Looking Ahead at Internet Video and its Societal Impacts

Media economics provides a basis for Eli Noam in setting out the logic behind a series of expectations he shares about how the transition from regular linear TV to online video will lead to major changes in culture, politics, and society. His perspective on the dramatic implications of this shift suggests comparisons with the fundamental changes brought about by the introduction of first-generation TV over seventy years ago, with both exciting advances and also disturbing problems. Noam is able to raise serious questions about new and enduring cultural, consumer-oriented, political, economic, educational, and other social implications of what might sound like a mere technical shift to a new style of video.