” Now with the interweb thingy we can pick what to read, what to watch and on our OUR timetable.
And if the news doesn’t suit us, we can actually go out and do our own news reporting and publish it for the world to see/read/hear. “
Ahhhhh, well we haven’t seen the hand of government weigh in on this yet. It happened too fast, but they’ll catch up.
The wet blanket of government taxation and regulation will take care of this temporary imbalance in what you think you want and what government knows you need.
Look for dramatically increased taxes on high-speed internet to prop up those things that you are allowed to express your opinion of through the freedom to ignore.
You can’t allow everyone to get anything if government is to prosper. Somewhere, somehow government will insert itself in the middle of the “on demand” equation because not to do so would allow too much freedom to citizens. I mean, what if too many people watched the “TEA party channel”, for example.
“Net Neutrality” is the first step - it seems like a good thing at first, but in the end it’s actually the government telling private companies what they can do with their property. It is not a stretch to see that there could be vast government servers that will provide must-carry “approved” content.
Ain’t happening.
Just as the Holy Roman church recoiled from the horror of the invention of movable type and the resulting impertinence of Martin Luther’s 99 Theses, government will find itself powerless to stop it.
Today’s governments have far less power and reach than did The Church in 1500. The Pope tried, but could not throttle Martin Luther.
I actually see the opposite happening of what you predict. Citizen journalism will actually roll back the power of government AT EVERY LEVEL all across the globe.
It all relates to networks. Today, anyone can connect with anyone whenever they want and share news, video, audio; and it can all be done WITHOUT it being strained through yesterday’s networks - tv, newspapers, movies, magazines.
Humankind has never seen such power in the hands of the individual and we’re just beginning.