The Internet, after the alphabet, the printing press, and the telegraph, is only the fourth revolution in media history. The alphabet gave the media distance, or portability. The printing press gave it volume. The telegraph gave it speed. The Internet is turning the direction of information around 180 degrees, and eliminating hours in the day and the edges of the page. And computers continue to shrink information, moving information storage and retrieval toward the infinite.
That's where we are in 2009, riding the crest of a media revolution still in its semi-primitive stages. Now let's turn around, away from the past, and look from 2009, into the future, 50 years distant, to 2059. Using the differences between 1959 and 2009 as a reference, what is the media world of 2059 going to look like?
It will be faster, smaller, fuller. If visitors from 2059 swooped in, picked us up, and carried us forward to their world, could we survive? I doubt it. We would be literally in the dark. There will be visible evidence of media. No screens, no print, no hardware clutter, no snarl of cables under the desk! No download times!
But mainly, information will be moving too fast for us to see, and in strange forms we would not have thought possible in 2009. We will have learned to process two tracks of information at the same time. The tracks will be coded, informing our brain which is which, then woven together and delivered. Today, it would be like the CBS Evening News assigned one code, the commercials another code, and then the two merged and run at the same time. We would get 30 minutes of news and 30 minutes of commercials, and we would understand both clearly.
Only in 2059, it won't be the "CBS Evening News." In 2009, we already know what it feels like to find channels of information tailored to our specific interests and demographic profile. It started in the 1970s, when cable television introduced "narrowcasting." The growing number of channels made it possible, and a good business deal, to dedicate channel content to specific interests, such as news, sports, business, weather, shopping and music. Advertisers loved the new focus, because it enabled a more direct connection with their target audience, which saved money and, most importantly, increased consumer response rates.
But even the cable world needed a relatively large audience base, a Neilsen rating of 3 or 4, to stay in business. That meant 8 to 10 million provable sets of eyeballs to attract enough advertisers to stay in business (remember the First Law of Media).
The Internet is changing all that. This is just so fascinating. In the 15th century, the printing press turned the direction of media information flow around 180 degrees. No longer did people walk to a central place to hear a speaker deliver the news; the news was now sent out to them from a central place. It was the dawn of broadcast. Now, the Internet is turning the information flow around again, by 180 degrees. In the media-public delivery system, a circle has literally closed. We are living in the twilight of broadcast, and, as it turns out, going in to the information is the vastly superior system, as long as you can do it at the speed of light through Internet connections, and not on the back of a donkey.
By turning the direction of information around 180 degrees, the Internet is removing all that broadcast transmission expense, and moving narrowcasting into the next phase. No longer does media have to broadcast content out to consumers. Consumers come in to the content, which in the emerging media world is only a directory in a computer. The result is an incredibly cheap connection with an incredibly focused audience. In this world, an audience of 100,000 hits a day may be enough to be a great business deal both for the content provider and the advertisers. In this world, a single individual with a good idea, a computer, and an Internet connection, can create fabulous wealth with businesses like FaceBook, YouTube and Google.
Even as we speak, all of these businesses, connections, content, advertising, and wealth, are based on media codes. Right now, the time has come, after the thousands of years bringing us to the 2009 media world, with its speeds and access, for the reader to become aware of this strange, ironic, ominous screen between your eyes and this page, and of the media codes embedded in all the media content you consume. The greater the access of media to consumers, and the faster consumers can absorb content, the more powerful the codes become.
Above all, as this world begins the voyage toward 2059 and phenomena such as parallel information processing – all content, and all advertising, 24 hours a day – people need to acquire information and knowledge about the codes the media uses to attract us, inform us, persuade us, and threaten us. In professional hands, the codes have enormous power, and that power needs a check and a balance that only an educated, informed public can provide. In the media-public relationship of 2009, the power equation leans heavily toward the media side. When the public starts to understand the media codes, and the media starts to realize the public knows what the media is doing, that equation will start to change, just slightly at first, then more. After that, the public will be positioned to influence the equation at will, and the final great irony will arrive when the people, laughing and embarrassed, realize just how much media power they have, and where it comes from.
If media literacy and education projects do their job, then that awareness will have become part of the 2059 media world, and it will be a good thing. In 2009, media delivery devices were becoming quite small, and wearable, and there was success reported with research showing that a switch could be turned on or off simply by thinking about it.
That is a stunning direction, and if it is followed, by 2059, it is reasonable to suppose that the media delivery system could be a microscopic, internal coating on a key nerve in or near the brain through which the wearer connects with a media of choice, or two or three mediums – visual, audio, print – the wearer being capable of processing and understanding all three simultaneously – read, watch, listen – at any hour or any place without the slightest disturbance to neighbor, office colleague, seatmate, or sleeping spouse, unless the media might be an ancient Monty Python piece and laughter, spontaneous and disembodied, erupts.
In that world, it will be crucial that a person knows how the media works, how to turn the media off, and has the power to do it. People need to start thinking about this. Standing in 2009, at the exact center of this history, I am glad the ninth-graders of this world are going to be getting to 2059 only one day at a time.
No comments:
Post a Comment