Even if you've never heard the name Rupert Murdoch, you'd have to be living in a cave not to have heard from his empire, News Corp, it's holdings include any company with Fox attached to it (20th Century Fox, Fox Television, Fox News) newspapers including the Times and the New York Post (click here for more) Needless to say he's a media giant controlling almost 1/3 of the company. If you want to read the Wired Article you can find it here.
What really caught my eye was not so much that Rupert has further strengthened his media ambitions with the recent acquisition of MySpace.com, but rather the theme running through the article: audience driven content, audience produced content. It made me think back to the August 2005 issue of Wired which looked back at 10 years of internet boom and bust. One article in particular looked at how wrong the experts had been about how the web would form and be used. The number one point they failed to take into consideration was the amount and content driven by the users, not big business.
Articles like this really make you realize that the internet and the information age have changed our lives, society and planet in ways we couldn't have possibly imagined. You also start to realize that we still haven't even started to tap the internet's full potential.
Albert-Laslo Barabasi's book Linked: How Everything is Connected to Everything Else and What it Means for Business, Science and Everyday Life. looks at how networks form and the interactions that occur within a web, with particular attention paid to the internet itself. I have admittedly not finished the book, it's a bit labored and repetitive dragging on without raising many new points.
The power of the internet is that it further reduces the ability of multinationals and governments to control people. It allows for the free flow of information and thought; while the recent terror related arrests in Canada and Florida have shown that this free flow allows the circulation of evil ideas as well as good, I think overall the net affect is positive. Any platform allowing the communication of thoughts, the sharing of experiences, especially across borders and cultures will only increase our ability to realize that all in all we're not all that different. This isn't some "let's all get along" shtick it's the simple fact that distrust, misunderstand and poor communication are the common thread running through any conflict regardless of whether it is a dispute across the street or on the other side of the world.
