Juan Monroy — Media Technologies: Media and Globalization

Global Digital Revolution
- worldwide networking
- peer-to-peer communication
- replacing top-down mass media
Wiki
- Ward Cunningham, 1995
- wiki: Hawaiian word for “quick”
- collaborative editing on a web page
Wikipedia
- encyclopedia projects
  - Denis Diderot, Encylcopdie, 1751
  - Encyclopedia Britannica, 1768
  - Whole Earth Catalog, 1968
- wiki: collaborative effort
- Jimmy Wales and Lawrence Sanger, 2001
  - early attempt with Nupedia
  - free encyclopedia
  - accessible by everyone
Wikileaks
- Julian Assange, 2006
- a global dropbox for leaks from business and government
  - a watchdog over powerful institutions
- Chelsea Manning, 250,000 secret diplomatic cables, 2011
- pressure on web hosting companies to shut down Wikileaks
Wikipedia Effect
- people contributing to a free encyclopedia without any reward?
- intrinsic reward
- James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of the Crowds
- Howard Reingold, Smart Mobs
- Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus
Social Media Sites
- Web 2.0 sites
- user-generated content
- walled gardens
- closed from the open Internet and world wide web
Facebook
- peer-to-peer social network
- Mark Zuckerberg, 2004
  - Harvard University
- predecessors
  - university face books, 1990s
  - SixDegrees and SocialNet, 1990s
  - Friendster, 2002
  - MySpace, 2003
- walled garden
  - user privacy concerns
  - digital divide: Internet.org http://Internet.org initiative
Twitter
- employees at Odeo, 2006
  - mini-blog by mobile SMS
  - message broadcast to followers
- popularity exploded at SXSW Conference, 2007
- “culture of generosity”
  - life-threatening emergencies
  - sharing insights into favorite restaurants
- trails Facebook in terms of users and engagement
eBay
- Pierre Omidyar, 1995
- decentralized
- service for users to buy and sell to each other
- depends on the large “network effect” of the Internet
Craiglist
- Craig Newmark, 1995
- started as a free email list service
- replaced newspaper classified advertising
- revenue from “help wanted”ads
Sharing Economy
- peer-to-peer exchanges enabled by the network
- operate largely unregulated in regulated industries
- Uber and Lyft
  - ride sharing
  - displacing taxi companies
- AirBnB
  - travelers and hosts with spare accommodations
  - displacing hotels and bed-and-breakfasts
- Relay Ride
  - peer-to-peer car rentals
- Spinlister
  - peer-to-peer bicycle and sporting goods rentals
Tethered Apps
- mobile devices
- information appliances
- top-down computing
- reinforces the Internet as a closed, walled garden
- contrast to the open computing platforms of open systems
  - open source software
  - Internet
  - world wide web
Long Tail Marketing
- marketing to niche and specialized markets
- Amazon, 1994
  - Jeff Bezos
  - online bookstore
- Netflix, 1997
  - Reed Hastings
  - DVD-by-mail service
  - on-demand movie and television service
- both companies have become major content producers for niche audiences
Principles of Free Expression
- United Nations, Declaration of Human Rights, 1948
- Article 7: equal protection of the law, non-discrimination
- Article 19: freedom of opinion or expression
- Article 29: rights, duties, and freedoms of community; morality, public order, and the general welfare in a democratic society
- democracy and free speech are on the rise
- authoritarian regimes reasserting their control
Technologies of Freedom
- Ithiel de Sola Pool, Technologies of Freedom, 1983
  - convergence of electronic and print technologies in the digital sphere
  - civil society must expand free speech and free press
  - free speech must apply to all technologies
- Ray Kurzweil, 1987
  - Soviet Union would be swept away by decentralized communication
  - satellite television
  - mobile phones
  - 1991 coup, empowered by hackers and teletype
  - “communication empowers”
- John Perry Barlow, Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, 1996
  - not just governments that are powerful
  - corporations can control cyberspace
Political Speech
- United States: First Amendment to the Constitution
  - guarantees right to free political speech, including criticism
  - Obama administration admonished The Innocence of Muslims video during 2012 Arab Spring
  - President Trump has called critical journalism “fake news” and threatened legislative action
- Turkey: president promises to abolish Twitter
- China, Great Firewall
  - internet police: 30,000 censors
  - blocks access to searches to Tiananmen Square
  - Google offered a sanitized version of google.cn http://google.cn, 2006
Reporters without Borders
- Enemies of the Internet
- identified nations that violate Internet freedom:
  - Saudi Arabia
  - Burma
  - China
  - North Korea
  - Cuba
  - Egypt
  - Iran
  - Uzbekistan
  - Syria
  - Tunisia
  - Turkmenistan
  - Vietnam
Religious Criticism
- an important part of Protestant Reformation
- laws and customs against sacrilegious speech
- global communication brings about “points of tension”
  - Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses, 1998
  - Jyllands-Posten, depicting Mohammed in an unfavorable way, 2005
  - Innocence of Muslims, video on YouTube, 2012
  - Charlie Hebbdo, “Where Moslems Come From,” 2015
- Organization of Islamic Cooperation: laws against blasphemy should be reformed or repealed
- United Nations: International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 1969
International Communications Commissions
- commissions to guarantee freedom and flow of expression
- Communication Rights in the Information Age: right to communicate
- UNESCO: Sean McBride report, Many Voices, One World, 1980
  - unequal flow of global communication
  - rich north: industrial West—poor south: developing nations
  - recommendations to develop media systems in the information-poor nations
  - New World Information and Communication Order: international theory of social responsibility
- International Technology Governing Bodies
  - International Telecommunication Union, 1865
  - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, placed under international administration, 2016