The networked world

Nonmarket production of information is the main point of my job. For three years I’ve been working in CT24, Czech public broadcasting news channel. Benkler’s note that many people turn to National Public Radio or the BBC is true, especially in the time of crisis, tragedy, votes and other important or endangering situations. People are turning to most reliable source of information which is usually not private, but public. They trust in those institution money isn’t the entity, which can influence spin or core of the message.

Every medium tries to make their news as reliable as possible. Viewing public like live broadcasting, opinions of “normal people” (look mum; they have the same problem with dogs excrements like we J ). Newspapers and TV channels began use features of public journalism, which are supposed to be true, non-edited, non-censored (although it isn’t always true).

One of the reasons of this phenomenon could be that many people are at present suspicious to commercial messages. Everybody is fed up of advertisements, PR articles and one-side news. Solution for them is the internet which obviously offers opportunities to get very deep knowledge of anything. In a few minutes is possible to find opinions from both sides of certain problematic. No wonder then, that many people prefer their RSS feeder to traditional watching news at 8 p.m.

Towards the information society

Sometimes it seems mind-quakes are without any end shaking with my live. Rethinking ideas, resolving settled processes and changing his mind are presently demanded not only for managers of international corporations. Changes and sometimes even big bangs are coming still often. The term of mind-quake is something like paradigm of Thomas Kuhn or Foucault´s episteme J Just the same process we suddenly see from different point of view, the same problems we solve in different way.

The huge mind-quake in sphere of communication which affected whole society caused mobile phones – changed from basics interpersonal communication and deleted space distances between people. Everybody is suddenly available any time, at any place and is awaited to react (answer).

One my fresh personal experience: Because of my mobile I have to be in touch with my girlfriend in Czech Republic every day (I like it of course :-). Mobile is my extension of my communication limits, but on the other hand it makes me many duties. Anybody can talk to me almost any time and I am forced to answer, because I am able to and want to accept the request.
May be it is closely connected to Handy’s paradox of time, which says that people should have spare a lot of time applying modern technologies. It is true that we use spared time to do more, be efficient. But it is normal human behavior from the very beginning – desire to do more, better and faster. Without this desire we would be still Homo habilis :-) Of course, the power needed for this process is to do it with heat and pleasant.

From the most Manuel Castells' network society descriptions I was most interested in theme of global economy and pushing aside people from developing countries. Dehiscent scissors is one of the techno-pessimists arguments. “Western” countries will develop technologies and the poor ones will supply only primary commodities. Approach to Africa is: Give us your stock and we will produce super-cheap notebooks for you. Then you can learn how to use it and if you will be good, you can work for us.

I hope the end could be more optimistic – like in India. Thanks to computer skills many people works on-line for western corporations – not only as a programmers, but also as accounting service, customer service etc. This is actually the next topic: changes in work and employment. No wonder, everything is connected, with both good and well features.