by the-real-deal » Sun Dec 11, 2016 9:59 pm
If information was like water and you took a sip of water from a firehose, how much water would actually go down your throat ?
Therefore, a consumer could still die of thirst, even if the source was handy or nearby ?
The real question is, how much will it cost for a "drink" of water ?
Similarly, how much "news" and information could one human being possibly absorb from the internet, a radio station, a tv station or a newspaper or magazine.
The answer is that, like water in the desert, you can still find real "news," (ie journalism) but it is becoming increasingly more difficult to find and thus, you may be tempted to find your news on sites like RadioWest, on other blogs, or on television talk shows, much like drinking salt water or even sewer water.
Therein, lies the problem. When you continously drink from dirty, filthy water, (like the state of journalism, over all ? cloudy, tainted, not very tasty, even putrid) you'll get sick and stop drinking water, altogether, or you will die.
But the internet has enough distractions to lure you from conventional media to blogs, facebook, twitter, websites and gawd knows what.
I would suspect that the leaders of the free world are already picking up on this trend away from conventional media. Donald Trump is running the freaking USA, now, and he isn't even formally sworn in, yet ! Forget the formal inauguration in January. He's running the government, now, on his twitter account, isn't it true !
So are terrorists like ISIS. They use Twitter, too, to make proclamations. Twitter is great because you can say bullshit in less than 140 characters and not have to be specific or even be coherent or answer to the conventional media, which is becoming less and less relevent.
However, I worry, greatly, about the future of the English language, as more young people are becoming more illiterate and the internet is partly responsible for this trend. Eventually, there will be no real journalism, as we know it, because most people cannot spell or even write proper sentences. And, politicians will likely cash in on that ?
Eventually, perhaps soon, governments will be merely virtual governments, run off of the internet, and your daily tasks, taxes, paychecks, rental payments, etc. will be sent to you, and back to them, via email. You will be hired and fired by email, even vote via email or from a website, because it is cheaper, and right-winged cheapskates will just love it !