The Raise and Fall of Medias - A Note to Dave

Well, I don’t want to burst the bubble BUT - thinking that having the internet would free us from the need of having the media as “the middlemen” is daydreaming…

Dave Winer of THE great Scripting News forecasts that:

“In the future we won't need middlemen.
Why?
Because the Internet disinter mediates.
Which is a fancy word for "gets rid of the middlemen."
Or, if you prefer, "gets rid of the media."
All that's left when we go through 2.0 and 3.0 and 4.0 is nothing but information and people and lots of more efficient ways of connecting them.”

I’m sorry to let you down Dave, but the internet is another media(!) [Maybe even a mass media, but that’s another discussion]. Meaning, different means of communication rise and fall (Bonfires, the railroad, post, Morse, newspapers, landline phones…) but the media itself never falls. We always have some kind of mediation between ourselves and the endless amount of information.

These Medias organize (professional term would be “frame”) the information so we could better understand and utilize it in our daily lives. We need that framing since we can’t know it all (what’s going on in the other side of the world, how to forecast the weather, how wanted-ads are ordered, etc…).

But being the “pipeline of information” and having the “framing position” gives the media a lot of power in hand: what gets in-or-out and how it would be presented (in the news, in the headline, in the encyclopedia…). For example, the term “gay” (referring to a homosexual man) can’t be found in the dictionary which is practically a consequence of an editor’s decision and his\her (social) power. The “pipelines of information” which control the flaw and give it its form, generate the big money and obviously hold the greatest power.

I agree that the internet has brought many changes to the world of information, to our accessibility and to our part in the process of producing information (web 2.0 blah blah…). But don’t be too naïve thinking it’s not a media (a.k.a. "a middleman") and thinking that internet itself(!) would help in getting rid of that unwanted mediation…

I couldn’t resist the temptation to end this post with Marshall Mcluhan’s most famous quote - "the medium is the message”... :)

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