One of the most important changes in the television industry is coming up. As more and more people are turning to streaming services, general broadcasted television continues to see viewership drop each year. While we will not see an entire shift in focus within the industry, companies and producers will begin to prioritize and orient their shows and movies for streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, HBO, etc. These streaming services offer almost any tv show or movie available worldwide at the tap of a finger with ad-less options as well. The biggest advantage that these services have over regular tv is the ability to watch whatever you want whenever you want without having to plan ahead or record it.

While the physical television itself isn’t going anywhere, industry giants like DirecTV and Dish will now have to change up how they operate and what they intend to offer to their customers. The future of television is entirely consumer driven. Any company associated with television is competing with each other but also every other entertainment related industry out there as well that could take their attention away from the tv.

“There are thousands of competitors in this highly-fragmented market vying to entertain consumers and low barriers to entry for those with great experiences. Our growth is based on how good our experience is, compared to all the other screen time experiences from which consumers can choose. Our focus is not on Disney Plus, Amazon, or others, but on how we can improve our experience for our members.”

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings

Consumer experience is currently the most important aspect of the television industry. Without prioritizing the customer’s wants and needs, companies will fall behind and fail.

Post 1999 the world began on a new era of music facilitated through technology. Through the creation of Napster and the worldwide use of file sharing technologies, people around the world were given a chance to figure out what music really speaks to them. At the touch of their fingers and about a half hour later people were able to download and listen to anything from Chopin to Nirvana for the first time ever without having to purchase it. It started this movement of people just playing song after song and finding a genre they can vibe with.

Before file sharing music was even a thing people’s tastes in music were just formed mainly by their parents, friends, radio stations, and culture. Having this new ability opened up a world of possibilities with music. It is now just simply less expensive to explore new music than it was in the past. Regardless of the legality of sharing music online, there have been so many positive outcomes of this that the latter seems insignificant. While it is completely legal for an individual to download all the free music they please online it is illegal for them to share it with others.

Having the ability to pay cue up almost any song I want for just $5 a month has completely changed my taste in music. I feel like i’m finding a new artists every single month that I enjoy because my Spotify suggests some bangers on occasion based off the music I already listen to.

Music has the ability to influence a person’s mood and behaviors and is generally heard in every aspect of our lives. I’ve always had playlists specifically for if i’m with the homies, driving, studying, or just relaxing at my apartment because of this.

I’m able to concentrate better and almost begin to enjoy the endless amount of assignments given to me throughout the course of a week when I’ve got some of my favorite music on.

“The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.”

-David Hume

I have always admired the work of that true journalists and reporters do. It’s sad to see the decline in newspapers but technology has just simply made them inferior. While newspaper readership has went down, the majority of these companies have put their focus on televised and online news. We have the ability to access almost any information possible from every angle possible. This makes it great to combat disinformation or an altered display of information by giving you the opportunity to do your own research and to see both sides of the story.

I have also always been a huge fan of any and all watchdog reporters with actual factual backings and objective research. Without people like this, our government, as corrupt as it is, would basically fly even more under the radar than they have in the past.

“None of the main issues which humanity is facing will be resolved without access to information.”

-Christophe Deloire

It has always been blatantly obvious to me that major newspapers and media outlets push an agenda onto their readers and viewers. The journalists all put forward the articles they are either told to look into or choose to look into.

As someone who doesn’t make and opinion or speak about something before doing my research, it’s appalls me to see the non-objective based news we are being fed every single day. It doesn’t necessarily bother me that news papers and media outlets choose what stories to report on because I understand they need to make money and certain stories sell better than others. The thing that bothers me is the obvious omission of important facts, jumping the gun, and creating their own conclusions for the viewers. While I take everything I generally read with a grain of salt these days, there’s a vast majority of people who don’t do their due diligence and just hop on the sheep train. When six major companies own 90% of the major news network viewership and employ 232 media executives in charge of what information is being given to the entire country something seems like it could go wrong. At this point we are at it doesn’t really matter how credible an article is or a media outlet is, i’m still going to do my own research. I just can’t imagine where we would be at as a society if all our news and information was still in a physical form.

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”

― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

I feel that the majority of people these days take literature for granted. While we definitely are not reading literature as much as we used to as a society, we are reading more than ever because we have access to almost anything imaginable in the palm of our hands. Many continue to endlessly browse social media and the internet for hours on things that aren’t necessarily intellectually stimulating or even worth while. However, I don’t blame a single person for this. We live in an age where this is widely accepted and encouraged almost every where we go. Each technological advancement stems off the last and has created and endless cycle of a technology dependent society (which is definitely not a bad thing but should be taken with caution). We’ve gain this attachment to our phones and our this stimulation of dopamine that our life style relies on this to function and many of us lose grip with reality. How many times have you felt your phone vibrate only to pick it up and see no notification?

These days anyone would rather sit on the couch scrolling on their phone then sit down and quietly read and take in everything a book is trying to tell/show you. It isn’t until you truly appreciate what literature is and how it has and can improve your life until you start to enjoy reading. We have all taken literature for granted through the ease of information, but at some point it may come back to hurt us.

No matter how old you think the Earth is or when humanity first started, billions of humans and animals alike have walked, swam, or flown across the world. Each with their own individual perspective and set of experiences that makes them who or what they are. But these experiences are just a reflection of one singular existence on this planet. An intangible amount of these experience have been lost and forgotten over the years before the first examples of cave drawings and literature began to appear. Although some may say that simple cave drawings or ancient Sumerian cuneiform do not necessarily constitute literature, this was an early form of communication and the first way for another person to walk in their shoes.

Without literature life would only be from your own perspective. From cover to cover, we are able to imagine the unthinkable and share the author’s experiences and take in new perspectives and opinions. Discussion is able to be had and what we regard as humanity is established. I mean how would we know what to know and how to act without a previous recollection of how other’s evolved to act as a functioning society?

But why do we believe the things that we believe?

At some point in our lives someone told us something that they insisted was true and we believed them. As a society we can see where this comes into play because there is a vast consensus on whether the sky is blue or not.

“It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain the thought without accepting it”

-Aristotle

When you look at the culture of today, everyone gets their original information on current events from the news. Today, there are five big players that control the media and how it is being put out for their viewers. These five big players have an overwhelming pervasion on our everyday life because they are constantly pushing the same perspectives over and over onto their audience. What Aristotle is saying is extremely relevant to the times. Many of us have all fallen victim at one time or another to reading an article or a headline and believing it right away, no matter if it was written an hour or a month after the event happened and took it to be true. What I have learned to do over the past few years is to always watch both sides and then go look at their primary sources to find the facts. There is always this picking and choosing of information depending on if it helps your message and it’s begun to be a huge problem. We’ve learned everything about our past by reading personal recollections and history books about our past.

When you start thinking about how divided our country and our people are portrayed to be and this picking and choosing and choosing of information, how can we as a society produce a clear record of what is actually happening for future generations to look back on and for us to appropriately react to?

Hello, my name is Aiden LaCourse and I am a senior currently majoring in Glass Engineering Science with a minor in business administration. I hope to continue on to grad school to pursue an MBA or a masters in materials science but that may change. I’m very passionate about my major and am hoping to start my own business within the year.

I’ve been into music my whole entire life as I grew up listening exclusively to whatever my dad had on (classic rock or jazz) and have continued doing that to this day although the majority of my music is now rap or hip-hop. Sports have also been a big part of my life as all through middle school and high school I played every sport offered and continue to stay active daily.

I grew up in the Adirondacks in a small town called Newcomb and was one of ten in my graduating class. It is located an hour north of Lake George and is the source of the Hudson River.