Computer Networks :: essays research papers

Computer Networks Computers by themselves are useful tools. But once they are interconnected, they surge in usefulness and suddenly become media. One computer is connected into a network which is then patched into a network of networks. Computer networks have the potential to break the monopolies of media institutions. With networks, there is a shift from centralized, one-way media to dispersed, infinite-way communication. Every audience member in the world can at the same time be an information provider. Channels of information creation and distribution become cheaper and broader until we have limitless bandwidth and storage capacity. This technology comes with a cautionary note. Every emergent media technology has been hailed as the harbinger of popular expression. Yet each new media is used for commercial ends by those in control of power. Newspapers, radios, and television have become institutionalized and continue to institutionalize as they are purchased by larger and larger conglomerates. Adver tiser-supported media has become a top-down business. The audience is, after all, not the consumer in television. That role lies with the sponsor. The sponsor purchases advertising time and decides what it is they want to support. Television, and other media forms, are dominated by these sponsors supporting what they perceive is what their consumers want, or what they want their particular product to be associated with. The question is whether computer networks will go this route. Computer networks are prone to some of the same problems as traditional media. Though anyone can place something on the World Wide Web, it becomes increasingly difficult to make that web page known to the general Internet audience. Large media-entities are able to create flashy, innovative sites that make personal sites look frumpy, and quickly passed over. An analogy can be drawn between television and the Internet. Anyone can videotape a subject, and with a little time, edit it into a program. But compare the quality of what the private individual can make within their budget (an 8mm video camera, perhaps two VCRs for dubbing) versus television companies with hundreds of thousands of dollars. But computer networks have several saving graces. Distribution becomes limitless. Television, radio, and even newspapers (due to high publishing costs) have limited bandwidth. Computer networks can carry virtually limitless amounts of data at piddling costs, "the electromagnetic spectrum is not scarce but nearly limitless" (Gilder 129). That private videomaker can not distribute his video independently unless he is very wealthy.