In the new network, everybody is always coming or going
With the demise of the broadcast networks (it's already happened, the practical reality just has to catch up), the question arises of what a network really is. What is an entertainment network, a learning network or a network in general?
I think one way that we need to look at it is as something that is fluid and always flowing. I don't think we can any longer look at it as something that is permanent; temporal is a better word.
What happens when a group of people let each other know that they are going to get together at a favorite restaurant to hang out on Friday night? Is that a network? Is it permanent? Will some that go there like it so much that they do it for a while and come back week after week, although not all of them? Are others hearing about it and joining in? Are some showing up weekly and others occasionally? What does that mean as a network? Again: Is it a network?
This is the type of thing happening everywhere now. I'm even starting to hear that many are starting to consider MySpace as a network that has peaked for its core audience. Young people are starting to talk like it's not a place to hang out anymore.
It is impossible to define a network any longer in any specific way. I think of it as a target that is endlessly moving, never standing still, flowing from one thing to another and rearranging itself over and over again.
The days of control by somebody are over, yet the traditional media outlets continue to attempt to legislate control where it can't possibly win, wasting its time and money on a hydra that grows a new head everytime they try to sue another one out of existence.
The new network or moving community can't be pinpointed or controlled. At least not for long. You go at it and it morphs and mutates into something else in a different place.
Networks interact, share, bring people together and are temporal. If traditional media wants to be relevant in any way they must accept these new realities. Not that I care in any way if traditional media survives.
Entertainment will survive and show business will survive because it's about community and networks, and people desire it. It just isn't going to survive in its current form. That is already dead.
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