2Unit 2Text I The Great Seduction.docx

1、2Unit 2Text I The Great Seduction Warm-up Small Group Discussion and WritingWhat benefits and drawbacks can the following Web 2.0 online activities bring to society? Have a small group discussion and complete the following table.Web 2.0 online activitiesBenefitsDrawbacksDownloading, uploading and sh

2、aring images, audios, and videos on websites or web-based communitiesUsing or contributing to openly editable, web-based encyclopedia (e.g. Wikipedia and baidu百科)Viewing, sharing, and commenting on news on social networking sites Downloading and uploading ebooks, e-articles, etc. on text-sharing web

3、sitesPrompts: These activities may speed up dissemination of knowledge but damage the interests of some content owners or producers Role Play(P23) Work in pairs. Student A assumes the role of a movie producer, and student B a music producer. Have a chat about the positive and negative impact of the

4、Internet on your own business. The teacher is to ask a few pairs to demonstrate their talk in class. Discussion (P23)1. What opportunities can the Internet offer to works of intellectual property? 2. What problems does it hold for works of intellectual property? The Great SeductionLori Oliwenstein【1

5、】First a confession. Back in the Nineties, I was a pioneer in the first Internet gold rush. With the dream of making the world a more musical place, I founded A, one of the earliest digital music sites. Once, when asked by a newspaper reporter how I wanted to change the world, I replied, half seriou

6、sly, that my fantasy was to have music playing from “every orifice,” to hear the whole Bob Dylan oeuvre from my laptop computer, to be able to download Johann Sebastian Bachs Brandenburg Concertos from my cellular phone. So yes, I peddled the original Internet dream. I seduced investors and I almost

7、 became rich. 【2】My metamorphosis from believer into skeptic lacks cinematic drama. It took place over fortyeight hours, in September 2004, on a twoday camping trip with a couple of hundred Silicon Valley utopians in Sebastopol, the headquarters of OReilly Media. Each fall, OReilly Media hosts an ex

8、clusive, invitation-only event called FOO (Friends of OReilly) Camp. These friends of multimillionaire founder Tim OReilly are not only unconventionally rich and richly unconventional but also harbor a messianic faith in the economic benefits of the cult of the amateur and cultural benefits of techn

9、ology. What unites them is a shared hostility toward traditional media and entertainment. For two full days, we camped together, roasted marshmallows together, and celebrated the revival of our cult together【3】The Internet was back! This shiny new version of the Internet, what Tim OReilly called Web

10、 2.0, really was going to change everything. Now that most Americans had broadband access to the Internet, the dream of a fully networked, always-connected society was finally going to be realized. There was one word on every FOO Campers lips in September 2004. That word was “democratization.” Media

11、, information, knowledge, content, audience, author all were going to be democratized by Web 2.0. The Internet would democratize Big Media, Big Business, Big Government. It would even democratize Big Experts, transforming them into what one friend of OReilly called, in a hushed, reverent tone, “nobl

12、e amateurs.” 【4】Although Sebastopol was miles from the ocean, by the second morning of camp, I had begun to feel seasick. At first I thought it was the greasy camp food or perhaps the hot northern California weather. But I soon realized that even my gut was reacting to the emptiness at the heart of

13、our conversation. 【5】My dream of making the world a more musical place had fallen on deaf ears; the promise of using technology to bring more culture to the masses had been drowned out by FOO Campers collective cry for a democratized media. The new Internet was about self-made music, not Bob Dylan o

14、r the Brandenburg Concertos. Audience and author had become one, and we were transforming culture into cacophony. 【6】FOO Camp, I realized, was a sneak preview. We werent there just to talk about new media; we were the new media. The event was a beta version of the Web 2.0 revolution, where Wikipedia

15、 met MySpace met YouTube. Everyone was simultaneously broadcasting themselves, but nobody was listening. Out of this anarchy, it suddenly became clear that what was governing the infinite monkeys now inputting away on the Internet was the law of digital Darwinism, the survival of the loudest and mos

16、t opinionated. Under these rules, the only way to intellectually prevail is by infinite filibustering.【7】The more that was said that weekend, the less I wanted to express myself. As the din of narcissism swelled, I became increasingly silent. And thus began my rebellion against Silicon Valley. Instead of adding to the noise, I broke the one law of FOO Camp 2004. I stopped participating