There are several advantages that hinges have over sliding doors. They do not require much maintenance, other than some WD-40 should it start to squeak. Paper has a similar advantage, requiring little maintenance other than careful use.

Sliding doors and technology-based media is much more intensive when it comes to maintenance. Should any part of the mechanism fail, people are literally locked out of the world. Automatic doors require pages upon pages of instruction to function properly (link is a PDF, beware!).  Even the most advanced computers and similar devices need constant updates to function smoothly. Somewhat impractical compared to the hinged door.

Sliding doors are expensive to produce, and therefore expensive to purchase. Computers and other technologies are exclusive of the groups of Have-Nots, while hinges are easy to buy, implement, and use. So continues the analogy. For those who lack the education, money, time or proficiency to purchase or operate a computer, it is impractical to adopt it as a means of garnering information when a much simpler system is available. Paper is the answer.

The hinge is considered the norm because it has been accepted as the most reasonable means of operating a door. Paper has long been considered the norm because of it’s domination of the market until recent years. Hinges haven’t relinquished their hold of the market, and while paper is struggling to maintain it’s presence, it’s difficult to imagine a world without paper.

Then again, a few decades ago, it was difficult to imagine automatic sliding doors even existing…

What an unforgiving statement. Thank you, Tim Burners-Lee, for validating my existence. Thank goodness I have a Facebook. To think, what would happen if I didnt? Would I disappear from the Earth? Would every trace of my existence be erased from the memories of my friends and family? I guess I owe my life to Tom and Mark Zuckerberg. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to exist.

But wait. My mom and dad don’t have a Facebook. And when I Google Dad, nothing shows up. Dad’s never been very computer-compliant. Is he simply a figment of my imagination?

In my opinion, that statement is absurd. The Web is awesome but it is not all-encompassing.  I went and asked some of my peers whether they agreed with Mr Burners-Lee’s ultimatum.  A surprising number of people agreed, that yes, if it isn’t on the web, it does not exist.

This is problematic.  I feel like we’re forgetting something important here.

Oh yeah, what about the Have-Nots?  I know Mr. Burners-Lee would like to ignore the portion of the populace that hasn’t dived into his wonderful invention, but I feel they’re too significant to pass off as non-existant. Those who have either decided the internet is not for them, or have no access to the internet, and therefore no means of leaving a mark of their lives online, are still a part of this world. They have friends and family that love them, they have jobs that require their services, and they have hobbies that don’t include surfing the web.

And forgetting people for a minute, what about tangible items such as books? Not all literature is available on the web.  Of course, most books can be purchased online, and shipped to home, but there are exceptions. Self-published authors may choose to not put their masterpieces online, but surely all that hard work in researching and creating the next possible Great American Novel wasn’t for nothing.  But according to Mr Burners-Lee, it was. 

Its already a shame that less people are reading books, but more and more people are turning away from books completely  and are running to the internet for content.  I wonder if those who believe books have nothing more to offer would agree with Tim Burners-Lee.

 I may have a Facebook, and therefore I comply with Mr Burners-Lee’s standards. But I say to him, I do not need my existence validated by you.

A very favorite comedian of mine had a standup routine that addressed the variation of people’s attitudes towards technology and the internet. He attributed those who were enthusiastic about technology and its advances to have “TechnoJoy” and the opposite, “TechnoFear” to describe those who were apprehensive of technology.

Myself, I lean more towards “TechnoFear”. My computer is smarter than me, and what’s more, it knows that for fact. While I can convince it to run the more basic programs, such as Microsoft Word and iTunes, I have little sucess with more difficult tasks such as finding stowaway viruses or figuring out the inner workings of the system to make it faster or more efficient. What’s more, I’m afraid to try to learn anything new on my own. Just like Eddie Izzard discovered the consequences of tinkering around with technology with no real knowledge (deleting all the files, breaking the new toy after throwing the instructions out the window) I feel I would have a similar experience were I to try to mess with something that’s smarter than me.

While it’s easier to rely on more knowledgeable friends to “outsmart” the computer for me, computer skills, especially in this day and age, are important to have. Obviously, the computer is NOT smarter than me, and I realize this. But boy, those pop-up boxes warning me I’ve done something irreversible just sends me into a tizzy of panic.

Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that I should become a computer programmer in order to be able to survive in this highly automated day and age, but I do realize that my skills are subpar for the demands that my career may have. And I would suppose that my position is familiar to many more people, and the computer programming “TechnoJoy” people are still the minority. Perhaps it’s time to make friends, not only with those who know they’re smarter than the machines, but also with the machines themselves.

Radio survived the onslaught of television. For many years after television’s introduction, radio remained the primary source for news and entertainment.  Granted, this popularity was influenced by a lot of things, including  price, availability of radios and programming, but radio is not defunct, decades after television burst onto the scene.  How has radio survived thus far battling television and now the internet?  Old habits die hard?

While television is currently the most used medium and radio has fallen to third place, a peek at history will reveal that radio survived because of its resilience. During WW II, only 700,000 radios were sold in 1943 because of the scarcity of supplies (source).  Still the pervasiveness of radio, and especially its programs, survived.  From Edward R Murrow’s addresses to FDR’s Fireside Chats, people came to rely on radio to get information they couldn’t get elsewhere.

And maybe this is the answer to newspaper’s woes. Offer something that can’t be found elsewhere. Problem is, what do you offer on paper that can’t be found on the internet, a medium that steals from every other?

Niche marketing. Requiring money for content taken from news corporations.  Advertisements. While these methods are not exclusive of the internet, and indeed, niche marketing might be done best by the internet, it is the only way newspaper can survive.

The reasons for this shift are clear. First, most content on the web is offered for free. As Chris Anderson pointed out, Google has one of the largest profits of any company today, yet all of their services are free. Through decreasing costs to provide services and gaining revenue from ads, they’ve adopted a model that allows them to provide the content for free.  Through mediums such as blogs, Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter and other user-submitted sites, people can participate in ways unheard of in the traditional model. According to some experts, like Andrew Keen, this will be the downfall of knowledge and high culture. Keen maintains that by allowing “infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters” to actively contribute content, the truth will be corrupted and diluted, and knowledge will become shallow and personal. However, scholars like David Weinberger celebrate the ability of the public to discuss and distribute information and and that shared knowledge is deeper than the expertise of an elite few.

 However, the “quixotic” traditional media must recognize its impact, and adapt to accommodate for the new demands that accompany it. Traditional media outlets need to adapt means for people to comment on stories and news, beyond letters to the editor. Not all agree with this idea, as “Sheila” pointed out in her blog, the threats that Keen foresaw are still there. But the benefits outweigh the detriments.   The ability to distribute and discuss topics is paramount to Web 2.0’s success, and if traditional news models can find a way to foster discussions about the news to the point where the discussions contribute to the story itself, that may be the saving grace for the traditional model.

John McIntyre is the managing editor of Content Intelligence, a company that’s trying to revamp keyword searches in the “161 exabyte” internet world.  In a blog post, he analyzed why people are still clinging to rags and old ways, while the new media model assimilates itself.

The answer is surprisingly simple.

 ”First, people enjoy the medium’s portability because they can take it wherever they go, and second, they say the medium contains information they cannot get from another source-information we presume they must deem essential because they often devote precious time to retrieving it.”

He cited portability as the main reason people still read newspapers, meaning that people enjoy having their news so they can read it wherever they go. However, the new technology is going to make it easier and easier to ignore that excuse. With the introduction of smartphones, its hard to say how much longer newspapers can last. 

The Pew Research Center said that young people had already begun to take advantage of this new technology when they ran their study in 2006.  13% of 18-29 year olds claimed they got their news from one or more device like a cellphone, PDA or podcast. 

So with the next generation getting their news from portable online sources, what’s going to happen to newspaper? How can newspapers respond to this infringement on an area they thought they dominated?  In 2020, where will people be going to get their news?

Journalists themselves can’t say for sure, which makes this transition a little scary. What can be assumed, however is that newspapers must adapt to this new media model.  With new technologies coming out all the time, its just a matter of time before newspapers become extinct if they don’t.

2. Thalt shall not promote pointless memes (read: all of them).   Instead, share interesting videos that promote self awareness and stimulate intellectual conversation.

3. Thalt shall not spam friends on Facebook with application invites.  If you truly considered them a friend, you would not annoy them with “Join My Farmville!!11!!!1″ invites.  If they wanted to join and send you a cow, they would on their own accord.

4.Do not “add” people on Facebook or Myspace that you do not know.  Even though people know it’s dangerous, an astonishing number of people do it anyway.

5. If Thou feels bored and peruses the internet at work, Thou must be familiar with the “Alt-Tab” function. The latest YouTube viral video is not worth getting fired over, says WaWaWa.com.

6. When joining a forum for intellectual discussion, Thou shall post enlightening and informative things, and will not call everyone random obscenities.

7. Thalt shall not “bedazzle” a Myspace page or blog. WaWaWa.com does not enjoy loading the graphics, as it is time consuming and gives him a headache from the glitter. He also knows that whomever is viewing the page doesn’t appreciate it as much as you think they will.

8. Thalt shall not use “texting terms” in spoken conversations. “LOL” is not a word.  The omniscent WaWaWa.com knows when you use these terms outside of the internet, and is not amused.

9. Furthermore, Thalt shall observe proper spelling and punctuation when writing on the internet.  WaWaWa.com, while all-knowing, does not posess a decoder to your made-up language, and gets tired of trying to decipher a simple paragraph that appears as though written by a chimpanzee with a limited grasp of English. Also ensure that you provide proper punctuation.

10. Thalt shall not forward chain emails.  We are not in the 1990s anymore. Get with the times.

As recently as July of last year, the Wikimedia Foundation fought a complaint from the Barbara Bauer Literary Agency.  Wikipedia had a submission to an article that labled  Bauer as #3 of  20 of the worst publishing agents and other slander.  The case was thrown out, as the court ruled in favor of Wikipedia because it is “an interactive computer service” and therefore does not allow for prosecution under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act because all of it’s information is user-submitted.

The founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, has recently been taking steps to deter potentially harmful postings made by anonymous sources in articles on living people.  Using a new “flagged revision” system, on trial for two months, submissions will be monitered by editors before actually being posted to the website.  With this measure in place, they hope to limit the number of false and harmful postings people submit, whether malicious or in jest.

Even with all the problems it poses, Wikipedia is a valuable tool for today’s academic.  While probably not ideal for a research paper, Wikipedia does a decent job of providing basic information on a wide variety of subjects.  Under close scrutiny, some of the details of some articles may not stand up, but for the curious surfer, it’s a handy tool for learning fundamental information on a subject one may not be overly familiar with.  The availability of information on a wide array of subjects can enlighten someone on a subject they may have been ignorant about.  The efforts of Wales to make Wikipedia as accurate as possible are a testament that the site is devoted to honest content, but it’s a difficult balance between keeping the ideals of the site, that is the user-submitted system, and the validity of the information it provides.

Bottom line: Wikipedia allows for collaboration of  information, and the value of the availability of that information far outweighs the potential misrepresented information. The opportunity to learn something new should take precedence.  Just read with discretion, and take what you learn with a grain of salt.

If you’re not careful, what you post on Facebook can have devastating effects on your career. A nurse in Stockholm found out the hard way when she posted pictures of herself with a patient during brain surgery.  The pictures, found on her Facebook profile, violated the hospital’s code of ethics, even if the patient wasn’t identifiable through the pictures.   Professionals aren’t the only ones that can be affected by careless posting.  Underage students pictured with alcoholic beverages can face serious consequences, as did more than 100 students from Eden Prairie High School. After pictures of a party were posted on Facebook, the dean called in each student individually and suspended students from sports teams and academic clubs.

Once used as a means of rekindling old friendships, Facebook is rapidly becoming a tool for other uses. If you’re applying for a new job, be aware that potential employers do look at public profiles to determine worthy applicants.  Once you’ve got the job, be careful that your status doesn’t reflect poorly on  your employer or your company, as it would provide grounds for termination.  Be aware that RA’s can see the pictures you’ve posted showing you drinking in your dorm room on a dry campus.  Above all, keep in mind that with the open connections comes new responsibility.