The Future of Media
Where Are We Now?
It’s no secret that recent changes in media have radically recast our world. Our lives have become data for us to slice, dice and share with other slicers and dicers. Of course, this invites certain snafus, but it also opens up whole new galaxies of innovative possibility. People are no longer willing to take their cues from Big Brothers. With the rise of social media, citizen journalism and user-generated content, everyone can be a part of the conversation—and usually about a thousand conversations at once. As we can see from the current measure of the human attention span--the ubiquitous 140 characters or less--with new formats come changes in how we absorb information. I realized that I had caught the multitasking bug when I found myself listening to a podcast while reading an article. Some claim that this sort of thinking in two directions at once is more productive, while others argue that it hinders retention. For me, it depends on the day. There are times when I can barely focus and times that I swear I could wash my hair, devour my daily news and write an article all at once. Please note, I am usually wrong about this one, a fact that becomes all too obvious when I emerge with dirty hair, no new knowledge and a page full of excrement.
What is Our Media Future?
Although everyone’s trying, nobody can predict the future of media--not even Eric Schmidt, the superhero I like to call MediaMan--but I will add one more opinion to the fray. Although everything seems to be migrating online, this doesn’t mean that the mobs chanting “print is dead” are entirely correct. People are still reading books and magazines in paper form. I’m guessing that print will take on a role akin to radio in the time of the televisual—functioning as a supplemental tool in the the annals of knowledge. I think the biggest change, however, will be in outlook. More and more, identities and ideas will be viewed as democratic and dynamic rather than static. This will lead to a climate in which the media is for the people and by the people, with all the innovation and mess that comes with that shining ideal. This trend can be seen in the new Twitter lists. People are no longer awaiting official tastemakers; they are forming their own tastes and then unleashing them on the world. It will be interesting to see the transformations these imagined communities of social media undergo. When I look into my cultural crystal ball, I see a future in which countless pieces of moveable text have replaced facts in our understanding of knowledge. Ultimately, if you’ll pardon a technologically antiquated metaphor (I’m over 25 now, practically over the hill), a given community will be defined less by its music and more by its cultural mixtape. Excuse me, I have some mixing to do.
