The Future of Television

A little over 60 years ago, the television was becoming popular in American households. Today, in a short period of time, the television industry is already changing. Because of digital media, there is no longer a need for a cable box, but people still have them. So how are television companies responding to this? The physical televisions are becoming “smart”. These TVs have Internet capability so applications like YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix can be easily streamed straight to the TV, instead of the person having to watch it on their phone or tablet. Also, I’ve noticed that television stations will run live specials so people will tune in. An example of this would be Carrie Underwood starring in the live production of The Sound of Music.

I think the future of TV will be online since people are getting more involved with Netflix and HBO Go. I truly think that once the baby boomers die out, there won’t be cable. We don’t hear people of this generation talk about shows on ABC, CBS, etc. We hear these people talk about episodes of Netflix series’ like Orange is the New Black. 

According to The Future of TV Is Here. Can Cable Survive?, by Greg Satell, the access to television is transforming. We can literally access TV anywhere there is a screen and Internet. I think the future of TV will be completely on the Internet, and I can’t say which platform will dominate because I have heard a lot of good things about HBO Go, and Amazon. People may even have different providers because one site may not have what another site has to offer. 

Will Apple TV be the future of Television?!

Wikipedia Post

Throughout grade school and high school, when writing a paper, teachers would always say "don't use Wikipedia, it's not reliable". Like anything that can be edited on the Internet, the website should be taken with a grain of salt. Just because it can be edited by anyone, doesn't mean that Wikipedia does not have the potential to be a source of accurate information.

Many people would argue that the Internet has it's pros and cons, especially Wikipedia. I think a pro for the website is the fact that there is a references section. With this being said, Wikipedia could be used for a fast source when researching. The person could take that extra step to verify the facts in Wikipedia. It can also bring people to websites or articles they may not have been able to find in a Google search.

A con for Wikipedia could be the issue of editing. Fortunately, there is crowd sourcing, but crowd sourcing could also be a problem. Crowd sourcing could be an issue because what happens if a crowd is biased, and the majority of people don't know their facts? Another problem with Wikipedia could be copyright issues. If I am looking something up, I will usually go to Wikipedia to get a general idea of the topic. When I find a more official website, I sometimes notice the same exact content on the website and on Wikipedia. If the source is cited, it has to be cited correctly.

A step that Wikipedia could take toward accuracy is to have scholars edit and review the articles. This was a suggestion in an article put out by "The Michigan Daily". This could be a problem because the scholars could be biased, although they shouldn't be. It would be very tough to select a certain group of people to let edit the Wikipedia pages, because everyone has a bias toward something, major or minor. The article published in "The Michigan Daily" was written in 2011, but it still relevant today because there is still no formal editing when it comes to Wikipedia.

ProPublica Post

ProPublica is a journalism website that prides itself on “journalism in the public interest”. ”Pro Publica” literally means “for the public” in Latin. This website has tons of news stories that can be republished by other news sources. 

To be able to be republished by other sources, ProPublica has a Creative Commons license. This license basically lets other people share someone else’s work, and also, the person who shares it, is legally allowed to build on it, meaning they are allowed to add information to it. ProPublica uses Creative Common licenses because they want to make people more aware of the issues going on around the world. The article states that they want their journalism to have an impact, they want it “to spur reform”. While maybe it doesn’t spur reform, people can still be aware of what is going on. With this license, news sources, like newspapers, can legally share these stories, but they cannot sell these stories under ProPublica's “NonCommercial” license. 

ProPublica benefits audiences by making their information available without legal hassle. Also, it could make the local news more interesting. In this article, I read that there are many news sources that use information from ProPublica, one source being The Trentonian, a newspaper right across the river. These stories are good content and they make people think. If the people think, then ProPublica may reach it’s goal of spurring reform. The articles on ProPublica are not articles we would see in mass media, and they reveal real problems, instead of the entertainment news people are so worried about today. 

ProPublica uses a Creative Commons license, which differs from tradition media. Traditional media uses copyright. Stories that are copyrighted cannot be shared, and if they are shared, the person who shares it must make it known that it is not their original content, or else they can be in major legal trouble. Also, I could not take a story posted by 6abc and build on it, like the Creative Commons license allows. 

I don’t think ProPublica will be the future of traditional journalism. While many people believe what they read on the Internet, some take the Internet with a grain of salt. Since ProPublica is a collection of news stories from different journalists, it may appear untrustworthy to someone who usually doesn’t look at these sites regularly. To me, their website doesn’t look professional, and it is unorganized, therefore, I wouldn’t travel to the site. If people are like me, I can’t see this being the future of journalism. Excluding the website set up, I still can’t see this being the future of journalism because people take pride in what they do, and many people want credit where credit is due. People probably won’t want to write a story, and have other people share it and possibly build on their hard work. I know I personally wouldn’t want that if I were a journalist. 

Diffusion of Innovation Post

“Traditions of Research on the Diffusion of Innovation” was written in 1963 by Elihu Katz, Herbert Hamilton, and Martin Levin. The diffusion of innovation is how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread between cultures. The process of diffusion is viewed through a sociological point of view, an anthropological point of view, a rural sociology point of view, and through mass communications. This paper focuses on the definition of diffusion of innovation through the eyes of a sociologist. The ways innovation can reach different cultures is through 1) acceptance 2) time 3) item 4) adopting units 5) channels of communication, 6) social structure and 7) culture. Each of these are important to the success of innovation, and how technology is important to our daily lives.

Acceptance is how people start to recognize innovation. Whether it’s a radio or cell phone, people need to know what is out there and how it can affect their lifestyle. Acceptance and time are similar to each other because they are both hard to study. Let’s take the iPhone for example. No one really remembers when having an iPhone was acceptable and how long it took for the item to become popular; it just happened all of the sudden. Since some people don’t have a definite answer on why they accepted the iPhone, or any smart phone of that matter, into society, acceptance is hard to research. The authors say that “where information on time is available, date of ‘first use’  is frequently employed as the measure of acceptance” (Katz, et al., 240). The problem with this is that just because someone accepts it at a certain time, doesn’t mean that is the time when the rest of society accepted it. For example, my mom got her first iPhone 4 when the iPhone 5 was coming out. At that point, the rest of society accepted iPhones, she just accepted hers at a later date. She integrated to the iPhone life because everyone else in the family had one, and while we were all talking about them and the updates and iMessage, she would be sitting there with an EnV 2 not knowing what to talk about. 

The specific item that is trying to become a part of culture is also important to innovation. Back in the 30s, a radio was considered a big deal. Today, if a company wanted to release a radio, people wouldn’t accept it as much because now we can get the radio anytime, anywhere on our phones. How do we distinguish what an item is today, though? Back then there were radios, televisions, phones, and cameras. Now, all of those things can fit into our phones. Is an item an app or is it the thing you play the app on? If it is considered an app, how can we measure the popularity of an app? By downloads? Probably not. The popularity of apps fluctuate all the time. Angry birds was really big back in 2008 and 2009, recently, they just came out with an Angry Birds 2. I don’t know anyone who downloaded the game, but that doesn’t mean it’s not popular. 

For an item to become popular, it has to have the right channels of communication. We wouldn’t see an iPhone commercial on Nickelodeon or Disney Channel, and we wouldn't see a toy commercial on CNN. The companies have to have a target audience to market to. These people who see it become the adopters of the innovation, and they found the innovation through these channels of communication. If the channels of communication are effective, there will be a greater chance of people adopting the product. Channels of communication used to be print advertisements, TV, and radio. Today, we have all of those things, plus the digital ads that are produced by cookies on the internet, and the ads that are within our apps. Like the other factors, how do we measure this? Click on the ads? If someone clicks the ad, that doesn’t mean the product has been successfully sold. Since technology is always changing, it is hard to measure how a product spreads and becomes popular. You’d think that because we have advanced technology, it would be easy to get the facts, but since this is abstract information, it cannot easily be done. 

Digital Media and Society (Blog Response 1)

Digital media has become a crucial tool in our society. Today, mostly every thing we do involves digital media. A lot of people access digital media, whether it is on a computer or on a smartphone. To me, digital media are tools that we can engage in conversation on, tools we can use that connects us to the Internet at anywhere, at any time. 

The American culture is shaped by digital tools. Postman says that “tools become the culture”, and I agree with this because the majority of people have smartphones, and a lot of people are on social media. I can’t watch TV without the channel trying to get me involved with some kind of discussion. As I am writing this, there is a show on the History Channel, and there is a hashtag in the bottom right corner. Why do they want me to engage so much? Can’t I just watch the TV program in peace? Postman says that “the main characteristic of all tool-using cultures is that their tools were largely invented to do two things: to solve specific and urgent problems of physical life” (Postman, 23). Do digital media solve these problems?  Some would argue “yes”, and others would differ.

Smart phones are a good example of digital media that people use to interact with other people. Because there is a new platform for human interaction, society is changing. Although the smartphone itself is not digital media, the applications ran on the phone are digital media. We can access websites, social media sites, video, and audio all on a smart phone. Smart phones have also changed society today by making everything faster. We can do everything from getting answers to a question, to ordering a Chipotle order so we don’t have to stand in line, almost instantly. Because we can do these things relatively fast, the impact of this technology will affect consumers. This doesn’t always have a positive impact. Because we can Google information so easily, it is not necessary for us to retain the info we read because we can always refer back to it. Since we are getting used to the speed of things, people have the potential to have little patience for things that take time. 

Article on smartphone use and society