Communication Infrastructures

1
Communication Infrastructures

• Thom McCain
• 2006

2
Perspectives on Media, Culture, Politics, and
Economics

• Two lenses
• Political economy
• Technological evolution
• How people use media How people are used by
  media
• Implications for the public interest

3
Communication Infrastructure

• Below the surface and usually taken for granted.
• Necessary for all human societies
• Other Society Infrastructures
• utilities (heat, water, etc..)
• transportation
• banking/money

4
Stakeholders and Convergence

• A stakeholder is an organization, public or
  private, with a substantial stake in the
  outcomes of alterations in the infrastructure.
• The Old Four Communication Industries
• newspaper/book/magazines (print, content)
• telephony (wires, no content)
• broadcasting/cable (air wires, content)
• computers (hardware, software, no content)

5
Online Learning

• Most college students today (90) will take at
  least one course online.
• 70 of college classes today are computer
  enhanced
• The political economy of course management
  systems and other software is driving many
  teaching/learning decisions
• K-12 Educations fastest growing trend is in
  online schooling
• Cyber course catalogs
• Cyber schools
• New stakeholders in K-12 learning are changing
  the landscape

6
Markets, Technology, and Policy are inseparable
aspects of the same phenomenon
7
Global Flatteners (Thomas Friedman)

• Berlin Wall cold war
• Netscape goes public from a PC platform to an
  internet based platform (TCP/IP, HTTP, VOIP,
  etc.)
• Work Flow Software interdependent production
  and re-assembly Paypal ebay)
• Open-Sourcing self-organizing collaborative
  communities (apache, moodle, sakai)
• Intellectual Commons
• Wikipedia the peoples encyclopedia
• 250,000 articles in English
• 600,000 articles in 50 other languages
• Freeware

8
Flatteners continued

• Outsourcing sending work to other places
• want fries with that?
• Offshoring moving the whole factory to another
  country
• Supply-Chaining Eating Sushi in Arkansas the
  Wal-mart effect
• Collaborating horizontally among suppliers,
  retailers and customers to create value
• Insourcing What the guys in funny brown shorts
  are really doing.

9
Flatteners

• In-forming Google, Yahoo!, MSN Websearch
• Play on the googol, the number represented by
  numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros
• The opposite of being taught
• Reputations damaged earlier and more often
• Always tell the truth, that way you wont have
  to remember what you said (Mark Twain)
• The Steroids digital, mobile, personal
  Virtual
• Todays students have never known life without
  them

10
Critical arguments about changes in infrastructure

• Locus of control
• central authority -- switching
• periphery -- desktop
• Funding Options -- Economics
• advertising
• subsidy/tax
• subscription
• combinations of these

11
Access, equity, ownership

• Private vs. Public
• Cross industry ownership
• Monopolies, duopolies, oligopolies
• What about access for those who cant afford it?
• Haves / Have Nots
• Knowledge Gap Theory

12
Content/function/application

• Should the infrastructure be for information and
  learning?
• Should the infrastructure be for entertainment
  and play?
• What is the publics interest in all of this?
• How does the publics interest get known?
• Government policy
• Marketplace of goods and services
• Public Opinion

13
From Information Age to Conceptual Age Daniel
Pink

• Neuro Psychology
• Left hemisphere controls right side of body,
  right hemisphere controls the left.
• Left hemisphere sequential, right hemisphere
  simultaneous.
• Left hemisphere specializes in text, right
  hemisphere in context
• Left hemisphere analyzes the details right
  hemisphere synthesizes the big picture

14
Abundance, Asia, Automation

• Abundance
• 70 percent own homes (13 are 2nd homes)
• Self storage -- 17 billion industry
• U.S. spends more on trash bags than 90 other
  countries spend on everything
• Asia
• One in four IT jobs will be offshored by 2010
• Automation
• Big Blue beats Kasparov

15
Recap of the Pink perspective

• The scales are tilting in favor of R-directed
  thinking.
• Abundance, Asia, Automation
• Boosting the significance of beauty and emotion
  and accelerating individuals search for meaning.
• Increasing need for relying on skills that cant
  be shipped overseas
• Requiring L-directed professionals to develop
  aptitudes that computers cant do better, faster
  or cheaper

16
The Six Senses of the Conceptual Age High
Concept High Touch

• Design
• Story
• Symphony
• Empathy
• Play
• Meaning