schweblog

My interest has recently been sparked in what the future holds for media in the age of technology. For those of you who haven’t seen it, you need to watch Epic 2015, a short Flash video that speculates on the future of media and how future technologies will affect the way we understand, process, and select news.

I also found a link to Lance Knobel’s Deakin Lecture on John Lundqvist’s weblog. In the lecture, Knobel goes over several up and coming technologies (Google, RSS, blogs, Wikis) that will likely transform the way society operates and handles news media. And I think he’s spot-on–there’s a transformation just on the horizon that is going to shake the way we get information.

What’s fascinating is that Knobel’s predictions manifest themselves in today’s London street bombings. Within just a few minutes, a Flickr pool was started where people were posting their own pictures of the crisis, along with commentary. In addition, some people were taking screen captures and posting them–essentially pulling relevant portions of the news out, removing the necessity to stay tuned in for minutes on the TV or go to a garbage-filled front page of a mainstream news source.

On top of that, a Wikipedia article was started on the event shortly after the news broke, the interface allowing for almost instant updates the minute something new was found out by any user. It’s tidy, clean, and abbreviated, unlike other news sources’ coverage, which is filled with advertising and links to pointless, irrelevant stories and useless polls.

As terrible and devastating as the actual event is, a crisis like this needed to come about in order to really underscore the nature and potential for the new direction media has taken. While bloggers have been talking about the new Supreme Court justice nominee or the Iraq war, a crisis like this–where breaking coverage is invaluable–verifies that this truly original and revolutionary approach to news is more than capable of handling the pressures of news reporting.

Wake up, big media…there’s a new player on the horizon.