Michael Jackson’s Demise; the Digital Significance

Michael Jackson passes away; a better expression could always be ’succumbed to his humility’. And who is working relentlessly to carry the word, eulogies, scepticism, and all other vitalstatistics of the late King of the Pop? No slot for a second thought, obviously a galaxy of facets of the prodigious ‘Digital World’ that comprehensively shrouds the human beings’ lives today. The facets mentioned are nothing else than laptops and desktops powered by fixed line or mobile broadband and the latest smartphones and PDAs blessed with the 3G technology.

The broadband networks, regardless of them being wired or wireless types, are growing increasingly sophisticated both in capacity and speeds. Does it need an additional detailed substantiation to prove the point that it offers one an incredibly convenient way to stay on top of the latest happenings euphemistically called news, right at the time of its occurrence? Furthermore, the multiple arms of the internet that brought forth the speedy transmission of the news, such as Facebook, Twitter and various news alert websites are also transcending fastly and phenomenally.

However, there are also serious problems with the new system that the bulk of the world population is aspiring to bank on, in the near future for the latest. The predominant one is related to authenticity, as not many sites in the internet can claim undisputed credibility. Maybe, an attempt to good policing from the part of the relevant watchdogs may see the situation improve in the future. Nevertheless, at least for the time being, one will have to bank on his/her reasoning power to come up with a quotient that is more reasonable.

Listen to the lament of a hard core Michael Jackson admirer that he had found that one of his Tweets from his Twitter feed claimed the report of the Pop King’s death was on TMZ.com that was notorious for being a gossip website. Seems the man was of the inquisitive kind, for he compared the information available in several other websites to assess the situation. In fact, he had for the first time, seen the information regarding the death of Michael on his Facebook page updated by a friend who had stumbled across the news earlier.

Meanwhile, somewhere else mobile phones were going hot with SMS messages those were not only transmitted between people known to each other, but also by mass multicasting of messages from unique sources, enabled by the numerous relevant offers prevailing contemporaneously.

If the death of the prodigal singer had given the broadband internet and the mobile phone segments, an opportunity to introspect, even while being circumspect, a different yet relevant segment was provided an acute reminder of its commercial significance by the incidence. This is all the more apparent from the rush on his albums, which testifies that a comprehensive CD with lyrics and the iconic cover means much more to the people that cannot be completely replicated by the MP3 player or the music oriented mobile phone of the day.

This news is all the more significant as well as promising in the present conditions that point to a slow death being inflicted on the CDs. According to the studies, the CD sales in the UK were falling by around 4 percent at an yearly rate, despite being still a substantial business that generates an income of almost GBP 1 million. On paying a deeper look into the matter any normal person would put the blame on piracy for this set back. As a matter of fact, the music industry was on the brink of a ‘moonwalk’ a day prior to the final Digital Britain report presentation, for it had great expectations on Lord Carter, who it believed would come up with a trick or two in the report to tackle the menace practically.

After Lord Carter’s backing down, the widespread notion blanketing the country’s internet segment is arguably that illegal downloading was justified as not being an offence. They think at least the government thought so. The situation today refrains even a kleptopmaniac from stealing a CD from a store, for he could do it honourably at the internet. Take the case of the recent outburst of BskyB that once enjoyed high-handedness on not only the Whitehall, but also the government who winced away from taking strict regulatory measures against the media empire maintained by the former fearing its wrath. Nevertheless, today it seems BskyB has taken the right decision at the right time, to emerge as one of the most powerful satellite provider in the country.

Coming back to the internet news segment, the editors of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia are confused with the dilemma, if or not to permit updations on the Wikipedia page dedicated to the pop star, with his death news as they thought a good lot of information were unconfirmed. However, one point that is worth mentioning here is that even Wikipedia seemed to be buckling under the pressure of traffic to the web-page of Michael. At a time, many surfers met with an error message at the place that informed with an apology that the site was going through technical difficulties due to an unknown error. Did someone say, “It’s just another part of it.”