Changes in the media landscape

Do take a few minutes to view this video. :)

Human society is constantly evolving and definitely as society evolves, so does our way of life. With the digital age, many common and simple lifestyle habits like reading the newspaper or a book is starting to move towards becoming digital.

The changes that we see in the media landscape can affect us both in a positive and negative way in our daily lives. After watching the various statistics seen in the video above, there were a few points which stood out which I felt was rather interesting.

In the video, it states that 95% of all music downloaded was unpaid for which would definitely put a huge financial drain on the music industry. As the digital age becomes more and more apparent in our lives, the rules have yet to be set so it is pretty much up to a person's own discretion to evaluate and determine what is right or wrong. It is obviously wrong for someone to take a CD out of a shop without paying for it but it seems like this notion is not consistent when it comes to downloading music. The line between what is deemed right and wrong becomes blurred and even though it is the same thing, the digital factor seems to have a magical effect of turning digital "stealing" into an acceptable and widely practiced phenomenon.

With the increasing use of the internet and social networking sites, a person's online and offline identity can become an issue. As with the incident above, the employee forgot that her boss was one of her friends and made a mistake of insulting her boss on her facebook which ultimately led to her being dismissed. As the internet grows to become a bigger part of our lives, the line between our online and offline personas can become blurred. Our privacy may be at stake and at the same time, we need to all the more be more cautious with what we type or upload because it may cost us dearly like how the girl paid the hefty price by losing her jobs. The internet holds more power than we think as I once read in the papers that potential employers sometimes do a check on future candidates by viewing their facebook profiles to see if they are in line with the companies values. Therefore, it is important to have good identity management both online and offline.

A point mentioned in the video was that in February 2008 John Mccain had raised $11 million for his U.S presidential elections while Barack Obama attended no campaign fundraisers in that same month. He did however, leverage on social networking sites to raise $55 million in those 29 days. This is the power and potential that the internet has to offer and Barack Obama is a shining example of the benefits it can offer when used wisely. I believe that this forces us to change our traditional ways in exchange for newer ways that are more effective and efficient. Granted that this has to be done with the right knowledge and tools however, this is just a glimpse of how the impacts and influence the internet has. I believe that Barack Obama's successful utilization of the internet would pave the way for many others who would follow his footsteps.

There are many other points that I could point out from the video but these are just the few that caught my attention. In essence, I feel that the growing digital age and increasing involvement of the internet in our lives would bring about both positive and negative changes. With it's rapid development, different rules and ways of going about doing things would emerge and would thus affect life as we know it. It will ultimately boil down to the individual and how he deals with the endless possibilities that the digital age will bring.