Monday, January 15, 2007

Digital Destiny Author: Jeff Chester Publisher: The New Press ASIN: 9781565847958

About This Book

With the explosive growth of the Internet and broadband communications, our society now has the potential for a truly democratic media system offering a wide variety of independent sources of news, information, and culture, with control over content in the hands of the many rather than a few giant media companies.

The country’s powerful communications companies have big plans to do business their way. Big cable, TV, and Internet providers are using their political clout to gain ever greater control over the Internet and other digital communication channels. Instead of a “global information commons,” we are facing an electronic media system designed principally to sell to rather than serve the public, dominated by commercial forces armed with aggressive digital marketing, interactive advertising and personal data collection.

Author  Jeff Chester gets beneath the surface of media and telecommunications regulation to explain clearly how our new media system functions, what’s at stake, and what we can do to fight the corporate media’s plans for our “digital destiny”—before it’s too late.

Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, is a former investigative reporter and filmmaker.