The feudalization of the Internet: When CODE is Law

The Internet landscape is changing and slowly being over run by feudal Lords. From medieval times where feudal Lords owned the land and had power over the people, today feudal Lords like Apple, Amazon and Google are controlling cyberspace by accumulating online property and developing ‘walled gardens’ and tethered appliances, which aim to regulate the open and free source of content the internet offers. This is causing barriers to entry, economies of scale and puts limitations on the supply of content. This is not what the Internet was created to be.

Content is becoming tied to platforms and devices; as well as copyright controls and licencing fees have been introduced. Jonathan Zittrain shares in his book ‘The future of the Internet and How to stop it’ that in the online environment code is law. Zittrain conveys that those who control the walled gardens or tethered appliance are in control of the user’s behaviour and content. Ted Mitew shares in his presentation on the feudalisation of the Internet that the iFeudals/web Lords control the user’s permission and data if they use their devices or platforms. He states that there’s no way round it, but you can break it! If you can change the code, you can change the medium and the message. The key is taking control over the endpoint. Control resides with the end user, so if you know how to build your own computer from scratch or code, you can enforce your own law. Peter Denning, Former President of the Association of Computing Machinery states, “Learning to speak the language of information gives you the power to transform the world.“

According to Clay Shirky, the Internet was intended to impose no barriers to entry, no economies of scale, no limits on supply. Don’t limit your Internet experience – Learn to code!

Convergence Culture driving the Classroom

With the rapid increase of convergent media came the digital education revolution, and the enhancement of learning moved its way to the forefront of Federal Government concerns with the introduction of the laptop program in 2008, with high school students exchanging textbooks for laptops and tablet computers. But the role of these new digital technologies has brought more challenges to the government, teachers and the students than the Labor party thought.

Robert Miller shares in his article that the digitization of education has caused a paradigm shift in the nature of human communication, transforming pedagogical functions and student learning as well as financial pressures to stay up-to-date with the latest technology. With funding for the Federal Government’s laptop program set to run out in June 2013, the future of looks rough for some schools. The convergent technology that was purchased in 2008 has been surpassed and students are now bringing to class devices from home to keep up with changes. The president of the NSW Secondary Principals Council, Lila Mularczyk, recently made a statement about the issue that “…technology can never be a one-off investment and you have to sustain it with particular infrastructure, with professional learning, with curriculum development and with learning devices and they will differ as time changes and that is moving far more readily than we can predict…”.

Has the government jumped shark on this issue? Greg Whitby, head of Catholic Schools in Sydney’s west comments that “the issue is around the teaching not the tool. We’ve let the type of tool, the nature of the tool, drive the process.” Convergence culture is transforming so fast it’s overtaken the classroom – the very thing it was meant to enhance. How can schools keep up with the tech trends, future budget cuts, let alone the professional development to put it into practice? The role of emerging technology in society will always cause a relational tension between media audiences and industry culture. But on the bright side, there will always be opportunity for innovation in education because of convergence. What’s next though…we’ll just have to wait and see – because it’s driving!

“Journalism is in fact history on the run” – Thomas Griffiths

Convergence effect on user practices has caused new communication practices to be formed. Convergences affect on media technologies has not only enhanced user practice but has enabled audiences to become prosumers in media. Audiences are sharing and contributing in new ways, no longer just consuming media but producing it. This new change in media practice from unidirectional to the directional model has caused audiences to form relationships with media institutions. Journalism originally an institutional practice has now become a niche practice with a new form of journalism emerging called citizen journalism.

In Quandt’s text ‘Understanding a new phenomenon: the significance of participatory journalism’ he interviews some of the key stakeholders in the media industry and asks their opinion on citizen journalism and the benefits of user generated content. There were mixed views, but an obvious divide – the technophile view that supported the idea of participatory journalism and the older journalists who had a fearful view and perceived it as a threat to their media pipeline of power. Now there are legitimate pros and cons to both arguments, but the fact is journalism as a profession is transforming so fast, research inclines us to believe that this participatory environment is inevitable. The question is how will this change effect the professional journalism culture? I think it will have adverse effects, but I want to focus on how this participatory culture is adding new life into the journalism field.

Recently an Unknown Australian Band goes to number 1 in iTunes because of their own online social media campaign. New forms of journalism are emerging and is showing up in the form of blogs, multimedia videos, podcasts, vodcasts, illustrations, comics and social media campaigns. Advertorials journalists once generated through paid PR networks are now competing with a larger and influential prosumer network. Traditional journalists are now reporting on prosumer content and amateur journalists are now contributing to the journalism network forming ‘proam’ relationships – professional and amateurs working together. Where is this relationship going in the future…no ones quite sure. But we can be sure that when the next big technology development happens, its going to change everything again.