![]() ![]() But the realization of these opportunities is dependent, first, on the inclination of humans to exploit them in creative ways and, second, on the capacity of entrenched stakeholders in both the private sector and the state to use such tools as copyright, regulation, surveillance, and censorship to stand in the way. The Internet is a technology that unleashes powerful opportunities. Technological change, inflected by economic incentives and regulatory constraint, guarantees that today’s Internet will be as remote by 2025 as the Internet of 2000 seems today. What we think of as the Internet in the advanced industrial democracies reflects a particular regulatory regime through which states allocate rights to intellectual property and, through regulation, influence the cost and potential profitability of investments in different kinds of networking technologies (Benkler 2006 Crawford 2013). Participation is even lower, of course, in much of the Global South.įinally, what we call the Internet is a moving target, a product not only of technological ingenuity but of economic strategy and political struggle. For those on the wrong side of the digital divide, the main impact of the Internet may be reduced access to public and commercial services that have migrated online. ![]() Second, when we talk about the role of the Internet in the lives of individuals, we must not forget that the technology is still absent from or only marginally part of the lives of many persons, even in the economically advanced societies, where between 10 and 30 percent of the public lack broadband access (Miniwatt 2013), many of those who have access fail to reap its benefits (Van Deursen and Van Dijk 2013) and far fewer actually produce online content (Schradie 2011). But the Internet will not make the politically apathetic vote, or the atheist go to church. The availability of these affordances may change behavior by reducing the cost (in time or money) of certain activities (e.g., watching excerpts from movies or comedy shows) relative to other activities (watching network television). They provide affordances (Gibson 1977) that allow us to be ourselves, to do the things we like or need to do, more easily. The reader should be aware that talk about the Internet effect, although at times a useful shorthand, should never be taken too seriously, for at least three reasons.įirst, technologies don’t change us. I will consider these economic changes, but also discuss the implications for creative workers and for the public at large.Īt certain points, I may use language that implies that the Internet has had an effect on the world or on its users. ![]() For many of these creative fields, the Internet has been “a disruptive technology” (Christensen 1997), reshaping industries and rendering long-established business strategies unsupportable, while introducing new ways to organize production and distribution. In this essay, I consider the impact of the Internet on the arts and media, focusing, though not exclusively, on film, journalism, and, especially, popular music, which serves as an extended case study. ![]()
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