Sept. 22 is OneWebDay, a day that people worldwide will celebrate and advocate for the Internet. Janna Anderson, director of the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University, asked readers to tell how the Web had affected their lives. Here are some of the responses:
When people think about how the Internet has changed music, most will tell you how the music industry has collapsed, or how people have since traded in compact discs for iPods and Mp3s.
What you have not heard about is the new generation of music fans who have picked up the pieces of the music industry's downfall to usher in an entirely new era in the ways that we enjoy music.
As a 21-year-old, I can hardly remember the days when my music tastes would have been confined to artists I heard on the radio, on television or from the recommendation of a close friend with mix-taping abilities. Most of the years I have been listening to music, I have been able to seek it out from all kinds of sources.
Today's providers of music include music blogs, services like Last.fm and Pandora, close friends with the ability to hit send on the computer and so on. Music listeners, both young and old, have been liberated from the confinements of an industry-dominated culture that once was rock 'n' roll.
So you say you want a revolution? I say the changes are well on their way for music listeners.
My knowledge of music doesn't stop with songs I have heard on the radio or records that I happen to own. It stops where I choose it to. And that's the power of our limitless world of the World Wide Web, to bring us that much closer to the things in life we are most passionate about.
Dan Rickershauser is a junior at Elon University who is majoring in journalism.
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