Jour1111 Lecture 2 Monday 30^th July 2012

Week 2 of my journalism journey, and I had already nestled my way back into the University lifestyle. So much so that I sluggishly rolled out of bed, groaned about not wanting to study and shuffled my way into class with a blank expression on my face. That was until I saw one of my new mates, and suddenly Uni was fun and exciting again. We gabbed on for a bit until Dr Redman came in and the lecture began. This time we got straight into things and were taught about probably one of the most central aspects of modern day life, the world wide web. Basically to date, our internet has evolved in three stages:

Web.1  was the original web model, invented by British engineer and computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee and was primarily created to benefit business. Companies used the web to advertise and promote themselves and there were no particular use for everyday people other than to look up businesses. Eg. Personal posting/ interaction were unheard of.

Web.2 saw the evolution of social Media, or “web for the people”. Myspace, facebook, and twitter come under this category, and provided everyday people with an international platform/voice box in the comfort of their own homes. The average Joe could now become a personal producer and entrepreneur, all at the click of a button.

Web.3 Is the current stage web evolution. It is called the Semantic web, were all basic information has meaning. We want to make sense of everything as consumers and regular users of the internet, as well as primarily focus on content specific to our own interests.

At this current point in web evolution we can super specify our searches. This is better known as “hyper localization” where we can look up crime information and property sales to street names, even “google” a bird’s eye view image of our residential addresses. Which is a little too ‘Sims’ extreme or ‘Big Brother’ if you ask me!

“EBAY KILLED CLASSIFIEDS- WEB NEWS KILLING JOURNALISTS”

Finally we discussed entitlements. Where Dr Redman included everyone in a simple here have these jelly beans, now that you’ve eaten them pay for them exercise. This was to reflect consumers web entitlements, more particularly to free news. For years now web users have been able to freely access current affairs and news for no charge beyond paying web providers for internet access.  This is problematic of us up and coming journos now that newspapers and magazines are on the out, because nobody will want to pay for information they can currently get for free, and if no one pays for the information journalism provides there will be no future as a working journalist. This issue is slowly being combatted by news companies like the online Herald Sun supplying “exclusives” one must subscribe to for fees as small as $1 AUD to access. Talk about slow start, but you’ve got to start small and build your way up!

Image origin: Jody Kihara. 2011. http://www.jodykihara.com/books/monsterzine/monsterzine-preview/. (Accessed 31/07/2012)