"Through the knowledge and choices that the new communications technologies allow to flourish, people like myself see the likelihood of a better future, one in which the big media empires will be redundant and 'melt into air'."

Hear hear.

And note that the new hope of a better society that Barry aspires to will not come from central planning, public ownership of the means of production, or government control, as the idiot leftists have persisted in believing in, and which defines their beliefs. Even the rusted-on leftists are finally coming around to understand the concept of individual sovereignty.

We have already established that what Barry is praising here as bringing a likelihood of a better future, would be illegal under the socialism he advocates, and under total government control including the right of censorship, on the grounds that the technology in question is "social wealth": http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16764&page=0

So once again all the socialists can come up with is a jumble of self-contradictions. And these are the people we are supposed to believe will lead us to a paradise of human liberation.

Many many people are not online while others are illiterate. Others cannot afford internet connection.
Many people only follow sport media and advertising agencies know that with their niche marketing that might sustain some viablity.

I think most people want to hear news in major media before they believe it, but how wrong can they be.

At least social media is open to truth and comment including criticism.

Well, after the hacking debacles, I wonder if the right to privacy isn't a far more important right!
Nothing wrong with fair dinkum investigative journalism, along with lawfully protected sources!
Always providing it is exposing the shonks, rather than the peccadilloes of so called celebs, or just ordinary if eccentric folk with unusual, relatively harmless interests.
Investigative Journalism? YES!
Moral or thought police? NOOOOOO!
Automatic mega data collection? NO NEVER EVER!
There's already laws that allow that data to be collected, kept, stored and examined, with the production of a legitimate warrant!
As I said, the right to inherent privacy may now be far more important, than the so called right to know; or so called public interest.
I for one, have absolutely no interest in what other folk, even so called celebs, get up to in the privacy of their own homes or allegedly private backyards; I mean, there's plenty of that stuff on the net, back, front, centre, standing on your flamin head, or stood upright in a hammock.
Well some people do like to do everything the hardest possible way!
All licentious lascivious levity aside. One recalls how Princess Diana was hounded to her very untimely and patently horrific death, by scoop hounding paparazzi!
So lets get some real privacy laws enacted, before we start fretting too much about so called press freedoms.
Which if misused as seen recently in the Senate, can amount to virtual moral blackmail; or worse, virtually/actually decide who runs the country!
Sure we need to be informed, sometimes by those heroes who expose important truth; always providing, it's only their own life and liberty that's risked or placed in harm's way!
What is best for the country and in support of real freedom, must be measured again the whim and caprice of patently power hungry, obscenely rich and incredibly powerful, king making media moguls!
Perhaps these self serving folk and their ilk, motor mouth shock jocks, need to be somewhat restrained, rather than further empowered!
Rights must always be accompanied and tempered by responsibility; and indeed, national security!
Rhrosty.

JKJ, the social ownership of means of production is precisely what would enable individuals to be freer - for instance, from the alienating necessity of wage labour for the profit of the very few. This is the C21st and we are seeing how this is possible due to technological change that is changing the social relations of production. We are seeing just how capitalism creates its own gravediggers. If you think the press will be freer under some kind of concentrated private ownership of media, then you are mistaken. It hasn't happened yet under capitalism. This is why the left oppose any attempts by the state or corporations to filter and control the Internet - a great communist device, if left unfettered, based on the principle of 'from each according to their abilities and to each according to their needs' (to which I add for this century: 'and their fantasies and dreams').

My main concern is that once an upsurge in people's discontent with worsening economic and social conditions begins to morph into a revolutionary movement, you will begin to see emergency measures to "protect democracy from its enemies". A crack down on free speech will be part of that, particularly reporting on state repression.

byork

So your dream is a situation where everyone has to ask the permission of everyone else in the world before sending an email?

If not, you're not talking about the social ownership of the means of production. You're talking about the *private* ownership of the means of production as the only way to achieve your ideal. Individual liberty and property rights are what you fundamentally oppose, remember, because as soon as anyone co-operates with anyone else, it's "social wealth", and then either society - everyone in the world - must grant permission before using society's property, or more likely, the state has a unilateral right to dictate all the terms, remember? You're only demonstrating your complete confusion and self-contradiction.