I’m pretty sure any function it has is replicated on the internet, but I can understand why the French would be so nostalgic about the device. For a people so attached to their language that not a single word is added to its officially recognized vocabulary without a fight, using a device made especially for French speakers is a matter of national pride.

I found Carlson’s comment about the solo nature of internet use versus the communal nature of the television particularly interesting, considering how YouTube has in a way brought things full circle. Whenever I see a group of people gathered around a computer, I can be close to 100 percent sure they are watching a video on YouTube. If not, they are probably watching video or animation from another site.

The other concept I found interesting was the idea that people wanted news sites to complement the newspaper, not replace it. When people began to present news on the radio and later the television, some worried that the ability to report news as it happened would kill the newspaper. But the newspaper adapted to complement live news broadcasting. It gave more in-depth information and analysis.

However, Web sites are now able to give users that same depth of information through hyperlinks while also offering constantly-updated news, videos, photos galleries and sound bites.

Now it seems that what newspapers have to offer is simplicity, the ability to sit down and have a finite amount of text to read rather than being faced with an endless stream of information. Do enough people crave this for print journalism to continue to succeed?

This is in many ways a lesson that media outlets are still learning. But even today the struggle is on to bring traffic to the websites amid all the other options in cyberspace. Almost every news source online now allows readers to comment directly on articles and thereby to feel like the site is something with which they can engage. This fosters a sense of community around the site as opposed to the content of the site and brings people back on a consistent basis. Loyalty is something media companies need now more than ever since subscriptions and the revenue they generate are on the decline.

It also goes toward explaining the outrageous valuation habits now rampant in new media businesses that involve social networking. Still it’s hard to justify spending $240 million for only a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook. But as the history of online media has shown us, sometimes you have to invest for the future without the expectation of making profits in the present.

Interactivity seems to be the word of the day. Miss Daniels smartly adds to this conversation that “Interactivity is what makes these technologies more appealing.” And while I think that is true, I would like to add (because I am embracing the interactive) it can also make them redundant. Not to diss on user-generated sites (I sneak onto my myspace account like 5 times daily) but for the sake of discussion, I’d like to bring up the innate possibility that not everyone has something to say that is new, original or fact.

James Young, is an historian that writes about memory and the compartimentalization of memory through the creation of monuments and memorials. He postulates that the more we displace memory outside of us, giving innate objects the “memory duty”, the less we actually know or remember. I may be an elitist but it would seem to me that we have placed the memorial duty directly into the membrane’s of computers so that the more we rely on these objects, the less understanding we have of our own historical context. So much crap is created, that wading through it to get to those diamonds in the rough can be a very filthy job.
Ok, enough of my old man complaints!

As for the article itself I was most interested in the difference between America’s development of Videotex and Europe’s (like Heather I was shocked the people still use this technology in any form or is that a dated fact by the author because this article is a bit old?). But I have always been interested way governmental control of development can either spur advances or hinder growth because there is not enough capital for exploration.

In this case it may seem that governmental control (not funding because those are not one in the same) did aid the growth of Videotex. This on the surface seems to be a success, but that is only if you believe in Videotex. American consumers obviously didn’t but they created a demand for a more efficient product—The Internet and the World Wide Web. If the US government had pushed Videtex on its populace this might have been different, we might have remained in the semi-static world of digital news absorption and the focus may not have been on blessed interactivity after all. (Make no mistake, despite being a Luddite I can see the positives.)

Oh, one last thing. From the article I still don’t understand what the World Wide Web is? I know what it is not, but still have no clear definition in my mind.

In today’s world, as technology is so rapidly evolving, it seems that consumers wait to get a new technology until it is not so expensive and until they are comfortable that it won’t be immediately phased out by the next new technology.

The article stated that, “electronic messaging has been the single most popular feature of every online system so far created, including the internet.” I am not surprised by this assertion, but I would like to know how he arrives so conclusively at such a statement.

I agree with the other posters on user-generated content as a highlight since the publication of this article. Wikipedia, WebMD, Yelp, etc – are popular examples. I support the idea of free dissemination of information and opinions, but I am worried that these sites are perceived as authoritative sources on complicated subjects. Certainly in the areas of health and nutrition, there are many good resources for information, but there are also many websites that offer un-proven and perhaps dangerous information that people believe is legitimate because of the appearance of the website, or affirming posts by users. I am not sure how to address this issue, but I think it is important to consider

There’s a part of me that wants to think of this as spilled milk. The companies paid that money to stay on the cutting edge, although they bet on the wrong horse. They probably have Beta tapes too. They gambled and lost, but the cause was good: Innovation, technology, embracing the future, rah rah sis boom bah.

But still there’s a knee-jerk reaction. Newspapers, particularly newspapers today, cannot afford to blow that much money. Unlike Kayla, my concerns are not about the advertising money following newspapers online. That’s the future. I’m worried about keeping existing operations going while management hopes and prays that adding online video brings the readers back.

I’m worried about making payroll, buying the paper for the presses, keeping raises, avoiding layoffs, avoiding pay cuts and so on. Every newspaper editor I’ve met chatters about the need to go online and invest more in online. The Web hasn’t failed, but Carlson’s article shows how online journalism has, time and time again.

The difference, of course, is that the Web already exists and Videotex basically had to be invented with proprietary hardware each time. It won’t cost $100 million to put up Web sites. Most can be done with an intern and the paper’s existing copy. But most small newspapers, already pressured by the Web, can barely keep up now. It’s a Catch-22: Not being on the Web is hurting newspapers, the process of getting on the Web can hurt newspapers.

As to the discussion on interactivity, I would have to respectfully disagree with Andrea. Students do learn by doing but with guidance. To continue the analogy a bit, students don’t get to select the textbook or even what chapter to read.

In a more literal vein, when I’m clicking through a paper’s Web site after reading an article, I almost always end up on something inane. I see an ad and click on that. A story with nothing to do with the topic at hand catches my eye. I go to an external link and start clicking around there. I see a word I don’t know, look it up in an online dictionary and then get intrigued by the word of the day and before I know it, it’s an hour later and I’m on Wikipedia looking up where 1990s pop stars live now.

Maybe I’m easily distracted, but I’m not the only one. Yes, it would be nice if people used interactivity to learn as much as possible on one topic, but many people are more likely to end up finding out where the Spin Doctors live now than to continue in-depth research on relations with Singapore.

To me, interactivity is cool and fun. It’s also distracting and uninformative. I’m not even really knocking it. It’s just the nature of the beast. But let’s not pretend it’s the best way for people to get truly informed on a topic.

I would take it one step further and say that now citizen journalism is an integral part of mainstream media. Some of these websites and blogs often scoop mainstream publications. The collaborative mode of journalism, people pointing each other in the right direction to uncover information about a shared topic is influencing the way we view journalism. It is also making traditional news publications reevaluate how they present information to consumers.

Interactivity is what makes these technologies more appealing. We do not have to be spoon fed news portioned out by decision makers on the media circuit. We can take it in whatever portion we like and have innumerous options. That sense of control is worth being tethered to a computer, and in a few years I think we will see mainstream media profitably capitalize on this new interest.

David Carlson writes, “There was no good means to charge users for access to Web-based newspapers – something all previous online services had done – and there were few advertisers interested in such a small audience. This made revenues scarce.”

I get it, money makes the world go round – and the news goes forth, but I am frustrated that these same problems continue to plague the industry today. How is it that newspapers have faced financial problems when it came to Web-based technologies and still have failed to innovate? How has almost no media company found a way to sustain itself online?

Newspapers were unable to fully sustain the Videotex systems primarily due to a lack of funding, caused principally because advertisers were not interested in broadcasting their messages on this new technology. Most newspaper’s Web sites have this same problem today – they simply cannot make as much money off of online advertisements as they can print ads. I wonder how the media can move fully into the online, digital age if advertisers are not willing to make the move with them. How is it that a print advertisement is still more effective (i.e. worth more money) than an online advertisement?

Also, until consumers are ready to pay for their news online like they do to receive their news in print or on television can media companies become fully sustainable? Advertising would be less of a concern if the public was more willing to financially support the media. The systems Carlson writes about failed because the cost was just too high for consumers. Now, granted I can hardly blame the consumers – I wouldn’t be willing to pay $900 for a terminal that wouldn’t work if I moved from Illinois to Florida. But what cost is low enough? I fear for my generation anything above $0 is too much. I know I skirt my way out of fees any way I can. Today, I blame my cheapness on being a poor graduate student but I am not sure my learned behaviors will change much when I am a *hopefully* employed person. Is there any price consumers would be willing to pay? But why bother when you can always find a way to get it for free, right?

On a more positive note, I liked Carlson’s reference to the Star-Telegram’s use of user-generated content on their online service. Startext featured “user-contributed movie reviews, commentary, columns, short-stories and more, all of which helped to build an active online community and an interesting and useful set of information.”

The world’s first Web blog? The precursor to You Tube? Myspace?

The major exception to this trend occurred within the media industry – several newspapers, such as the Forth Worth Star-Telegram, operated at a loss in providing online content during the Web’s less profitable early stages. Only when the Web was able to attract a mainstream audience (and thus higher ad revenues) could the online news sites expect relative financial stability.

Mass communication was another pivotal element that Bush’s model overlooked – Carlson describes email and bulletin board systems as two of the biggest draws for consumers first buying into the Web.

Since Carlson’s article was published, the advent of wireless Internet access has made newsgathering a virtually instantaneous task. Journalists (and citizen bloggers) universally report live from events as they happen, offering audiences even more immediate access to the world around them. As such, the news has become extremely “hands-on” in recent years: News flows in from thousands of blogs from every corner of the world, offering a litany of narrowly-tailored viewpoints for mass consumption. On sites like Wikipedia, users can, for better or worse, weave their own “facts” into communal encyclopedias.

The development of the Web as Carlson describes it – a process driven by a society craving immediacy – has essentially diverged from Bush’s notion of an instrument aimed at examining the past as a means of informing the present. On today’s Web, the present is informed only by links to other versions of the present, pieced together by hundreds of millions of worldwide users.

(Quick sidenote: before reading this article, I was unaware that there’s a distinction between the Internet and the World Wide Web. How interesting that our perception that email, downloads and other such applications exist on the Web is false!)

It’s noteworthy to me that Videotex was considered revolutionarily interactive, whereas now we not only want but expect to interact with our news sources. When I’ve finished a story on www.nytimes.com, I darn well better be able to learn more via related searches or past coverage. I feel like a more informed citizen after clicking my way around the website. Its the classic classroom theory: students learn by doing, not by sitting and listening politely. We don’t want to bear silent witness to the news, but rather we want to have control over how we hear about it.