iPad Discoveries

On Wednesday, April 20, Apple announced the official date and time for the release of the much-anticipated iPad Wi-Fi + 3G model. The product will be available in stores and delivered to U.S. pre-order customers on Friday, April 30. Apple released a statement claiming that the new iPad, “allows users to connect with their apps and content in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before. Users can browse the web, read and send email, enjoy and share photos, watch HD videos, listen to music, play games, read ebooks and much more, all using iPad’s revolutionary Multi-Touch™ user interface. iPad Wi-Fi + 3G models are just 0.5 inches thick and weigh just 1.6 pounds—thinner and lighter than any laptop or netbook—and deliver up to 10 hours of battery life for surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching videos or listening to music, and up to nine hours of surfing the web using a 3G data network.” I believe that this announcement is important to new media because it is an advancement in technology that we have never seen before. Like we have stated in class, the iPad is essentially this generations Swiss Army Knife and I am excited to see what other gadgets and additional features will evolve from this model.
On Sunday, April 25, Israel lifted a ban on iPads over concerns that they would interfere with other electronics. After tests were conducted on models confiscated under the ban, results proved that the device caused no such interference, and the 20 iPads that were confiscated are being released to their owners. The article on Mashable.com states that the ban was, “frankly bizarre, and perhaps Israeli startups can now get on with developing a multitude of new iPad apps.” However, Israeli officials still seem cautious to the device and are inexplicably limiting iPad imports to one per person. I believe that this article supports the idea that Americans are culturally more accepting to new media than people in other countries. And I believe that your society has grown so much already and we will only continue gathering knowledge and essentially adapting to advancements without even knowing it.

The Machine

According to Vannevar Bush, “Science has provided the swiftest communication between individuals; it has provided a record of ideas and has enabled man to manipulate and make extracts from that record so that knowledge evolves and endures throughout the life of a race rather than that of an individual.” Bush predicts that science will continue evolving and will provide faster communication between people. He states that in the future, the Encyclopoedia Britannica will be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk and millions of people can have access to it. Machines with interchangeable parts will be constructed with great economy of effort. In spite of much complexity, they will perform reliably. The world will arrive at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it... A future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library that stores ones books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It will act as an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory. In one end is the stored material. Personal files and business correspondence are obtained and dropped into one place. And there is provision for direct entry. On the top is a transparent platen. On this are placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, and all sorts of other things. Kevin Kelly believes that we have come to that age and are already preparing ourselves for the future.
Kevin Kelly states in his speech, “The Next 5000 days of the Internet” that in the last 10 years, amazing technological advancements in science have been made. With the emergence of the Web, we now virtually have all of the information we would ever need right at our fingertips. According to Kelly, everything will be connected to one machine, and that one machine will be connected to the Internet. The Internet will be something that we are surrounded by and always connected to. From our clothes to our cars and the groceries we buy, everything will have access to the Internet. Kelly claims that society will have to give up personalization to be transparent. Just like the alphabet, we will learn to adapt to the Internet in our lives and make it seem normal over time. The next 5000 days will be smarter. Our computer’s operating systems will know us. It will know what our favorite sites are and will recommend more information based on our opinions, thus making us more transparent. Kelly predicts that we will be right in the middle of the Internet. It will become a part of our lives everywhere.

New Media & Politics

The article, Political Communication - Old and New Media Relationships reflects upon the ways television has changed the political landscape. It also looks into how far new media, such as the Internet, are displacing television or reconfiguring the political communications ecology. Since the 1960s and the JFK/Nixon debate, television has held the center of the political stage, assuming a “co-producer” role. Television gradually moved from the role of observer of events and provider of stories and emerged as definer and constructor of political reality. And without necessarily breaching journalistic norms, television came to have an impact upon the events it covered and how they were covered. Networks like FOX and NBC began to favor different sides when covering politics, setting different agendas. It is these reasons that the Internet is now taking the spotlight.

Since broadcast news limits what we learn on different topics, we are looking to the Internet for additional information (the same goes for newspapers). The article states that a majority of Americans who accept new media get political material from blogs, comedy sites, government websites, candidate sites or alternative sites. Furthermore, data shows that younger people are more heavily represented among new media users, suggesting that the trend will accelerate. Since 2004, the number of Americans citing the Internet as their first source of presidential election campaign news has increased by almost twenty-five percent. Sites like Facebook and Twitter are also finding ways to attract their audiences towards politics. The viral energy of the blogosphere, social network sites, and wikis constitutes a new flow of incessantly circulating publicity in which reputations are enhanced and destroyed, messages are debated and discarded, and rumors are floated and tested. President Obama’s decision to use Facebook as a source to reach out to young voters could be considered a key component in his election. It allowed him to open up to a specific audience that he knew he would not reach on any other media.

Television must find a way to incorporate the Internet in its broadcasts to maintain its dominance as a political source. However, it will first face consequences before it will be a success. Although television still performs a public service function, this function is struggling to survive in an increasingly market-driven, competitive media environment. Broadcasters must now be able to operate across media platforms and engage collaboratively with a broad spectrum of off-line as well as online communities. Now it is required to produce 24/7, cross-platform content, sometimes at the cost of journalistic depth and even accuracy. Overall, the media and politics will continue to be mutually dependent. I believe that in time, collaboration between the Internet and television will be made and our country will be exposed to a new form of gathering political information.