Reading: looking into – logging onto

Over the last decade, the Internet has had a significant impact on worldwide media consumption. In a consumer-centric world, few things facilitate consumer choice more than the Internet. Is a transition afoot from ‘looking into’ to ‘logging onto’? Prima-facie, this seems little more than a rhetorical question. As clear majorities in developed countries now use the Internet regularly, whereas ten years ago this phenomenon was “essentiallyâ€? unheard of, obviously there’s a shift of some sort. However the Internet is not a phenomenon in isolation. At the same time as the growth in the Internet, and probably related to that growth, there have been increased offerings in all areas of media and life: pay TV, Videos and DVDs, innovative electronic games, color in newspapers, magazines in newspapers, magazines/catalogues in magazines, a dramatic increase in printed material due to widespread availability of desktop publishing and cheaper printing, mobile telephony and SMS, the advent and growth of the compact disc and the associated growth in portable CD players and MP3 players, a greater focus on health and fitness, increased mobility in the workforce, mature age education etc. etc. The issue is complex and multi-faceted.

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