Product of Pain

Photo by Matt Dwyer.

I liked the production of the EPIC media future video, and I think it is a good use of the multi-media nature of internet.  If this had simply been an all-text blog, it would have had much less impact.  

Parts of it seemed dated.  Do people in 2009 think Tivo is going to have a significant impact on the media landscape?  Friendster...?  (Although given the subsequent success of MySpace and Facebook, it was prescient of the creators to include a social networking site.)

As I listened to the video, I wondered where information used in the customized computer-generated news stories people were receiving from future theoretical information outlets was coming from, and what sort of information would be available for this product.  Where are the "editors" these future people are subscribing too are getting their news, to remix for their audiences?  (This idea was prescient of Twitter and simply an extension of blog followers).  Presumably newspaper and other "old media" web sites have pretty much vanished by 2014 in the video scenario, so it can't come from them.  As the video mentions, the information could be gathered by "everybody" (or at least the small percentage of any online community that contributes enthusiastically), plus public relations and government data released online.

Based on observation, in a traditional news sense, "everybody" would be good at reporting on things that effect large groups of people suddenly, like natural disasters or the Iranian election.  "Everybody" would be good at chewing things over, like George Bush's hump, or Megan McCain's bumps.  "Everybody" would also do a good job of covering things that interested everybody who is part of the top of the power law distribution.  Right now, that means things like the top search terms on Twitter:  The vampire movie "The Twilight Saga: New Moon," and celebusician Lady Gaga.  "Everybody" would be poor at covering boring stuff, like local government.  Presumably the web crawlers of the future will be able to find your town's web site, and decode the agenda or minutes for local meetings, and (possibly) determine what is interesting, but it remains to be seen if the bloggers of the future will be able or willing to fill in the human details in an accurate way.

Perhaps media training efforts like this NPR/PBS effort with American University's Center for Social Media will help "everybody" learn how to be a reporter?