What is news and what is the impact of the advancement in Technology

This is a very important question to ask. In today and tomorrow's world, news will yet again change as it is constantly evolving. But what will be the effect of this evolution progress? In today's world, freedom of speech is being challenged every day such as the likes of Wikileaks or the the U.S.A constitution.  One of the core functions for a news organization to do, is to produce topics that the social community would like to learn about, or, is it sometimes what the news organizations think we should learn about?

In today's age, news can broadcast to mass audience in an instant with ease. This is a relatively new progression in news distribution but i think one of the main detriments to this outcome is that  news organizations have grew to an enormous size. Hundreds of years ago news traveled by word of mouth or by humans traveling on foot to different city's and towns. The source of the information would be only one of the few with the knowledge of worlds events. Taking this into mind, it would be hard to get a different outlook on the report if they questioned it as communication was limited. Life without the internet, who'd of thought it ?

The 1800's saw the invention and rise of the steam powered printing press machine. This was one of the first times newspapers could be spread on a mass scale.
By the end of the 19th Century Europe and North America were linked on day to day basis by the advancement of the Transatlantic telegraph table . This meant that information was able to be sent and received on the same day which eradicated the need for ships to send messages which took at least 10 days. In the 1930's, the Alexandra Palace mast was turned on, allowing mass audiences to watch the Television. The only channel to be broadcast for the next 20 years would be the BBC, which now had the capability to instill the same message into millions of people.

With the likes of the BBC, CNN and Rupert Murdoch's News International who all either own or broadcast news all over the world, there is growing skepticism about how much independence there actually is in the news industry market. These organizations often report the same story's with slight differences but still with the same core message. As well as this, because of the fast paced movement of news such as news 24, there is always a need for fresh news to be broadcast to the nations. But with this, often comes bogus stories as each organization will broadcast the same news as too not be seen behind there opponent. This became apparent with the so called capture of Saif al-Islam in August. Many reports told the public that he was captured, only for him to turn up on the streets of Tripoli the next day. This was done without checking the source of the information which turned out to be the ICC (International Criminal Court), something which you would of thought would be essential. Reports from the Telegraph and Reuters. Was this just an innocent mistake by the newspapers, or, is this just one of the many cases where the government use News as a tool to instill fear into the heart of Libyans, who had already witnessed NATO missiles and bombs destroying their land. It seems to me that misleading impressions is rife today. It's key to note here that the west will profit around $300 billion from this extermination.

The rise of the internet has enabled any human to become a citizen journalist anytime. It is now possible to get a different angle on the news, through advancements such as mobile's and camera's, images and video's can now be caught on tape and publicized through the internet domain. As well as this, through sites such as twitter and facebook, these files can now be distributed on a global scale. For example, on the day of the 7/7 bombings, the first reports were from civilians in the area who had taken images and videos, which resulted in them being sent to news agencies. It is now possible to be up to date in an instance, even when a news crew is not present.
As well this, it would seem it is getting easier for the population to catch out illegitimate reports and articles as we ourselves become the journalist. Citizens and local officials reported that NATO have been destroying food supplies, water supplies and hospitals, in effect taking out it's infrastructure and committing war crimes on the Libyan population. They alerted journalists to there findings youtube .
There is no doubt that the internet is transforming the way we look at news.

Cyberspace, the final final frontier.

Well not quite, but cyberspace is still being explored by many people and the future capabilities of cyberspace. Some say that cyberspace has the capability to be a literal virtual reality one day that we can step into whilst others say the term no longer has pertinence. Maybe this is just a story from a science fiction novel but if we explore the past, we can see that these "novels" can become reality.

In 1982 William Gibson known as the "noir prophet", first came up with the term "cyberspace" in his novel called "Burning Chrome". Gibson referred explored the term cyberspace and referred to it as the "mass consensual hallucination of computer networks". In some senses this is true because in today's modern world, we undoubtedly delve into the world of networks every single day. Some would say that the term "cyberspace" has no value anymore, as it has now become an evident part of human life which no one thinks about anymore.

 As of June 2011 there is now around 2110 million internet users. After all, Cyberspace has created various mediums which are very useful to us and sometimes essential for our daily chores, for example, Journalists like to be constantly up to date with news and events as it happens. This is now possible because of technology such as Mobile applications which keep you up to date every minute. It's no wonder there are so many internet users which shows no sign of slowing down as more people get connected. Here is a graph from internetworldstats.com showing the growth from 1995-2010.

Cyberspace also has the capability of addiction and fraud. Sometimes at a very dangerous level which can result in possible death. The MMORPG World Of Warcraft is the world's most played game with around 11.1m subscribers as of June 2011. This produces colossal profits for Blizzard(the game maker) but produces game addictions like no other, World Of Warcraft- the new drug.  This game has produced a virtual world where any person can create a character, a class such as a priest or warlock, can eat or drink (even get drunk) and progress with their level to 85. You may think the game would end their, but it doesn't. They have features called raids and dungeons where you can team with other online characters to get gear. All of this adds up to cold stone addiction, with many people playing for years.  Many people get so sucked into the game that there marriage breaks down or has problems. Here is a forum for people who have addicted partners http://www.olganon.org/?q=node/15214. Another problem that has arose is that with younger people, students are failing there courses and are becoming social recluses. In a person's life , the younger years are a vital learning curve in your development to survive in later life. With the younger generation playing these games, they are missing out on vital skills which could potentially effect them for the rest of their lives.

Does history help us understand digital culture?

In my opinion, it is very important to look at the history of digital culture because we wouldn't be where we are with out it. Also at the start of the internet for example it would of been built around some core basic values which like anything else in the world, grow and stay entwined as that idea progresses. It is important to study the core values in a historical way because their are two sides to a coin, there is a lot of good that came from Digital culture but at the same time there are darker parts which need to be explored.

The internet was merely a by product or development from the project ARPANET in which the U.S DOD (Department of Defenses) wanted to make a reliable system in which they could communicate. One of the main reasons was that, they wanted to be able to communicate between research centers throughout the country. Others speculate that the reason for them doing this was because the U.S government was paranoid about their ineffective communication networks which would suffer gravely from a nuclear attack. The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990 as it had become obsolete to NSFNET which was more widely used with a bigger user base. The NSFNET went on to evolve to the internet we know today.

With the birth of the public internet,  the birth of radical freedom of speech and information. was also born. Some of which is disturbing and worrying. Hilary Clinton said "Blogs, email, and text messages have opened up new forums for exchanging ideas – and created new targets for censorship." While ideas and thoughts can be exchanged and developed freely most of the time, there is also a form of war on the internet where different government agencies try to censor information or keep tabs on you. Of course some times these measures are necessary because there are websites which have child porn on or other inhumane forms of torture.

The internet has transformed so much, enabling the common person to have the capability to be an internet policeman. On October 15th the loosely nit hacker/activism group Anonymous who are branded by government agencies as dangerous, found a trove of internet sites on the Darknet ( a hidden form of the internet). The web hosting service Freedom hosting was found to contain sites with immoral images and videos. Anonymous has since closed down the website hosting service and has kept up attacks when it has tried to resurface. Sometimes you could say it is necessary to work outside of law if the government agencies are failing which the internet has encouraged.