Senior Paper: The Internet

In December, 2007, there was a talk at an EG (Electronic Gathering) conference where executive editor of WIRED, Kevin Kelly discussed about what has happened to the media in the past 5,000 days. The Internet has gotten so popular in the past 5,000 days, it has become part of people’s everyday lives. Kelly believes there are so many uses for people to use the Internet that whether it’s finding out what the weather forecast is for tomorrow, buying tickets so see a sports game, finding if a book is available at a library, paying your monthly phone bill or applying for a job, people forget how amazing the Internet is and how far it has come.

"It’s amazing that all this stuff (on the Internet) is here. It’s in 5,000 days that this stuff has come, and I know that ten years ago if I told you that all this stuff was coming, you would have said that’s just impossible….and if I told you it all would be coming for free, you’d say simply, you’re dreaming."

Before the Internet, the basic technology for people to communicate with was the telephone, radio and television. Nowadays, people expect the Internet to do so many things that it helps their businesses, their social lives, their personal lives and in some cases, their entire lives.

So how does the past of sports journalism have to do with what Kelly said at the conference? Well before the Internet, when sports journalists wanted to interview an athlete, they did it face to face or over the telephone. Also prior to the Internet, after journalists talked to the athletes and wrote an article, readers had to wait for the following mornings’ newspaper to read it.

Now, after the past 5,000 days, the Internet has changed sports journalism because all of the new technologies used to communicate with athletes, coaches, owners, agents, etc. are now at their grasp. ESPN The Magazine columnist and former Sports Illustrated magazine sportswriter, Dave Fleming feels because of the Internet, in some respect, it has changed everything in sports journalism today.

"When I was at Sports Illustrated in 1999, I was still covering NFL games on a Sunday, where the stories about the games would come out in that week’s magazine on the following Friday. But because of the Internet and its speed which can allow people to consume and gather their information within 24 hours, a story that comes out five days later is irrelevant these days."

So let’s say a sports fan saw a NBA playoff game and it’s now two days later. That person has already seen the game on television, they probably watched the highlights after the game on television a few times, have already read about it in the newspaper at least once and even may have seen it in some blogs on the Internet. That’s why when Kelly says the Internet is amazing, that’s just one more example why. Which leads me to one of Dan Gillmor’s new technologies used on the Internet, weblogs, or as most people call it now, blogs.