Convergence and Web 2.0

Convergence is the coming together of mass media-internet, television, newspaper and all other methods of communicating.  Henry Jenkins finds it important because it is shaping a new way of taking in information.  Jenkins brings out the point that people are viewing convergence either as the gatekeepers releasing all information or a select few still controlling what is being put out.  Convergence is also breaking down barriers of previous media assumptions like time and availability so that you can get info anytime and anywhere.

Peterson believes that convergence culture and web 2.0 are creating slaves out of everyday users. He shows that people get on to a website, like Flickr or Facebook and share information and pictures about them and their activities.  Those people interact with friends, giving comments and rating each other's pictures, creating another world inside of a web 2.0 application.  Then the makers of the web 2.0 application get advertisers and even create things like Google's Adsense program to try to think they are giving back to the users.  All the while the web 2.0 creators are making the bulk of the money from advertisers because of the free or extremely cheap slave labor they get from everyday users in the world they have created.  Eventually the web 2.0 application is sold for millions of dollars, like Flicker, to a larger corporate entity because it is seen as an investment of free laborers, or slaves, that will continue to use the web 2.0 application and draw in advertisers.  Though crowdsourcing using results in the users getting some sort of monetary payment, I believe Petersen would still find the model of crowdsourcing to be a slave-like environment for the user.  Web 2.0 companies like istockphoto regulates what they will accept to put on their site, and wen someone purchases it the initial creator of the photo gets a fraction of the amount paid, enslaving the photographer to the web 2.0 application and being a cheap paid slave for that entity.

Convergence and Web 2.0 are bringing communities together and developing new communities everyday.  People come together through web 2.0 applications, share information, pictures and interest, creating communities amongst interest groups and similar people throughout the world.  While we need to be careful as to the extent we involve and rely on new media in order to connect us as communities, the web 2.0 world is ever-growing and developing into an all encompassing connector.