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Posted

While downloading the latest patch for World of Warcraft, I stroll around the news sites and gather around the happenings wround the world and here in Finland jsut to form a while image on what has happened lately, I'm not a media person, I block good 90% of the madia babble and usually narrow the hose that feeds me with news to a fine pointed needle that can barely sqeeze through the much appreciated gaming and technology related news.

But during my stroll I nod approvingly to news that tell about someones achievements on some sort of socially accepted thing, and at the same time I realize that most of these people are some sort of millionaires, company execs or just plain jerks in high positions of goverment. Gone are the times when we looked up to the athletes to bring us hope of the better tomorrow, they are almost regular joes these days, just few hoorays for some hero who can drive a car faster than anyone else, or celebration to a team that accomplishes impossible goals in a winter related sport mainly called Ice Hockey.

Our society is growing out of testosteroine filled athletes that risk more than just their earthly posessions in some stock market fluke, but we don't give you the kudos on achievement, we give kudos to the results of that achievement, it isn't enough anymore to be the fastest runner in the world, when you win, it has to be something so big that the world has changed, or atleast some way for others to do money from your accomplishment.

Is this a good thing? Or is it a bad thing? Do you celebrate the victory of your favourite basketball team? Or do you chuckle when some mega communications company invets a new free software for you to use?

Computers and communications technology has changed the world forever and there is nothing any of us can do about it.

Posted

I have to disagree with you there. Maybe its just me but I never understood the point of cheering on and calling pro athletes heroes. So they can run faster than me, they can swim faster than me, they can drive faster than me in the format of left turns for 3 hours. I don’t think that is something to spend more than three minutes acknowledging and I certainly don’t think it’s worth giving them more money than one can spend in a lifetime.

Sure, it’s a form of social inspiration, its a form of friendly competition between cities, states, countries. Sporting events would have to be one of the few times separate nations can participate in an activity that most likely wont result in some form of a war, but I don’t think that means give them more money and fame when they break a new world record for speed on a race track.

I have more of an interest in where technology is going. Maybe I'm weird but I like hearing about what the newest invention and socially accepted piece of technology is. Sure most of them aren’t innovative or even useful, but to the ones that are, they deserve their kudos, even if it was developed by a multimillion dollar corporate conglomerate. A lot of people in this world hate Microsoft. I'm neither for nor against, but if everyone hates Microsoft, why still use their software? If everyone hated Microsoft enough, they would just stop using their software and switch to Mac, Linux, or invent their own OS. Developers would use these new fangled OS' instead because of the hatred for Microsoft. This doesn’t happen, because Microsoft writes good software that has a use. If it wasn’t good for something, developers would focus resources on developing on Mac machines or Linux.

May have gone a little off topic, but I would rather see kudos go to the technological innovations than the person/people who can run faster than me, bike faster than me, drive faster, etc.

Posted

I can see your points, but here is another view on the matter, I used to play Basketball in a team when I was younger and had the time, so I know that they don't just stroll around and get poured money at, it was extermely hard work and it was only little league. I couldn't imagine doing it around the year, keeping in shape and taking in cosideration that I would have to be one of those freaks of nature that have the motoristic skills and height to be good at it.

But I have alot of respect to people who have helped us in technological advancement in the past 20 years, the development has been very fast and it seems to be getting faster, it literally changes peoples lives. I owe alot to Steve Jobs and his Apple family and Bill Gates and his Microsoft family, not to mention plethora of other pioneers who have done alot of work on computer technology and communications technology.

But even when I have huge amount of respect to these pioneers, I still enjoy a good game of Basketball or Football over the new blockbuster movie that is mind numbing and unproductive to everyone, not to mention that they just pissed around 100 million dollars to show people what will happen when a real witch is cast to a part of a witch in a tv show and what snappy comebacks they can invent about the setting.

And when I agree with the huge salaries of professional athletes it is actually tied to the income they make to the parent company, take Formula 1 for example, the F1 drivers salaries are highest in sports maybe even in all of entertainment, but F1 is one of the most televised and advertised shows around the world, and they make insane amounts of money, thusly the salaries of the people who are the sole reasons for the massive income are high. If Apple could be ran by a team size of anverage football team and wouldn't use millions of dollars for R&D, I think their salaries would be huge aswell, even more so than the F1 drivers or movie actors.

Posted

At the moment NBA, MLB, NHL and NFL are at same average salaries, and the salaries top around 15-17mil, the trades go for around 100million (depending for how many years) like Kevin Brown signed a 7 year contract with Dodgers and got nice compensation of 105mil.

But Super Bowl is the best pay day to date, playing that one day the top NFL players can get nice 20mil for one game.

Posted

Like you said yourself, you're not a media man^^ It might be waaay different somewhere else, but alot of the guys i call friends are football geeks and watch every game on tv and celebrate alot when their team wins.. Same goes with our nations success' in the OL...

You ask why we're not celebrating that some guy breakes a world record in running 100 meter every day? Its because it doesnt happen every day...

When it does, its always mentioned in the news.. especially if it has something to do with our nation, then its probably the biggest news of the week..

For example, take tour de france, norway had/have a good candidate for first place whateer, i didnt really pay attention, but i noticed that everyone else did.. Alot of people even started riding bicycles because it was becoming "hip"...

What you call news, the whole thing about the corporate assholes is something that has been going on since the dawn of time... Nothing has changed, and if it has it certainly dont have anything to do with computers and technology...

Posted

Haile Gebrselassie almost ran a new record on the Marathon today. There was a wonderful final in Badminton in the Dutch open today, best play ever. (Out of all sports, badminton has to be the most elegant). Athletes still have meaning but you have to be open for it.

Posted

Like you said yourself, you're not a media man^^ It might be waaay different somewhere else, but alot of the guys i call friends are football geeks and watch every game on tv and celebrate alot when their team wins.. Same goes with our nations success' in the OL...

You ask why we're not celebrating that some guy breakes a world record in running 100 meter every day? Its because it doesnt happen every day...

When it does, its always mentioned in the news.. especially if it has something to do with our nation, then its probably the biggest news of the week..

For example, take tour de france, norway had/have a good candidate for first place whateer, i didnt really pay attention, but i noticed that everyone else did.. Alot of people even started riding bicycles because it was becoming "hip"...

What you call news, the whole thing about the corporate assholes is something that has been going on since the dawn of time... Nothing has changed, and if it has it certainly dont have anything to do with computers and technology...

So you are saying that compared to 20s 30s 40s 50s and the 60s there is absolutely no difference how we treat our pro athletes compared to medical researchers and industry tycoons? You know, back in the day when Paavo Nurmi ran 5 Olympic golds at 1928 Olympics and almost 100 parents named their next child Paavo, or when someone got world record in long jump and it was more important than curing cancer.

If you just look around the last two years or so, yeah, I'd agree, nothing has changed, but those days when we considered athletes national heroes is long gone, and now Bill Gates, Jorma Ollila and the rest of the brady bunch are the ones who are considered national heroes and get the most news time, they don't have 15minutes, they have a lifetime.

Posted

So you are saying that compared to 20s 30s 40s 50s and the 60s there is absolutely no difference how we treat our pro athletes compared to medical researchers and industry tycoons? You know, back in the day when Paavo Nurmi ran 5 Olympic golds at 1928 Olympics and almost 100 parents named their next child Paavo, or when someone got world record in long jump and it was more important than curing cancer.

okay, only thing that has changed is the fact that we get more news now, not just a newspaper every other week... Except from that, things are pretty much the same.. its not that theres more of the corporate lackeys thing, its more like the news people have all this time to fill, so they throw in some useless info that people might be interested in... (like bill gates doing this and that)

If you just look around the last two years or so, yeah, I'd agree, nothing has changed, but those days when we considered athletes national heroes is long gone, and now Bill Gates, Jorma Ollila and the rest of the brady bunch are the ones who are considered national heroes and get the most news time, they don't have 15minutes, they have a lifetime.

They are not long gone, athletes are still considered national heroes... If you ask a norwegian, any norwegian who Bjorn Daehlie (Bjørn Dæhlie, norwegian cross country ski-hero), you'd get the right answer pretty quick. Alot of the people would probably also mention when he and how many gold/silver medals he's won... To switch it over; Not many girls i know knows who bill gates is.. (just using 'girls' as an example seeing as just 1 out of 100 girls are interested in computers)

Maybe you just think that the corporate thing, and computer stuff is all that is on the news, is because thats the only items you really care about and notice... You wouldnt believe how much sports crap some of my friends manage to fill their days with... Its all about interests.. maybe thats what has changed, we have so many channels and news papers and magazines to choose from, that we can all get the news that we care about... its not just one channel black and white tv anymore... Aside from that, everything is as it always has been since the 17 hundreds..

Posted

Ok, well maybe todays journalists and news casts are bit biased towards big corporate happenings. But I read Finnish mainstream newspapers and watch TV news and little bit of Euronews and BBC World, so I'm not a total media outcast.

And while I think that the amount of news has not drastically increased since the start of the 20th century till this day, the amount of news outlets has, and it just seems that the amount of news has increased ten folds. But still I think that technology news dominate todays news, and it has been increasing since the start of 90s.

I can't comment on your friends but I don't think I have any friend that doesn't know who Bill Gates is, most of them even know Steve Jobs and Linus Torwalds even the girls.

Posted

Depends on how you filter your news. If you don't really care about sports, you're not going to notice it, likewise entertainment news or whatever.

My main source is the beeb and on the front page they tend to carry major storys from each subsection on the front page. Tech news appears reguarly, but doesn't by any means dominate.

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