Paid content: global consciousness — what cost?
In the FT there’s an article in which Rupert Murdoch announces all Newscorp sites will charge by 2010:
* http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7f6edc2c-821f-11de-9c5e-00144feabdc0.html
It’s thought that this will encourage other content providers to likewise “gate” certain content to subscribers only. This means even if the link gets streamed via Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook wall or whatever and we are notified about the article, we won’t be able to read the content and contextualize it collectively — since not all of us may be subscribers to XYZ site.
Now, what impact is this going to have on global consciousness if we can’t share that information and have conversations around it and from there determine our collective activism or action? Some of us will have all the original source information to facilitate contextualization and decision-making. Some of us will have 0 original source information and be entirely dependent on others’ subjective transmittance of what they’ve read. Some of us won’t even bother to participate in the conversations because if we don’t have access to the same content at the same time and via the same media, what’s the point?
Call this ironic or a Twain-ism, but yesterday I was watching the Google Tech Talk on global consciousness again:
Whilst I appreciate and understand some of the speakers’ positions about “talk is cheap” (and so we should be discussing climate change solutions online more), Rupert Murdoch is showing that content has a cost.
If content has a cost, then so will contextualization services and, ergo, Net consciousness.
I tend to agree with Vint Cerf. We have to take into consideration the incentive model, “What motivates individuals to participate in global consciousness?”
