Internet = medium?

While I don't always agree with Internet Week editor Antone Gonsalves, I do enjoy reading his takes on life in the wires. His most recent editorial nails down part of a phenomenon that people are ignoring among the blare of the trumpets heralding the wonders of the wired age. He points out that though Americans are getting more and more of their political news and information electronically, they are starting to treat the Internet more as a medium than as a place or space in which to get informed. As access to the net becomes conversely unwired through the use of Blackberries, cellphones, wireless laptops, etc, he asserts that people are using it more as a tool than ever before.

Anyone who reads this space of mine regularly knows what I think of this concept and it is becoming a prevailing one as even academics seem to be striving to continue this articulation of a binary opposition between the so-called "real" and the "virtual", between the "actual" and the "digital". I see Antone's opinion as falling into this line, because after all, his employer is all about broadcasting infromation, no matter how interactive they think they when they provide their email addresses so that readers may give feedback.

Even that term, readers, is telling. Are we readers? Something to think about.