Decentered: Difference between revisions

"Old Media" has been based on a centralized system where the media institutuions have controlled the structure of the media system.  Media institutions such as newspaper corporations, publishing houses and network television and industry film companies have dominated the media since the early 1900s (Hardt).  The super structure of the media's centralized power base is built upon money and the controll of the content and distribution of the material produced by the media moguls.  The French philospher, Jacques Derrida wrote on the topic of the structure and the deconstruction of the stucture, he also referred to the center as being fixed (Childers 72).  The Hollywood system can be viewed as an example of this fixed system that is controlled by a hegomonic elite.  With the digitazation of the media, "New Media" has emerged as the force that is decrentralizing or deconstrcuting "Old Media," as Derrida would call the decententralization of power within the media system.  Now anyone with a computer and Internet access can download or upload media files taking the control away from a central power structure.  Nicholas Negroponte says that a decentralized structure demonstrates a better system for the future and a system that will survive and evolve into the future (Negroponte 158).  The farther that we get from the fixed center of the structure, the more powerful we become as "New Media" users.