The internet has shifted the news from a portioned to a streamed mode of consumption. A news feed in social media is an example of such an information stream. The news teasers in social media represent, in essence, the wave–particle… Read More ›
Media ecology
The Quantum Theory of Mass Media (I). What is the unit of media consumption?
Now, what is a quantum of mass media content? The length of any piece of content gets shorter and shorter as the formats for delivering the content get cropped to satisfy the consumers’ ever-shrinking attention spans. But how small can… Read More ›
“The Daily Me” now also means producing personal content
The internet looks full of junk, but the news that people consume is in fact filtered very well. We visit certain websites, click certain links, and follow certain bloggers. In doing so, we convert our preferences into a virtual newspaper,… Read More ›
The Revolt of the Public and Media Ecology
Marginal notes on Martin Gurri’s The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium (2014) Most Westerners would be surprised to learn that many Easterners consider Tahrir-type protests to be cunning plots by the West… Read More ›
Lenin and billions of man-hours of free time. From passivity of TV consumption to activity of social media contribution
Television swallowed up millions of man-hours of free time by drawing people into a shared passive addiction. Prior to the age of TV, never before had such a large number of people done the same thing at the same time…. Read More ›
The social function of the news
Originally posted on the fifth wave:
In his brilliant little book, Human as Media, Andrey Miroshnichenko provides the following explanation of the news business: The journalist’s profession is about picking up on the social demand for consolidated pictures of the…
The next Big Thing: simulation of mind or replacement of body?
Efficient simulation of mind will win the technological race with efficient replacement of body Space transportation, teleportation, human resettlement into a better body – all these things are both too primitive and too complicated. They are going to disturb the… Read More ›
