eCommunications for global organisations

 ”Imagine if you will, begins the newscaster, sitting down to your morning coffee, turning on your home computer to read the morning’s newspaper. Well it is not as far fetched as it may seem”.  In this great clip from 1981 you are briefly transported back in time to see how the future of journalism was perceived.

Watching this clip, which I found on Conversationblog,  is a way to remind ourselves how far the ‘information revolution’ has changed our media consumption habits.  I was actually sitting at my computer with my morning coffee as I watched this, feeling that reality has taken us much further than the 1981 reporters had imagined.The end of the report makes the whole concept sound far too expensive and declared the future of printed papers safe.  Would they still feel this way now?

The web continues its progress as becoming the main source of news gradually replacing alternatives for the ultimate place where information is found.  According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press the percentage of people getting their news online jumped from 24 percent a year ago to 40 percent.  During the same period newspapers have remained around 35 percent.

I picked up this story in this blog post then latter in Media Post.  The findings don’t surprise me, as it confirms the trend I have been following that the internet is becoming the ultimate source of information for any kind of activity we might have.  What is fascinating is how the internet continues it’s progress and regardless of hype is becoming a permanent feature of our everyday lives.

Over the past decade we have been observing how the internet has become increasingly core to any fact finding activty, increasingly being the start, if not the end of any research process that we understake to form an opinion on any given subject.

Whether the print media will actually disappear altogether is not the real question.  The key is what role the internet plays in influencing people in making a decision on a political subject, medical question or purchasing of a product.   The real question is not whether the internet will be the single most important part of this process, but when…