marketing was a success; there has been a renaissance in the collectable book and book related products. I just hope that the people who buy them do actually read them
I am loving the way Penguin seems to be involving young people in their marketing campaign for the ’75 new titles.’ It’s great! I’m so happy that such a diverse range of authors from Anais Nin to William Burroughs are able to stand alongside the more traditional classics in the Penguin canon. I am in full support of a broadening of the horizons of what constitutes a ‘Classic.’
However, I think that Penguin went a little too far last year with the release of Twitterature by Alexander Aciman and Emmett Rensin. Earlier this week, I absentmindedly picked this book up at the counter while paying at the University Bookshop on the strength of the orange and white cover. I realised all too soon that I had been duped. This was not a new Classic at all. Oh, how witty those folks at Penguin were being, using the cover for irony. For Twitterature is of course ‘the world’s greatest books told in twenty Tweets or less.’ The Classics butchered up into netspeak canapes to be washed down with gallons of Pepsi and a KFC bargain bucket. It is for high school students who need a plot synopsis before class when they haven’t read the book. It is a stocking filler from your Uncle who is always cracking unfunny jokes at Christmas dinner. (It is a joke of course, I know I should lighten up). But it is also…. well, it is…. selling quite well…. (as are other spinoffs in the Twitterature genre).
Trust me when I tell you that i’m not the person mentioned in this video who said they wanted to punch the smug authors of Twitterature in the face, but I am not alone in my disparaging tone, or in thinking that this sets the precedent for the lazy way out of reading. Or is it the future? Perhaps I am overreacting to a harmelss joke.
Of course Twitterature has been marketed in a very positive, pro-reading tone, (at least Twitterature gets the youth of today away from the computer screen for 10minutes to understand something of classical literature) but it breaks my heart that on Penguin’s website, they put up for question the ultimate bullet in their own foot; ‘as great as the Classics are, who has time to read those big, long books anymore?’ As far as I can see, this undoes all of the good work brought on by the Penguin classics. And besides, I still read those big books, don’t you?
Last week I really enjoyed a Digi Media class blog discussion on how awkward politicians are when it comes to manipulating social media. Or even using it with any finesse. I thought it was funny to see the mistress of the social faux pas, Sarah Palin, proving my point for me this week. Politicians are no better at pulling off social media then they are at keeping election promises, (or conducting themselves with any social prowess when in public). Earlier this week, when Palin was Twittering some moral-panic inducing nonesense about the unsuitability of building a Mosque somewhere close Ground Zero, she asked ‘Muslims to pls refudiate’ (instead of repudiate) their plans. So as well as being capable of stirring up bucketloads of unnecessary racial tension, she can now lay claim to toppling entire dictionaries worth of etymological sense by creating her own words. And all this without even being elected….? The inevitable back lash that followed is quite entertaining, but then making fun of Sarah Palin always is.
Among other amusing comments following the incident is the suggestion that Palin may have used the term ‘refudiate’ before. She has probably been using it all her life in place of ‘repudiate’. It isn’t just a typo. It couldn’t be. Note where the p is on your keyboard in relation to the f. In keyboard terms it is roughly the distance between Washington DC and Tehran. Miles away.
So here she is again, quite rightly smack bang in the firing line for even more ridicule by the media. It just goes to show that politicians just don’t gel that well with social media. Even if it was spelt right, the whole sentence looks stupid. We have the casual ‘pls’ against a word that seems to be at odds with the casual tone of Twitter. It sounds politicized. I am not overly comfortable with politicians using ‘pls’ and ‘bcoz’ and other ‘netspeak’ expressions. Hell, i’m not particularly happy when my own friends text me like this.
There are countless issues that come up when politicians use social media. For a start, it is probably not even the politician who is actually doing the updating, but some PR ‘professional,’ (although i’m sure Palin can take full credit for this little incident). Then there are the other issues that surround politicans; integrity, honesty and authenticity. And claims that social media outlets are meticulously policed and sanitised before being going live to the public. Often they are not the independent forums for debate and scrutiny that they should be, but a chance for a politician to indulge in a narcissistic ego-stroking where only pro-party comments are allowed to be posted.
It is very interesting to observe how highly vetted Palin’s Facebook account allegedly is. Apparently her page unequivocally supports her and all comments praise her actions and trumpet her good name without exception. Ha! Of course, all negative or challenging posts are instantly deleted. Some little skivvy is probably employed with the soul purpose of adminstering a chemical peel and an enema to Palin’s Facebook on the hour every hour. Are Palin’s 2 million fans real people? Of course they’re not. They are the botox injections and plumpers that follow the chemical peel. Fake.
I mean, would you be friends with Sarah Palin on Facebook? Even for the purpose of research, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I can’t vote in the election this year. I’m not an Australian resident. It’s quite nice to be able to sit on the periphery and watch it all unfold for a change, knowing that I don’ t have any decisions to make. It will also be quite nice when it’s all done and dusted. I’m sick of the headlines featuring nothing but campaigns, rallies, protests, promises, and more spin than a heavy duty washing machine. So it’s with a pre-emptive apology, that I would like to welcome you all to this week’s ‘Election Special’ blog. It is time to talk about the digital future of Australia. Questions at the end please.
This week, it has been interesting to observe the digital mudfight between parties concerning the National Broadband Network. The way Ms Gillard is insisting on the crucial importance of the NBN in my opinion pushes her head and shoulders above Mr Abbott. The Age is right in identifying that the differences in policy succeed in making Julia look ‘forward-thinking’ and Abbott look ‘old fashioned.’ I’m not sure if Mr Abbott’s ‘technology for schools’ counter campaign really cuts the mustard for me. For a start, I’m not in school. And when I was, I can’t say my educational success was dramatically hindered by having to share a PC.
I think it is more important for Australia to think globally, and keep up the pace with other countries’ broadband speed. The whole of Gillard’s election theme of ‘moving forward’ seems to be cleverly encapsulated in her vision of Australia’s technological future. An article for ABC raises some interesting issues about the pace of the election campaign, but I think it dramatically underestimates the necessity of keeping ‘up to speed’. The NBN will obviously do more than ‘make Farmville… go with a bit more zing.’ Who plays Farmville anyway?
As Professor Matthew Allen of Curtin University argues in an article in WA Today, it is not just about faster downloading, it is about synchronicity and the ability to multi-task. Yes, even for guys. I agree with Allen that “the jump in speed we are after would enable you to do the video conferencing, download a movie and back up a computer to a removed location at the same time,” but I think that more importantly, the NBN is crucial for economic regrowth. Abbott’s laptops for every child in every school will arrive later as Australia reaps the benefits of the NBN. It will indeed facilitate much more for Australia in the long run.
It just seems to be a shame that the obvious need to skyrocket Australia into NBN oblivion has to be so politicised. It should be at the forefront of any campaign. These days every country should be polishing its go-faster stripes.
Oh Rupert Murdoch, how many cars do you have? How many sprawling Bentleys and Aston Martins? How many lavish estates do you call home? How big is your yacht? Which one? Ummm… I don’t know, the biggest one. How many private jets do you have? Could you lend me a tenner? No, I didn’t think you would. In fact, you might even charge me for using your bathroom. I’ll bet even your soap dispenser wouldn’t give me a pump of magnolia fresh unless I put 50p in it.
What is it with people these days? It must be the recession, but absolutely everyone seems to be wanting to grab your last penny. The most outrageous example I can find is Irish budget airline Ryanair’s proposals to charge for the toilets onboard back in April; proposals that appear to have been scrapped due to public outrage. Perhaps not as shocking as toilet terrorism, but equally as controversial are Rupert Murdoch’s recent attempts at holding online news hostage. Admittedly, the ransom is only one shiny pound coin, but it has still caused shockwaves amongst the media world, as there are grounded fears that this move to charge for online content will set the precedent for the future and that other news agencies will follow suit.
Everyone seems to be holding fire to see what the public response will be. Can Murdoch get away with the commodification of online news? Would it be a success? Well, the Times Online was taken under siege on 2nd of July this year and concurrently lost two thirds of its online traffic. I wonder which bright spark on the marketing team enjoyed a jump into a three figure salary for that slice of brilliance?
The thing is, the pay-to-subscribe model is ticking along nicely for some papers. The Financial Times in London and also the Australian Financial Review have both had an active, and indeed successful paywall for some time. FT Group Chief Executive John Ridding has acknowledged the success of his paper’s paywall, but conceded that charging for online was always going to be more welcome at a paper supporting such a niche interest. The FT’s readership can justify paying because they cannot source information at this level of specificity and quality anywhere else. Perhaps the reason that the paywall’s popularity has not skyrocketed at The Times is because it caters for a much more general interest. This sort of news can be sourced all over the place. Asking to pay for the content assumes a level of superiority. Can the Times really claim superiority when it is set against the online content of other broadsheets such as the Guardian?
It would seem that the good folk at Guardian Towers found the whole paywall drama laughable. The shockwave of a bleak future of paywall media does not even seem to have fazed them at all. (Perhaps Guardian Towers is one of those earthquake proof buildings; is there anything they haven’t thought of?) Following the release of the paywall, they published a highly amusing ‘letter’ welcoming all former Times Online readers who had been blocked out by the paywall. Certainly made me chuckle.
The idea of paying for online content has been courted by news agencies for a while now. In 2005 the New York Times released ‘Times Select,’ a paid subscription service providing more in depth journalism from celebrity and guest writers. Murdoch experimented with the ‘freemium’ approach last year with the Wall Street Journal. This offered basic online content for free but more in depth, ‘premium’ journalism at a surcharge. He confessed in an interview on Sky News that he was happy to have fewer visitors to the site as long as they were paying.
I think that Murdoch may well have got it wrong bulldozing the Times Online like Hitler in the Rhineland.
There was no warning, no tentative attempt at the freemium approach. The people of Great Britain were shocked. Morning lattes were spilled. Tremours were felt as far as Wales. The only efforts to ease people in gently were the special introductory offer of a pound for 30days, which cheapened the content anyway. Who wants bargain basement news? The idea of a paywall implies quality and notions of special offers only serve to contradict that.
Online news is renowned for being less regulated and less meticulous than that of print. It is not proofread or edited to the same extent, but I can’t say that this would apply to anything on a website that trades under the name of a good broadsheet. So what extra quality will the Times paywall offer us? Does anyone have any ideas? I certainly don’t.
The other problem with a paywall is that it potentially loses more casual viewers of news, who will just go and search it out elsewhere. There are so many other avenues where you can find news. A paywall will only work for hardcore fans. You wouldn’t subscribe to the paywall unless your allegiance to that news medium was absolutely no-compromise-sworn-to-secrecy-fight-to-the-death. Personally, I like to get my news from different sources as it gives a more well-rounded opinion of events. If you consider the demographic of who would be willing to subscribe to the paywall, it is also worth noting that this limits the breadth of commentary that will be generated from articles behind the paywall. The resultant readership may be more streamlined regarding class and background and therefore the online comment may be less diverse. People who have an allegiance to a certain paper would be of a similar mindset and would have a tendancy to agree with the political or ideological stance of their journalists. Murdoch is training up a readership of ‘yes’ men and women. Feedback would be much less democratic. Jesus, this is getting scarier by the minute.
Recent comments from Murdoch show that there is no sign of backing down. Surprise, surprise. The wall will not be toppled, but bricked up further. The implications for Australia are as yet unknown, although there are rumours that online division of The Australian may move to a ‘freemium’ website next year as an experiment. A recent article by Shane McLeod discussed a global survey by the Boston Consulting Group about which countries would be prepared to pay for online news. Australia came out bottom. I don’t blame you. I found another interesting article on the AFR website regarding Australia’s views on the paywall entitled ‘Mixed news for Murdoch’s paywall push.” Unfortunately, I will never know that outcome, as it was locked behind a paywall…….
Mark Zuckerberg
(I’m really sorry I just did that to you dear reader. Please come back next week.)
Kateinoz33's Blog 