While most
people would argue that the explosion of content creation technologies (web
publishing software, video editing tools, audio mixing tools, cheap portable HD
cameras, etc.), media channels (600+ and growing cable networks, millions of
blogs, podcasting network, etc.) and distribution technologies (namely, the
broadband internet) over the past decade has been a boon for consumers, I’m
going to jump out and raise a red flag in the face of it all. Because our brains are hard-wired to prefer
corroborative information (even to the point of filtering out and/or ignoring
non-corroborative data), the trend towards increasing consumption of narrowcast
media creates a series of dangerous conditions, hurts individuals along the
way, and at least in my mind, runs the risk of weakening society.
A Pencil and a Dream
Literature
has benefited tremendously from centuries of equal opportunity business. You do not need to be rich to write a
book. You do not need to have the right
connections. You just need a paper and
pencil, a typewriter, or more recently, a computer. The result has been the creation of a
tremendously diverse global body of work, and with infinite time and no
publisher restrictions, a voracious reader could get a pretty good look at the whole
human experience in every corner of the globe over the past few hundred years. But that is not how most people consume
media by choice. Most people prefer to
focus. No matter what you’re interested
in, and what perspective you agree with, you could easily spend a lifetime
reading nothing but books on that subject, written by authors with shared
perspective. This can be very
comforting.
Three $500,000 Cameras, $2mm of film, a few
million dollars of editing time, a 300 person staff…. and a Dream
Until very
recently, feature film and television have been quite different from the open
conditions of the literary world.
Television spent its first 40 years with essentially 3 channels
available to distribute programming.
Feature film has been a similarly closed experience, driven largely by
the huge cost associated with making a quality film, leading almost all mainstream
filmmakers to have to access the necessary capital through a small number of
major studios. These conditions in
television and film had two direct consequences. First, the content that was produced was
generally crafted to speak to as many different audience constituencies as
possible. As an audience member, you
were likely to find occasional pieces that you really agreed with, and just as
frequently, find pieces that you strongly disagreed with – as you were not THE
audience, but rather, a very small part of a highly diverse audience. Because fare was limited and aimed at broad
swaths of the population, viewers were subjected to a much more diverse array
of stories and perspectives than they would otherwise choose to watch in a more
open system.
Second, a
vast array of highly talented storytellers were never given the voice that
their talent would have otherwise merited.
The “Democratization of Video Media”
The
restricted nature of video media has changed rapidly over the past decade, and
the pace of change is only accelerating.
iPhones with embedded video cameras and basic editing software are the
poster child for this emerging era of video literacy. Now, we’re all producers and directors. When we couple a Twitter-like promotion
engine with an increasingly video literate society, “channels” and “programs”
will be rapidly replaced by “people channels I subscribe to”.
“I
Love This Guy, He Thinks Just Like Me”
As news
sources and opinion publications proliferate towards infinity, we all search
(whether consciously or subconsciously) for our perfect channel of
information. Finding it is a wonderful
experience – as you suddenly find that “this page has everything I want to
know”. The voice is highly resonant,
as it’s basically your own. You feel
like you’re getting exactly the information you’ve been looking for, but
without the clutter. These “channels”
can be broadly shared (i.e. MSNBC, FoxNews, The Drudge Report, the Daily Show,
The Huffington Post, etc.), or much more narrow (i.e. individual smaller blogs
like Davenetics). The bottom line,
though, is that you get exactly what you’re looking for with each of these, and
nothing more. It’s both comforting and
easy. Your viewpoints are validated,
reinforced and, ultimately, entrenched.
But
isolation, even if it’s unintended, is still isolation. If we consider Darwin’s birds of the
Galapagos, it’s hard not to wonder if information isolation will not have
analogous social and cultural “evolutionary” ramifications. If we remove ourselves from contact with
anything other than self-selected information and communities, will we lose the
ability to interact reasonably and productively with people outside of those
communities in time? How long would
this take? What kind of impact would
this have on society, particularly the parts of it where people from different
information communities are forced to interact?
Information Availability is NOT the Problem
My gripe is
not with search engines and information availability. Fact retrieval is easier now than ever
before, and in some cases this can help create a more curious society – if I
want to know the average lifespan of an albatross or birthplace of John Maynard
Keynes, I can find both of these answers in le
ss than 30 seconds on just about
any cell phone from pretty much any place in the world. I have seen in my own life how this has
changed my relationship with small information and unknown trivia. Whereas previously, I might have asked someone
and given up quickly if they didn’t respond with the answer, now I find that I expect an answer for anything that sparks my curiosity. With approximately 43 seconds of searching, I
can tell you that the average albatross lives amazingly for 42.3 years despite a brutal life on the
seas, and that John Maynard Keynes was born in Cambridge, England on June 5th, 1883.
And I’m not
in any way against narrowcast media.
After all, with this blog’s loyal readership of seven readers, I’m using
one of the most narrowcast methods available to put forward my thoughts :) Targeted sources of information can be
great, for many of the reasons listed above.
But they need to be only a part of the total input.
Calling for a New Era of BROADcast
Information
Broadcast
entertainment still works fine, so why can’t “broadcast” news (and I don’t
necessarily mean it in the traditional context, but rather defined as broadly
targeted at a diverse array of people)?
Whether it’s American Idol, the Superbowl or the July 4th
blockbuster release of The Transformers, as a society, we have no problem
sharing in experiences despite the fact that we may individually be very
different people.
I don’t know
what the new format will look like, but I feel strongly that the continued
decline of network news and the accelerating death of the major newspapers are
somehow a very dangerous development. So,
while the venture community focuses on alternative energy sources/transmission
technology, clean-tech, performance marketing and other hot areas du jour,
perhaps some of the social entrepreneurs can take a look at something slightly
less sexy…something that marries Walter Cronkite to Sergey Brin.
The solution
is not a television show or a newspaper.
It will almost surely take full advantage of emerging technologies. My guess is that it will have attributes of
Google News (democratized roll-ups of a broad array of news channels, ordered
by popularity), it will prominently feature or be exclusively video, and it will
openly (and proudly) incorporate the editorial input of a respected array of thinkers
with a diverse set of belief systems.
And whatever
it is, it won’t taste like medicine, but it’ll be good for us all.
We have decided to open our POWERFUL and PRIVATE website traffic system to the public for just a few days! You can sign up for our UP SCALE network with a free trial as we get started with the public's orders. Imagine how your bank account will look when your website gets the traffic it needs. Visit us today: http://nsru.net/238o
Posted by: Svetlana | Saturday, August 24, 2013 at 12:06 AM