Life in the Network

It's hard to argue that the media has changed significantly, even in the last 5 years. As we can see clearly by Time Magazine's crowning "you" as person(s) of the year, the inception of the internet has had a similar effect on the media has it has on the music industry, in the that it puts the means of production in the hands of viewers. However, in the case of television, things aren't quite as widespread. It seems that something the internet has done across the board is put more control in hands of people rather than forcing consumers and viewers to go through media outlets. It's interesting that these means are brought about at a time when the media seems to be increasingly criticized for its ability to really cover news without regard for corporate or broadcasting interests. It's clearly already had a huge impact with the Saddam Hussein execution video and the UCLA Library tasering incident. Now people are able to find their own news and spread it around, rather than reacting to news presented to them. In this regard, I think the transformations that the media is undergoing are positive ones. It’s interesting to consider how this shift in control to the users will affect media some years down the line.

This is a CNN report about the verichip, an identification device that goes inside beneath your skin and holds identification and medical and various other kinds of information on it. Actually it relates to matters of privacy we mentioned before: all the information is on a website and it doesn't appear things are very secure.It strikes me as kind of offputting, but judge for yourself. There's a lot of videos that contend the chip is for complete control of the nation and may actually be the "mark of the beast" mentioned in the Bible book of Revelations (those seemed pretty heavyhanded, so I posted this one instead).