How technology has changed society’s expectations of mass media and culture.
Technology has always had a profound effect on society and
the expectation that good things come from it. With the rise of American
industrialist like JP Morgan, Thomas Edison, Wilbur and Orville Wright, and Henry
Ford have come to believe that anyone with imagination, vision, and drive can
make anything possible.
Mass media and its rapid development have changed society’s
expectations in ways never imagined. I’d like to explore the rapid growth of
the Internet, music, and mobile technology. On Christmas day 1990 the first
successful communication between a Web browser and server via the Internet
happened and today the world wide web gets at least 33 billion pages. Ray
Tomlinson sent the first email in 1971 to himself. The Internet is connected to
just about everyone in some way in today’s modern world. The Internet controls
everything from commerce to entertainment, the stock market and banking.
The Internet has connected the world and has helped us grow
at an unprecedented rate. The Internet has changed society’s expectation that
only the privilege can have access to knowledge. In one keystroke the World
Wide Web has become the great equalizer. Now a child in Outer Mongolia has access
to the same information as a child living on main street USA. If you think about it, this class wouldn't be
possible without the Internet, and this education is changing the lives of students
and the lives of those around them.
The Internet has made old forms of media grow into new
economy. The Internet has transformed the business of music. Until the 1980’s
music and the way we consumed music was controlled by three major corporations.
Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Universal Music Group. These
three companies built monopoly’s controlling the distribution of musician’s
music.
They built inclusive networks of radio stations and concert
promoters to expose musicians to music fans and thus sell records, tape, or CD
for music hungry fans. One of the darkest aspects of this kind of monopoly is that
independent music labels get crushed and there is no real ability to find music
outside music artist.
In the 1990’s Apple put these three major music corporations
on notice in the spring of 1998 and built a completely new way of distributing,
buying, and listing to music. Drastic changes and the advent of widespread
digital distribution of music helped Apple
launch iTunes 1998, this simple music player had the ability to turn your CD
into MP3 files for sharing and personal music libraries. Apple’s move in this
direction help them gain a foot hold in the emerging market that ultimately
lead Apple to introduce the first iPod October 23, 2001. Taking your digital music
on the go gave way to new forms of listening and personally distributing music
among large and small groups of music lovers. With Apples right and left punch
it started a major revolution. It offered a new way to buy, sell, and listen to
music other than the major music distribution streams. Under this new module the
Internet was used to distribute music and share files, it took music companies
by storm.
Mobile technology really has had some similarities in its
growth. Apple brought its version of the
smartphone to a mass consumer market in June 2007, but smartphones have
actually been around in one form or another since 1993. (Tech2. Retrieved
October 22, 2014) But what truly set the mobile market motion was the ability
to use it more as an appliance and not a phone. With features like SMS, email, a
camera, photo and music library, and Apps the phone call became obsolete in
communicating quickly with everyone around you.
Smartphone users check their phones on average about 60
times in a day. Making calls falls to the bottom of importance. Accessing
social media, SMS, and email, is higher up on a user's preferences. Apple once
again had pulled out front of most smart phone companies by linking iTunes,
iPod, iPhone and the growing consumer demand for personalized content. Other
companies today follow the same digital content strategy that Apple has
pioneered. Microsoft and Google are quickly gaining ground as the three giants
vie for position to become today's digital industrialist.
Google, Microsoft vie for title of second most valuable tech
company. (n.d.). Retrieved October 22, 2014. Fromhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-microsoft-vie-for-title-of-second-most-valuable-tech-company/2012/10/02/1c33b532-0c88-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_story.html
Smartphone users check their phones an average of 150 times
a day - Tech2. (n.d.). Retrieved October 22, 2014. From http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/smartphone-users-check-their-phones-an-average-of-150-times-a-day-86984.html
50 Surprising Facts About The Internet. (n.d.). Retrieved
October 21, 2014.
From, http://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos/50-surprising-facts-about-the-internet#18f8ec9
The size of the World Wide Web (The Internet). (n.d.).
Retrieved October 21, 2014. From, http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/
