Friday, November 23, 2007

Architecture used to be the means of mass communication before the printing press was invented. (According to Victor Hugo anyways, who says that books have killed architecture.) eg. if you were a roman emperor, you'd build a triumphal arch with engravings of your battles to tell your citizens you won, as opposed to publishing it in the newspaper. if you were a priest you'd carve biblical scenes on your churches because people couldn't read the stories themselves. Once printing came around, literacy increased.

One can similarly say that the internet has usurped the utility of books, but if there is a parallel the new medium should also entail a new literacy - just as people learned to read words as opposed to pictures when books came around, with the internet people are learning to read multimedia (photos, blogs, videos) and often multiple authorships.

So if magazines are replaced, I don't think it's being replaced by publishing the same content in digital format, but by collaborative sites like youtube or blogs or even this forum. Blogs are a sort of alternative magazine because they're the voice of anyone, not necessarily a trained journalist. Blogs and forums and message boards are also interactive and allow discussion.

We've actually created a new cultural need: not the need magazines address, which is that of distributing "official" information (most magazines and newspapers have a political bias) for individual awareness and reflection, but the opportunity to publish individual thoughts and creative ideas. Everyone has a say on the internet. The internet is a great place for alternative culture and small amateur independent operations to start up (and grow big if that's where their ambitions lie.)

That shouldn't replace getting your information from official news sources or professional articles. It's a different category of "source." The stuff you read on the internet is in a way not as credible as an official news sources, in other ways more "true" because it lacks a single bias (you'll have multiple biased opinions instead) and it's representative of what real people think.

No comments: