At 10:01 AM -0500 11/28/98, Brent Eades wrote:
>On 23 Nov 98, franko wrote:
>
>> Now hold on a minute. AOL may control 70% of the US web, but hello! the
>> web happens to exist outside of the US of A. FYI AOL is nowhere in Asia
>> Pacific, although they are starting up. And what market share do they have
>> in Europe, the Middle East, Africa or Latin America.
>
>As one member of the Commonwealth to another (you guys are still in it,
>aren't you?), I say "Thanks for the reminder. The WORLD Wide Web does
>not begin and end in the continental United States."
agreed -- unfortunately -- the mega-corps (media) are either centered in US
or have seen the US consumption model as their holy grail to profits.
>The past couple of days were a good example. It seemed that every
>news, portal and magazine site I visited had prominent features about
>Thanksgiving this-that-and-the-other thing... well, here's a late-breaking
>news flash -- of the 200-odd countries on earth, Thanksgiving was
>celebrated in exactly one of them this week, the US. So Thanksgiving-
>related news was utterly irrelevant to anyone else on the Web.
So -- how do we give them a quick kick in the you-guys-know-where ...
>But if this US-centric trend continues unabated, I foresee the Web
>becoming the equivalent of America telelvision: a mass-entertainment
>octopus dominating culture and marketing in nations around the world, at
>the expense of distinctive regional culture and voices. Just the sort of
>intellectual imperialism the Web (at one time) semed poised to do away
>with.
all the more reason for Chad's kiddie site to be multilingual and global.
that, in and of itself, would differentiate it from most education sites.
let's face it, folks. MOST american's don't think about anything outside
the borders of their hometowns and states, much less the bloody country.
it's an unfortunate byproduct of a massive country (geographically) and a
dominant market position (which brent enumerated).
i did an analysis of international news coverage on the front pages of
several major newspapers for a project in j-school. i'm almost certain that
if i were to replicated the project today, the results wouldn't be
dissimilar. even though the world has 'shrunk' in the meantime.
in fact, if i used 1998 as the base year, it would probably be WORSE. given
the media's fascination with bill's zipper.
kathy
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Kathy E. Gill, http://www.dotparagon.com/R65/
WWW design � writing � training - http://www.dotparagon.com/
Mac Advocacy - http://www.halcyon.com/kegill/mac/
Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they
should live next door and just visit now and then.
--- Katharine Hepburn
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