In today’s lectorial, Ramon Lobato from RMIT presented a fascinating look into the impact Netflix is having on the media landscape right now. This presentation complemented this week’s reading “The Attention Merchants” by Tim Wu. We learnt of two competing ways of looking at this developing technology. The first describing Netflix and other SVOD (Streaming or Subscription Video on Demand) providers as a new form of democratic entertainment that can only get better with time. This opinion is juxtaposed with the counterargument that by simply interacting with these platforms the public are surrendering their valuable intellectual property, Wu explains that “the attention merchants” aren’t phased by their target demographic cancelling their cable subscriptions and using SVOD in droves. The very act of searching for information online provides them with more information than they have ever had, a users metadata gives more answers about an individual than any survey could. Personally I think that if you believe an attention monster is coming to upload cookies directly to your soul, maybe you should go for a nice long bike ride or head to the pub and watch a live band. Here’s a gig guide…

http://www.beat.com.au/gig-guide/2017-05-27