Audience Atomization Overcome...

Recently I've been watching a lot of future technology shows on the Science Channel centered around either eco-technology or human enhancement technology. It's scary and exciting to think how our world and even ourselves will change in the next ten or twenty years. As someone who was around for the birth of things like the answering machine, the ATM, the web, the cellphone, and the laptop, things that are so prevalent in our lives today they have become indispensable and and at the same time invisible, I know that technology is expanding at an exponential rate. Its ability to affect our lives and our society is almost immeasurable. Given that, it's easy to forget that it is affecting other things besides adding more convenience to our lives.

Technology has been for quite some time, also changing how we connect and relate to each other. Most people are familiar with social networking sites like Myspace, Facebook, and even Blogger, the site driving this website. But it also shaking the foundation of other more unconscious relationships such as the one between us (the audience) and mass media. Jay Rosen over at PressThink explains it in detail. An interesting read for those who are interested in such things (like me).

Now we can see why blogging and the Net matter so greatly in political journalism. In the age of mass media, the press was able to define the sphere of legitimate debate with relative ease because the people on the receiving end were atomized— meaning they were connected “up” to Big Media but not across to each other. But today one of the biggest factors changing our world is the falling cost for like-minded people to locate each other, share information, trade impressions and realize their number. Among the first things they may do is establish that the “sphere of legitimate debate” as defined by journalists doesn’t match up with their own definition.