I thought that this introduction talked about how everyone is starting to use different types of digital media in their everyday lives. Be it using flickr to post photos or using sms text messages to organize flash mobs. The information economy is going through a change from the industrial information economy to the new-networked information economy. This is making it easier for people to access information and keep up with all their friends on social networking sites such as myspace, yahoo and facebook. But as Ito said, “technology does not stand apart as an external force impacting society and culture but are embodiments of society and culture.” Technology is just expanding society and culture so it is more readily available to more people.
I found it contradictory that in the beginning of the introduction when Ito was talking about how all these new Peer-to-peer and many-to-many networks were such good things for sharing media, that at the end of the introduction he said how harmful they could be. How they are invading people’s privacy and becoming harmful to some. If they were so great then there shouldn’t be all these issues with sites like facebook and myspace.
This introduction led me to question whether or not these sites should be allowed if they are not doing or being used for what they should be. Also is all this change good? If this information economy becomes completely networked then what happens if the network crashes? Will our information economy be destroyed or will we be able to return to the way things used to be?
