Month: April 2009

I wrote the following article in 2005 after finding that there were few articles in my college newspaper that had anything remotely to do with the Internet. I was going to go through and edit it to fit my sensibilities of grammar and correctness, but I’ll let it stand. In April of 2005 the internet was a different place… people were just getting used to the idea of ‘Wikipedia’ and ‘Youtube’. Newspapers were churning along and the Interwebplace was at least a world where all established companies knew they needed a ‘footing’ in. Today, the Internet has upset so many old ways of interacting with content and brands that old-media corporations without a comprehensive Internet strategy simply fade away. Though only four years away, 2005 was a entirely different world. In this article I tried to get a handle on what elements of the new web would be disruptive and beneficial: (and please keep in mind this article really needs an edit)

When the Internet began to really grow in the late 90s, the public understood it as a useful parallel to the more tangible content delivery systems already in place. It was believed that magazines, newspapers, and television would exert their presence primarily in the realm of non-Internet space, but each would have a presence on the net to offer extras like an archive of their content or a place for last week’s crossword puzzle answers. Against the wishes of the big media, software, and information-delivery corporations, the online community began to make its own content, sell products, tell the world’s news, and entertain the masses. The net’s producers are not only making this global content more cheaply, but its quality and integrity far surpasses the more corporate producers. This shift in authorship has implications in every aspect of visible media and software.

Continue reading “From the Archive: “Open source revolution means more Internet” [4/8/2005]” →