Your preferred source for news

[Slice of Life]

BTW, Narona, I wonder if you confuse books with what they stand for. Or maybe stood for. I love books, I have a large library right behind me, including two world histories in 10 and 16 volumes. But neither could answer the question when rice came to Europe which came up the other day. (Based on an epsiode of which anime? Not hard to guess ...) Not that I even tried, of course. Since wikipedia -> rice answered the question in 2 minutes. One could say who cares ... But that's not the mentality on which libraries were founded, is it.

[Narona]

Originally Posted by Kusa-San

True, for the moment at least.

Yeah, i can see how a factory worker will need internet in the future. /sarcasms (don't hate me)

Maybe to find a job, but there will be place for that, in which there'll be computer linked to websites that help you to find a job.

But after that, I want you to explain to me how a factory worker will need internet at work.

That's remind me something very important, Internet is not the same kind of media than a book or a TV. It's a tool for communicating and the difference is very important. Futhermore, I think paper book will maybe disaspear (but maybe not) for digital book (e-books). So in the end, Internet is not a threat source for book but just a different support for book. In the future, you will download a book via internet and then read them on your e-book !

I would hate that.

I'll create a Books made of paper and ink defence force.

Also communicating... I encountered classmates who became internet addict when it comes to talk to people, while they almost stopped to talk with their family and siblings.

I consider that a problem, even if medias don't care apparently.

Sadly, you can't since you have too much (many ?) club

I'll harass xris till he accept to change the limitation For the sake of books, true books

Well I think it's important for parent to know how internet works since their children will surely one day using it. There is too many parents who know nothing about internet but let their children use it and it's not acceptable ! And I'm sure that there is many people who don't know about DoS, DDoS, phishing etc...

My mom doesn't use internet, but quite guessed how it can be dangerous for a kid. For example, knowing that people can post what they want, and that there is a lot of porn on it, can make you guess a lot of things.

So I think in our country, there are actually some (at least) parents who just don't care, whether they use internet themselves or not.

That's true (and I agree with total freedom) but if you know how to use it, you know how to avoid internet traps.

Depends. I didn't know what was danbooru, and one day somebody told me to go there. I am an adult so I don't care to have discovered it was a perverts nest. But I would not like to see my kids (if i had some) ending up on websites like that. Even if I block this website at home, if they use internet, they will not do it exclusively from my home. So they might end up on websites like that.

So where's the trap? People say it is an image gallery for manga and anime. How I am supposed to guess that it is a trap?

I have to google every website before clicking, and it's a pain

[Alchemist007]

User since 2008 huh? Well myself having been using it since middle school, you'll eventually figure out how to spot suspicious sites if you haven't already. With a place like Danbooru you can figure it out just from user comments. Most of the sites I go on aren't from word of mouth though, but paste of link.

[Narona]

Originally Posted by Alchemist007

With a place like Danbooru you can figure it out just from user comments.

The one who sent me the link by PM just said it was an images gallery (not that it was not true, but still)

[JMvS]

Originally Posted by Narona

I would hate that.

I'll create a Books made of paper and ink defence force.

Count me in.

Originally Posted by Slice of Life

BTW, Narona, I wonder if you confuse books with what they stand for. Or maybe stood for. I love books, I have a large library right behind me, including two world histories in 10 and 16 volumes. But neither could answer the question when rice came to Europe which came up the other day. (Based on an epsiode of which anime? Not hard to guess ...) Not that I even tried, of course. Since wikipedia -> rice answered the question in 2 minutes. One could say who cares ... But that's not the mentality on which libraries were founded, is it.

The key word here is time: I also rely on wikipedia to answer simple questions, as it is much faster and up to date than going trough an Encyclopaedia.
But that's it, it won't replace a whole library so easily, but only the encyclopaedia.

And there is much more to books than just encyclopaedia: as reading a book not only provide you the information written down, but it also allows you to feel the perspective of the authors. Another reason why I enjoy well written newspaper, as they can give a radically different view of events.

On the matter of rice for example, wikipedia provide a good summary of informations, but cannot be compared with all the informations I came across reading western and eastern cooking books, history books, books on agriculture, UN publications that came for the Year of the Rice, ethnological books, etc...

Being a Uni student now I have to rely on library network and their databases, and even if ALL the texts past and present were effectively numerised, there still would be a long way to go for them to be as accessible and easy to work with.

Also, for me the data contained within the internet and other electronic media are too fragile to totally replace the traditional medias. People and time can corrupt them too easily (for example, my state had serious problems preserving datas as medias age incredibly fast, IIRC most data of the Apollo program was similarly lost).

So I feel that the ones who think that netbooks and such will replace libraries are mostly peoples who are just not readers (well, having spent most of my child- and teenage-hood exploring libraries I might be biased in my definition of a reader).

[Kusa-San]

Originally Posted by JMvS

So I feel that the ones who think that netbooks and such will replace libraries are mostly peoples who are just not readers (well, having spent most of my child- and teenage-hood exploring libraries I might be biased in my definition of a reader).

Hum sorry but the digitisation is something which will most likely happen in the future. It's just a modification of support, that's all. It's not like the contents will disaspear But I understand that people don't like that ^^ It's just that for me, it's unavoidable.

And you know, nowadays even some librairies has digitized

[Evil Rick]

Internet and newspapers for me. I don't watch tv a lot so I'm not in with the News programs.

[-KarumA-]

internet -> TV -> newspaper
I usually watch the news in the morning or afternoon, however the Tv news is a lot slower than the internet news and skips a lot of things I find important (if you ask me TV news here is too much influenced by what the government wants us to know.. I'd rather have something more independent)
I read the newspaper a couple times a week while in my train to school or when we get it here at home.. but again they skip a lot and are slow (at least a day slower but that is obvious), however for my region the newspaper is a lot better
I prefer internet above TV because it is direct and free, though they want to make it so that you need to pay for internet news (not gonna happen XD)

[Slice of Life]

Originally Posted by JMvS

The key word here is time: I also rely on wikipedia to answer simple questions, as it is much faster and up to date than going trough an Encyclopaedia.
But that's it, it won't replace a whole library so easily, but only the encyclopaedia.

My point was that the Internet is an essential tool to spread and retrieve information. If you want to spread and retrieve information that is (see below). My point was not that we should just burn all libraries now and dance happily around the flames as you seem to think.

Originally Posted by JMvS

On the matter of rice for example, wikipedia provide a good summary of informations, but cannot be compared with all the informations I came across reading western and eastern cooking books, history books, books on agriculture, UN publications that came for the Year of the Rice, ethnological books, etc...

Sometimes you don't want to "come across" an information but want it here and now. And not everybody has easy access to a big university library.

Originally Posted by JMvS

Being a Uni student now I have to rely on library network and their databases, and even if ALL the texts past and present were effectively numerised, there still would be a long way to go for them to be as accessible and easy to work with..

And being a scientist I have to rely on the internet without which scientific progress would virtually come to a standstill these day and age.

Originally Posted by JMvS

Also, for me the data contained within the internet and other electronic media are too fragile to totally replace the traditional medias. People and time can corrupt them too easily (for example, my state had serious problems preserving datas as medias age incredibly fast, IIRC most data of the Apollo program was similarly lost).

There you have a point but this is something we will have to organize, individually (-> sound backup strategy for life) and as global society. NASA's main problem was probably not spreading the information in the first place.

Originally Posted by JMvS

So I feel that the ones who think that netbooks and such will replace libraries are mostly peoples who are just not readers (well, having spent most of my child- and teenage-hood exploring libraries I might be biased in my definition of a reader).

At best, this can be read as "people who don't think so highly of books as I do don't think so highly of books as I do" which is clearly void. At worst you're saying "people who disagree with me don't count because they lack the experience I have" which you can pull when arguing about hard facts and when you have the relevant diploma to wave with. But not in this case.

Also, I wonder if you really want to side up with Narona who seems to prefer books more than the internet because in comparison books allow you to more easily control and restrict instead to spread and retrieve information which is what they were invented for. Quite a decline of a medium, huh? Gutenberg is spinning in his grave. Although the battle for the free internet (and digital information in general) has yet to be won so one might as well argue the other way around. Amazon deleting 1984 and Animal Farm (alas, not Fahrenheit 451 which would have been even more ironic of course) from everybody's Kindle should still be fresh in memory. Lacking control over the content is my argument against e-books for the moment.

[Irenicus]

My answer to SeijiSensei's answer is unfortunately very simple: the Internet. I don't have regular access to daily newspapers, weeklies, or some combination of print media thereof, and when I do they usually don't prove all that much better to the much more convenient internet.

I read some of those big blogs, visit BBC news, and sometimes when I visit forums topics in their general sections link to news sources whose topics they are discussing.

Oh, and as for TV: cable news don't give me news. They give me headaches and things to get pissed off about. FOX anyone? Heck, CNN too. MSNBC isn't even in my radar. Every time I overhear something from them it's either things I have to laugh off as shallow dumbing down, filthy talking head polemic, or repetitive logo-touting nonsense. Thank the gods for the Internet. At least you can click the back button away from their bullshit.

Originally Posted by JMvS

The key word here is time: I also rely on wikipedia to answer simple questions, as it is much faster and up to date than going trough an Encyclopaedia.
But that's it, it won't replace a whole library so easily, but only the encyclopaedia.

Nobody (except for those wiki faithful types...you know) ever say that wikipedia should replace a library. Wikipedia could, however, replace an encyclopedia's use as long as the reader is discerning enough to realize which article is acceptable and which one is full of it (hint: talk page and/or common sense).

And there is much more to books than just encyclopaedia: as reading a book not only provide you the information written down, but it also allows you to feel the perspective of the authors. Another reason why I enjoy well written newspaper, as they can give a radically different view of events.

Don't internet blogs also do this? If anything, it's even easier and faster to compare the Huffington Post to...whatever the conservatives like these days rather than Wall Street Journal vs. the New York Times.

Or fiction written over the internet, for that matter? I'm a fan of books, but I also regularly read fiction online. If anything, the forum post format (or some other format) can allow authors to engage with readers in different ways than the venerable novel. Being a fan of fiction in general, I find the different potential of different mediums all the more exciting.

On the matter of rice for example, wikipedia provide a good summary of informations, but cannot be compared with all the informations I came across reading western and eastern cooking books, history books, books on agriculture, UN publications that came for the Year of the Rice, ethnological books, etc...

Yet SoL wasn't trying to study the topic of rice in-depth. He was looking for information about a simple answer, which is pretty much all you could get from a traditional encyclopedia too.

Being a Uni student now I have to rely on library network and their databases, and even if ALL the texts past and present were effectively numerised, there still would be a long way to go for them to be as accessible and easy to work with.

Also, for me the data contained within the internet and other electronic media are too fragile to totally replace the traditional medias. People and time can corrupt them too easily (for example, my state had serious problems preserving datas as medias age incredibly fast, IIRC most data of the Apollo program was similarly lost).

Actually, as a historian-in-training I think me, my fellow students, and indeed my professors all recognize the immense potential the Internet has for the profession. More and more each day sources both primary and secondary are being digitalized and uploaded online to be accessible in academic databases. As of right now they are terribly incomplete and weeks of being holed up in the library are still necessary (and they will be for a long while yet...primary sources, in particular, only lend themselves to digitalization in limited ways), but even then they are already very useful. Imagine the situation ten, twenty years from now: what riches there will be on the almighty virtual landscape!

As for loss of data, that's a matter of system. Properly set up and maintained a database shouldn't see much, if any, loss of serious data. Think google. In the same way, a library exposed to bad situations experience similar catastrophes. I mean, sure, modern libraries are good at this stuff nowadays, but when one look back into history, one would find countless scholars who lamented at the loss of precious, precious documents in the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, or the burning of Qin's capital Xianyang, or the dispersal of a library whenever its noble patron gets snuffed...

[Narona]

Originally Posted by Irenicus

As for loss of data, that's a matter of system. Properly set up and maintained a database shouldn't see much, if any, loss of serious data. Think google. In the same way, a library exposed to bad situations experience similar catastrophes. I mean, sure, modern libraries are good at this stuff nowadays, but when one look back into history, one would find countless scholars who lamented at the loss of precious, precious documents in the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, or the burning of Qin's capital Xianyang, or the dispersal of a library whenever its noble patron gets snuffed...

What JMvS means, I think, it's that you need nothing to read a book, just your eyes. And it can be conserved during a very, very long time in a dry and dark place.

My personal opinion is that keeping archives of datas on paper is important. Just in case.

[Kusa-San]

I just want to add something : I love book too ! Just to be sure that people don't misunderstand me

Anyway the main problem with the digital is that's a young support but in the future it will be really efficient. But I tink it's important for important data to have different support. So I think there will always be book.

[solomon]

Im skeptical about blogs, as any one can write them.

I read newspapers online, other than that, NPR for broadcast. Commercial tv news is pretty useless outside of disaster coverage.

[JMvS]

Originally Posted by Slice of Life

At best, this can be read as "people who don't think so highly of books as I do don't think so highly of books as I do" which is clearly void. At worst you're saying "people who disagree with me don't count because they lack the experience I have" which you can pull when arguing about hard facts and when you have the relevant diploma to wave with. But not in this case.

Please notice that I myself admitted being partial (being a bookwork and so), my (badly explained) point was that all the hype about netbooks replacing books in the near future is neglecting a few points, data preservation being the most crucial perhaps, with other practical aspects.
They are great for "consumable" reading: when you want to quickly access something you will only quickly go trough, such as news or a single read novel.
But they still have a long way to go to replace books as we know them: flippables, resilient, usable in most environments, in a no-tech environment, and most importantly, almost unaffected by static decay for decades, centuries if not millenias (unlike the internet which requires a constant (actually growing) flow to preserve it's informations, all electronic support being rather short lived and prone to static decay).

On a side note, while during my researches for my thesis, I use internet a lot, publications databases and on-line publications being a damn useful tool.
But I also have to do with a LOT of older publications which are not as easy to access (well it depends on the field you work in of course, and mine is the one that makes you consider something lasting hundreds of millenia as a punctual event ).
As the numerization (not just scanning) of all publications and writings will take considerable resources and time. I somehow fear that future generations, safe for a few intent specialists, will become cut from a significant part of our legacy by a reverse technological and cultural gap.

Also, I wonder if you really want to side up with Narona who seems to prefer books more than the internet because in comparison books allow you to more easily control and restrict instead to spread and retrieve information which is what they were invented for. Quite a decline of a medium, huh? Gutenberg is spinning in his grave. Although the battle for the free internet (and digital information in general) has yet to be won so one might as well argue the other way around. Amazon deleting 1984 and Animal Farm (alas, not Fahrenheit 451 which would have been even more ironic of course) from everybody's Kindle should still be fresh in memory. Lacking control over the content is my argument against e-books for the moment.

I am more inclined toward Narona's opinion, as I enjoy clear labels and preservation in general. Internet is a formidable tool, but I admit being irritated by all the "noise", and the information decay I encounter; it is unparalled for spreading information, but sometimes retrieving feels like fishing blindly in an infinite ocean.
Maybe a keyword is "clarity", as the new technologies also allow better and more discrete control from the very top. (Reminds me of a record about the evolution of press in Myanmar: newspapers were heavily controlled after publication and potentially dangerous articles literally cut from the newspapers, leaving holes in them, now they are still controlled but with modern editing and impression techniques the newspapers are all neat ). We are probably doomed to all become cynical in a greying world...

It isn't my field of research, but wasn't writing precisely created for recording and precise transmission? the collective memory being so prone to oblivion and deformation... now that the written language, after the last centuries of it's evolution, seems on the way of overtaking (if not totally replacing) the oral language in all it's aspects, I wonder what will come after .

[chikorita157]

I usually get most of my news off CNN and also for tech sites, mainly TUAW, Macrumors, Enadget, etc. Sometimes I read it via RSS using Times.app which allows you to read all your news like a newspaper.

I don't really read the news paper since I'm on the internet often, but I keep up with current events in contrast to most who aren't very informed what is happening in the world.

[Claies]

Everything I do is online. I read the newspaper for more in-depth information, but they tend to be late by current standards.

I go for BBC and Reuters for official news. Sometimes, special interest blogs like Kotaku and TechCrunch tend to get news out faster at a potential cost in accuracy, but if I actually care about whatever breaking information they bring up, I'll go research it, so it doesn't matter. They're more or less tip-offs.

[ZeBird0]

NY Times online ftw man! Free newspaper

[blue skies]

…Only a few of you guys read newspapers?

Not that I’m surprised; the newspaper industry is in bad shape, plain and simple. The emergence of digital media has drastically changed the face of the news industry altogether, but no medium has been affected as profoundly as newspapers. It seems like I constantly hear about layoffs and staff cuts and newspapers folding left and right. As a small-fry journalist just out of college, I feel extremely lucky to have what I do right now.

Most of my friends and other people I talk to prefer to get their news from the Internet -- which I can understand. There is a plethora of advantages to the Web that neither newspapers nor television can offer. People have much more control with news on the Internet – they determine exactly what they access, how they access it and when they choose to do so. Obviously, this isn’t the case with T.V. or radio or print journalism. A reader or viewer can find out what’s happening right now instead of waiting for a newspaper to come or the television anchor to get on with it after 2323989 commercials. Any kind of news you could want -- from the most obscure to the most heavily reported -- is at your fingertips. Consumers are no longer at the mercy of traditional news companies.

While the Internet continues to grow and gain users, traditional forms of media will have to reinvent themselves and adapt in order to remain relevant. Newspaper sales dropped more than 7% last year and continue to struggle while the Web thrives: audiences for online newspapers increased more than 10% as circulation numbers fell. Several newspapers have gone online-only, the highest profile of which being the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. There is no easy answer to reversing the newspaper decline, but most of the ideas I’ve heard revolve around focusing on original content and local coverage. Whether it will work or not is a mystery to all involved. Broadcast news has also been affected by online news, and will have to adjust accordingly.

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

I'm especially interested in the intersection between these technological trends and the political context in which they occur. Do people in states with stricter government controls over media outlets turn more often to the Internet to get a less-biased view? If so, is that true of older citizens as well as younger ones?

Spoiler for saving space, if only a little:

China’s an easy target, so I’ll pick on them.

PRC’s government has a chokehold on the media; subjects such as Falun Gong, democracy, Tibet and Taiwan independence and a laundry list of other things are off-limits. Chinese newspapers and news shows aren’t exactly paragons of truth due to the amount of control the government has on the media. Disasters and other unsettling things are also underreported or downplayed. Under the Emergency Response Law of 2007, the government is supposed to prohibit the media from “fabricating or spreading false information regarding emergencies and government efforts to cope with emergencies” and requires the government to provide “accurate and timely information” about said emergencies. However, the government fears that reporting on these incidents would lead to social unrest, so they or others in positions of power occasionally try their best to hush up disasters and terrible events to retain order.

As of June 2009, China had a reported 338 million Internet users; in 2007, a total of (I couldn’t find a report for this year or last) 98.7 million copies of newspapers were sold daily. I read an article a while ago that said Chinese people who read newspapers are much more likely to turn to the Internet for news as well, but I can’t find the link anywhere right now. Young people make up a huge portion of Internet users in PRC -- almost 70% were 30 or younger in July 2008. You’ve probably heard of proxy servers being used to circumvent censorship imposed by China’s “Great Firewall”. They can be used outside the firewall to access things like blogs or websites containing forbidden content that are frequently blocked or censored. Newspapers seem to be doing fairly well in China, but the Internet certainly appears to be the media of choice, at least among the younger crowd.

James Fallows of the Atlantic wrote an excellent article about the Chinese firewall last year. On another note, I’ve always found it horrible ironic (or maybe just sad) that the firewall was developed and provided by an American company – Cisco Systems.

Burma is even worse. Everything is under government control, free e-mail services such as gmail or hotmail are prohibited, foreign sites are blocked, and the government keeps profiles on its users. Internet use is far less widespread than it is in China, though.

This is seriously making me want to research censorship and media trends in different countries…

Anyway. Personally, I’ve had a love affair with newspapers for years. Newsprint makes me happy for reasons I don’t even understand myself. I read three or four dailies religiously, and I follow a few others online. I’ve always preferred it to any other news medium and likely always will. I simply love having the news right in front of me, in my hands while I drink ten cups of coffee every morning. If I don’t do it, I can’t function. It just doesn’t feel right.

My favorite online and television source is the BBC, although I also check NPR’s site and a couple others frequently. I also watch the local ten o’clock news every night. I switched from the CBS Evening News to NBC Nightly News a while ago after watching CBS for a long time. Something about Katie Couric just grates. I don’t even know what it is, but I know that I don’t like it.

I’ve also gotten away from watching 24-hour news networks recently too. Much of what’s broadcast on those monstrosities isn’t even news; it’s opinionated, useless garbage. Every time I turn one on, it’s Lou Dobbs, Chris Matthews, Olbermann, Hannity, Bill O, etc… It drives me crazy. Opinions and fluffy bits of not!news certainly have a place in the media, but they’re so prevalent on news networks like MSNBC or CNN that I can’t stand to watch them. Too many talking heads, too much BS, too much shrilly shrieking. Add that to the fact that none of them has any more credibility than the next, and you can bet I won’t be watching.

Other than that, I love The Onion and Fark for the amusing factor, and The Daily Show and The Colbert Report always make me laugh.

EDIT: Someday, I hope you can all forgive me for this massive wall of tl;dr

[Alchemist007]

I read'm while on break at work. But I'm back at school now, so I don't work.

[npcomplete]

I've stopped watching TV almost altogether for a while now so I get my news from the internet and from public radio (haven't heard anyone else mentioned that) when I drive: NPR, BBC, and a local alternative public broadcaster.
.. which may be a good thing too since it was likely from network news, both TV and print, that convinced most Americans that Saddam was gonna destroy the US or something.. so we just had to invade rescue Iraq

@blue skies - funny you bring up China and the media because I feel that a growing number of Chinese, especially those educated or more well off in general, are becoming hyper-nationalists. I have to avoid talking about certain things with my Chinese colleagues