Good read – 05 10 11

Twenty years ago, W. Russell Neuman wrote, in the opening pages of his The Future of the Mass Audience

“[Print, broadcasting, and telephony media companies] currently enjoys a highly profitable tradition of business practice. The market boundaries between these sectors are based on a series of evolved social conventions for the repertoire of media appropriate for each category of human communication. A single integrated electronic system for high-quality video, audio, and printed output will make such artificial barriers less meaningful. As a result, each corporation in these fields will soon face three or four times the previous number of determined and well-financed competitors for its business, a prospect about as welcome as an invasion of Vandals and Visigoths.” (p. x)

“The hero of the piece is communications technology, or at least its increasing capacity to enhance communications and empower the individual to control the communications process. There is no villain per se. There are, however, social, economic, and political forces that threaten to constrain, to limit, and perhaps to prevent the new technology’s potential for intellectual diversity and openness. But if there are to be heroes, powerful oppositions are required for a true test of their mettle.” (p. 5)

And tested they have been…