MTN & Portals
From:
Tim Salo
Date:
2007 Nov 10 04:30 UTC
Short link
Peter Fleck wrote:
> I just heard about a proposal of Mayor Rybak's to cut MTN funding by
> $100,000 and use that money to fund the wireless community portals. ...
A proposal to shift the City's funding that enables residents'
communications from cable TV to the Internet appears to me to
be a good, if belated, move.
My short answer is: Cable TV is so twentieth century.
Public-access cable TV channels support narrowly focused,
one-way communications by a small group of people, while the
Internet enables rich, interactive, two-way communications between
every Minneapolis resident, elected official, and employee.
What role, if any, is left for public-access cable TV in the era
of ubiquitous Internet access?
What role can or should MTN, as an organization, have in the era
of ubiquitous Internet access? Is the mission of the organization
tightly tied to one particular medium (i.e., public-access TV),
or is its mission applicable to an alternative medium
(i.e., the Internet)? Can MTN adapt, or will it simply become
another casualty of the Internet?
Is it ironic that this discussion is occurring on the Internet,
rather than public-access TV?
.