“Internet” as “an international computer network linking computers from educational institutions, government agencies, industry, etc.”
That description made the ensuing “World Wide Web” sound like a vast conspiracy to undermine our societal foundations.
How true! (Or so it seems.) In the past decade alone, the internet and wireless telecommunications technologies have seismically shifted the way we communicate, conduct business, access news and information, teach and learn, travel, spend leisure time and socialize. In his new book, What Would Google Do? (Collins Business), blogger and City University of New York Professor Jeff Jarvis Collins suggests that companies and individuals have to alter the way they think and act and follow the lead set by internet behemoth Google if they hope to survive in our evolving world.
In the Concordia University Magazine’s world of print media, the changes are coming fast and furious. I’m a long-time subscriber to Time magazine and, in early 2009, Time Inc. informed me that it was closing shop on its Canadian edition (although it would continue to send the U.S. edition). A few weeks later, I learned that Canadian printing giant Transcontinental was ceasing its publication of The Monitor, a weekly Montreal newspaper that had been around since 1926. The online version, themonitor.ca, remains available.
This year promises to be an uphill battle for newspapers. The February 16 Time cover story offered a prescription on “How to Save Your Newspaper.” (Answer: pay for online content.) Even the future of the Gray Lady herself, The New York Times, is in question. While it appears as though Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim will step in to save her, even the shadow of doubt over the continued viability of the iconic institution is clearly a sign of the, um, times.
Our current economic situation would endanger these print publications regardless of other factors. But there’s no denying that an increasing number of people have altered their media consumption habits and exclusively access news and opinions from online sources, via wireless or wired computers, BlackBerries, iPhones and a plethora of other gadgets. The trend to virtual from tangible is unlikely to reverse itself.
Is paper-based media all but dead? Not quite. Most of you are probably reading a print version of this article and will likely continue to gravitate toward print publications in the foreseeable future. Rumours of print media’s total demise are premature, according to Concordia Journalism Professor Mike Gasher, who once sat on this magazine’s editorial advisory board and serves as director of the Journalism Department. He also heads the Geography of News Project, which examines the differences—apparently, less that you’d expect—between the print and online versions of newspapers’ international coverages.
Professor Gasher is among the umpteen Concordia researchers and pedagogues tackling the various issues surrounding the internet—and helping to distil truth from myth. Our cover story, “Webbed and Wireless” (page 8), features Gasher, along with nine other, Concordia professors and six alumni whose work is related to wireless telecommunications and the internet. (If we had the time and space, we could have added countless more faculty members and alumni!)
Our subjects’ areas of interest— including education, business, website design and web access for the less-privileged—contrast widely. Yet, their work and research are giving birth to alternative means to tap into the internet’s potential, build better tools to leverage it more effectively and securely, and advance our understanding of ever-changing technology and accompanying mindsets.
These Concordians are making this “international computer network” seem less conspiratorial.
