Web 2.0, the shared land

Nowadays, if you want to share your thoughts, ideas or knowledge, the easiest way is the opportunity that the Internet gives you. As I’m doing right now, everybody can write their opinion, their thoughts and even their feelings and share them with people from any part of the world. People can sit down in front of their computers and speak freely, for instance, about their problems or worries. But the strange thing is that they will probably receive feedback from other people, strangers, who advice them or support them unselfishly. Blogs, forums, youtube… There are a lot of different ways of expressing oneself, sharing their hobbies, exchanging ideas, etc, and these webs let you share this with millions of people!

People use these webs not only as a way of expressing themselves, but also as a big source of information when they want to know more about a topic. For example, when you are writing an essay, you prefer to look for information on the web, because is faster than searching the same information in the books. The final amount of information that we can find on the web is the wisdom of the crowds result. But why do people spend their time on sharing the information they have with strangers?

As we can read in the article “Time person of the year: you” by Lev Grossman, webs 2.0 have made possible the creation of an enormous community where people help one another for nothing, or rather, this community has made possible the existence of these webs, feeding them with knowledge, videos, etc. In other words, Web 2.0 is the shared land, a place made of little contributions of millions of people who decided to spend some time of their lives for doing something for other people… And that’s nice.

But this “social experiment” also has its dark side. What would happen if people used this shared land in a mob way? In the article “When the ‘wisdom of crowds’ turns on itself” by Harrison Hoffman his author talks about this problem. Although there are a lot of people who use the web to share information and help other persons, there are people who use this space in a wrong way too. If people use this common space to introduce wrong information on purpose, will the Internet users lose their faith in these webs? What do you think?

FILE SHARING AND COPYRIGHT

When people can get free things just with a click, they don’t really think of Copyright and all this stuff. In the movie “Good Copy Bad Copy” one of the interviewed says that music industry can’t compete against what is free. So, if it is so obvious that there is a problem with copyright laws and that they can’t stop piracy thinking of how they should punish the offenders, why don’t they change the strategy?

In my opinion, all these businessmen must think of the causes of this problem. Why do people prefer download movies and music instead of buying the CD or the DVD? And how can they convince the consumers that they must buy their products? And also, how can they profit from the current situation?

In the documentary “Good Copy Bad Copy” there are some good ideas about how they can solve the problem: for example, about music industry, they can sell the CDs after the concert. Internet could be a way of promoting their products too.

But why have we reached this situation? I think it is because of the outrageous prices of their products. In my opinion, going to the cinema, for instance, has become a luxury. I remember when I was a child and it cost less than the half of its current price. Now, you have to think it over before going.

And about music, I think there are people that just want to try new music, and because of the prices of CDs, they don’t buy them unless they really like them. And how can they know they really like the whole CD? If they have listened to them before, they will know. So, if they really like the album, I think they will buy it just to have the original.

Therefore, as a conclusion, I don’t think that they can stop what is happening right now. Technology is within reach of everyone. Internet is like an opened door of possibilities. But if they changed the strategy, and they took the opportunity that Internet provides to them, they could have more profits. If they continue with the wrong idea of punishment, they will probably catch the main sources of piracy, but they won’t stop the whole thing. So, I invite them to change their minds and confront the current situation thinking as businessmen and not as angry bosses.

COMPUTER’S ERA

                                                                                                      

 After a hard day you come back home just thinking of relaxing. You sit down on your chair, stretch your legs and look at your computer that has been waiting for you all day long. “What would I do without you”, you think then. But the truth is that this indispensable machine in your life didn’t exist some years ago.

Computers are young machines that have become indispensable for a lot of people. They are used for working and for fun, and we spend a lot of time in their company. But, how were these wonderful machines created? We find the answer in this documentary, “Triumph of the Nerds“, that not only lets us find out how hard the process of creating this machine was, but also it shows us the persons who were involved in its birth (who are called “nerds” because of their appearance and their habits, I guess).

After watching this documentary a question was floating in my mind: After the moment “the nerds” started earning that amount of money, what were they thinking of when they worked on their computers? Had they got the same enthusiasm… or did the pure process of creating become the money search?

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