The Communication in the Actual Socio-Economic Environment.

The communication, joined with all its problems, became the topic for interesting studies during the mid of 90s. This attention was due to the publication of "Being Digital", wrote by Nicholas Negroponte, the first book that analyzed the communication environment in a comprehensive way. The novelty of this original book, which was immediately perceived by both the scientific and socio-economic environment, was twofold: the forecast of the revolutionary impact of digital technologies applied to the communication and the subsequent modified scenario. Nevertheless, the described scenario was contradicted or confirmed several times during last years. The linkage between communication and socio-economic environment, after the publication of that book, represented a special focus for the scientific society since the beginning of the new millennium. The evolution of technologies involved several structural components in many different phases during last years and generated a lot of deep changes in a short time. These developing conditions made really difficult any forecasting attempt about the evolution of each technological component and, consequently, any reliable scenario for the communication environment. The functional update of existing technologies leaded to the appearance of a new medium: Internet. This medium started with revolutionary peculiarities: low access and operating costs, multimediality, bidirectional way of usage and, above all, planetary target. The new communication tool seems to be a good candidate to substitute many of the former media or, at least, to reduce their usage in a meaningful way. Vice versa, the socio-economic effect of Internet was very weak: the new medium appears as simply added to the previous shape without meaningful influences on the diffusion of traditional media. Nevertheless, the advantages offered by the technological innovation was not reserved only to Internet, but deeply changed all the media influencing particularly their way of supplying service. The most meaningful effects of these innovations involved both the diffusion systems and trading approach so generating a special attention also by politic environments. The final objective of this paper is to analyze the evolution of the communication environment due to the innovation and to depict the actual communication offer. This approach will be useful to verify the conditions for reliable definition of scenarios.