SSA: How Will The Social Web Change Media?

mpasiewicz — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:25:00 -0600

Not a lot to relay here. I expected more on participatory, journalism, citizen/grassroots journalism, and with all the talk of flickr, maybe photo journalism ;) Those seem to be among the more interesting sweet spots for the intersection of the social web and the media. A few web sites were thrown up, but there was little to no discussion or elaboration about them. Most tools and practices are still very primitive, but they'll get better. The one site that wasn't mentioned, but is most interesting to me is IndyMedia ... an organic, transnational organization that has at least a little bit of history to it.

The discussion again seemed very focused on what has happened/is happening today. I would have love to have heard more about future hopes and fears. No one mentioned interactive TV ... it will be interesting to see if/when the cable/satellite industry joins with major media to make this happen and what the dynamics will be. It will be driven by the internet, by software and technology, but I wonder if it might not manifest itself in the way that many people expect it might work. Perhaps they'll all move too slow and the inertia that is forming on the Internet will be the only force that shapes the way that media is produced, aggregated, distributed and consumed in the future. I'm not convinced of that yet. In an era where kids are growing up with fast paced, game based interfaces that provide constant interaction and feedback, I'm not convinced that we'll be poised provide the richness that folks of the future will want with the current pace of change in infrastructure ... computer prices will have to drop, Internet2 will have to become ubiquitous, screen prices will have to drop radically, screen sizes for mobile devices will have to change ... a lot of this will happen overtime, but I suspect the sleeping giant that is major media, cable and satellite companies will awake with strong will to redirect some technology its way ... but maybe not, maybe they're too bound to quarterly profits to invest during this time of disruption.

There was a little talk about remixing and open/closed content.

As far as I could tell there were no meaningful projections on when the two will begin to blend together in a more meaningful, pervasive way. There was also no talk of interdependencies required to facilitate greater investment and attention ... costs of screens, size of screens, the digital divide, etc. Again, very, very little about the potential risks involved if these technologies get hijacked. Does society at large really understand the risks?

I would have also been interested to learn about the rapid spread of memes etc. Does that make us more susceptible to propaganda and brash decisions?

Someone from OSTN, the cable industry might have proven an interesting addition to the panel. Of course, this was a topic that could have easily gone on for several days.

For those of you that don't know about OSTN, you might be interested in this podcast with Internet2 driven service.

http://connect.educause.edu/OSTN_INTERVIEW

Public Radio Exchange is also kinda interesting
http://www.prx.org/

EDUCAUSE | Open Systems

SSA: How Will The Social Web Change Media?