PowerPoint Presentation Slide 1

Technical Potentials of the New Media

• Costs of production dropping: makes media creation more accessible ( digital camera and access to the net)
• Costs of distribution down
• Interactive// less hierarchical
• Faster…more global

The Internet

• What: a vast network of high speed wires and satellite relays linking computers worldwide
• No central hub: thousands of computer nodes ( it is highly distributed)
• Uses a type of switching that is hard to trace: designed after WW2 in the RAND corporation to avoid worldwide military attack
• Now used for: email, commerce, chat lines,file sharing etc.
• Sometimes synonmous with on line world

Components of the Internet

• World Wide Web
• Internet Service Providers (AOL Time Warner; Sympatico,Telus, Shaw@Home, AT&T)
• Portals ( MSN)
• Browsers: Explorer, Netscape
• Search Engines and directories ( Google, etc)

Rate of Diffusion

• Each generation of technology ( telegraph, telephone,radio, satellite to cable TV, VCRs) had an increasingly rapid rate of diffusion
• Key is where it reaches ‘mass’ or majority ( 60% or more) of consumers.
• Internet has done so within one decade: only other technology to do so, but not quite as fast were the VCR and cell phones
• Now well over 75% of Canadians have access: that number rises to 100% under 25
• The Internet the fastest techology in rate of social adaption

Impacts

• Changed the way we work
• Accellerated space time compression: globalization processes
• Convergence of computers and distribution allows greater efficiency of control and communication
• Much cheaper to sell via Internet than in person ( 1/100th cost per transaction for banks, airlines)
• Average person is now estimated to spend 187 hours a year on line ( source: Penguin Media and Information 2003)