media

The mediastore will replace today's both DVD rental and music stores. It will only serve digital media, that customers will load onto their personal storage devices, such as USB flash drives or iPods. They will also be able to order it to be placed online, to later stream it from home.

The value of the mediastore will be the same as today's video or CD store: to find current media in an environment designed for findability.

As far as media are concerned, on the Internet it's enjoy first and pay later (maybe). If I like it enough to want to support your thing.

Microsoft is the most successful software company on Earth. Does it owe its success to better engineering? I hear the masses of netizens ROFLing. Besides, they acquired most of the software that they sell. No, Microsoft owes its success to excellent marketing - too good even for their own good but that's another story.

In general, a for-profit company spends a sizable amount of money on advertising.

I've been using the Internet as a culture box. I am referring to that part of TV that is supposed to enrich our personal and collective culture, rather than dumb us down by lowering our standards as consumers of media. That's what the Net can provide and in increasing quantities.

Here are the tools I am using so far in no specific order:

01 A computer hooked to the TV and to the sound system. In my case, I am running a Neuros LINK which is an Ubuntu box configured for HDMI TV and Surround audio output.

One core tenet of media is "the more you repeat something, the more people will believe it." This is why we are bombarded with advertising - so that the brand name occupies a larger region of our minds.

Unfortunately, whereas advertising is simply driven by the desire for profit, other applications of media are even less commendable. I am referring to the political uses of media, that have given us among others the first tragedy of the 21st century, 9/11, as the century had just been born.

How does media - the discipline - manage such success?