Internet and Collective identity

Communication is alot easier now then it was in the 1970's or before. In the 1970's letters and telegrams were the most popular way of communicating with friends and family. Morse code and smoke signals were stil used, whereas in the 80's fax and mobile phones were invented. Although mobile phones existed text messaging wasn't available until the 1990's when online chat occured with news groups and bulletin boards. E-mail was introduced aswell as web pages and web conferences, yet nowadays in the 21st century we have all these types of communications and more such as; online gaming, social networking sites e.g facebook and twitter, we have blogs, and file sharing sites along with virtual worlds.

Huge shifts that have occured may seem recent but actually have been manifesting for a number of years. The digital switchover is an example of a technological shift, people now have to have digital to be able to watch the television. Artefacts can now be downloaded people do not consume as many as they used to. Sabbah talked about 'new media' as far back as 1985, stating that there was no longer a mass audience receiving messages they were given, but that audiences now select what they want to hear/see because of the multiplicity of sources.

Today, due to new media sources, we live in a trans-medial society where we are exposed to new forms of technology such as simulations and sx cinema and therefore we begin to have new representations.

In the long term we may be losing our collective identity to the internet. Shifts that occur can affect the our culture as consumers become prosumers, the audience becomes active rather than passive, and experts may not necessarily be experts any more as everyones works or ideas become valid. This may be due to the audience having more freedom with their feedback. In the old media there is a time delay between broadcast and the third party however now it is a two-way intgeraction between a broadcast and the audience. Media are no longer controlled by ologopolies but by the produser. It used to be the bigger audiences that were more valuable, however in the new media it is the smaller communities such as facebook friends or monile phone contacts. The internet contributes to the losses of copywrite as it is so easy to take others works and 'mash' them up with other works and pass them off as one's own. And so maybe this means the end of the artefact.