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It's very hard to describe how the media landscape has changed in the last 5-10 years,
largely because
the evolution has been big in some areas and small in others in terms of
content generation, certainly in the news industry news is still news, so to speak,
but the delivery systems have changed and that's of course where
digital technology has been of great benefi. The advent of better tape
systems, higher-resolution then solid-state drives and flash memory and now of
course a shift even from big sort of bulky hundred and fifty thousand
dollar cameras to three thousand dollar DSLR's
producing superb quality video for example - all these have been credible
changes
and what they've done is they've also made accessibility
to equipment much easier, so there's a lot more people using the
technology.
People can access the material instantly because of the technology it's
theirs on flash memory, they can edit it because there's
Final Cut Pro on your laptop, so the the dynamics have made
the equipment in the digital dynamics have made stories
easier to cover.
For a society where media has been largely closed off, the fact people can
get the hands on equipment and get it get information and stories out
there an incredible leveler - it's a great way to actually
fight censorship and restrictive practices in the media in
some parts the world but of course this is what's happening,
and we've seen this with the Arab spraying and and many of the sort of
recent events where people have that that camera
on the phone and they can actually send in video very quickly.
Of course, resolution quality is different but it's dynamic 'cause it's there.
So I think societies have benefited with the spread of information instantly
and very quickly accessible from the everyday person.
The thing with expression such as The Networked Society, the digitally
empowered,
all these are really an evolving process and the level of connectivity
really depends on where a person is in the world but the key is this: it's how
they approach that network.
Sound I think the Networked Society is really something that's
evolving based on the tools available to the the younger generation
somehow they use them. I mean the Networked Society is really where we all are
whether we want to be or not - a senior citizen can
get a refrigerator with a chip in it,
then they're interconnected really by
default, so we're really all part of it, it's just how how much we engage in its
like were all sitting around the swimming pool but how deep we dive is up to us.