Questions on The Future of New Media

A student from University of Lincoln, England named Tom Hughes e-mailed me this morning asking me about the future of New Media.

I shared some of thoughts about some of the trends that I see, and Tom would be really curious to hear any other feedback about this in the comments.

Here's Hughes' questions and my response:

For my dissertation, I am analysing the current state of new media technologies and how the idea of 'audiences supplying their own demand', through the ease of a variety of new softwares and technologies, is becoming more widespread. I am hoping to be able to make some conclusions as to the outcome that this progression will lead to, influenced mainly by two particular examples; the optimistic outcomes of a 'Global Village' predicted by Marshall McLuhan, against the bleack, pessimistic predictions of theorists such as Paul Virilio.

What is your opnion on the future of new media...

I do believe that the passive consumption of media via television or movie screens will be phased out and eventually replaced -- supplemented -- with more interactive and digitally delivered experiences.

So instead of watching a linear narrative film -- only watching linear narrative films, then audiences will begin to also demand a non-linear self-guided experience of a highly annotated archive of multimedia segments linked by associations. Once the broadband pipeline will support the bandwidth, then people will begin to surf the Internet that's full of rich media about niche topics instead of watching the mass media. There is also a much higher probability that audiences will be able to interact directly with content producers.

UPDATE: Dumitru made a great point in the comment below, and so I rephrased my some of my original statements as indicated by the bold words.

This is my model for how the footage would be annotated with metadata by a distributed audience.

HUGHES: do you believe we should be embracing the future as a world of easy communication and creative outcome, or fearing it as a static environment where we will not need to move to communicate, anything we need can be accessed via a touch of a button, and the creative industry becoming full of talentless individuals?

I don't think that technological advances that allow people to make simple choices for the creation of media necessarily mean that creativity diminishes. In fact, I think we see just the opposite. The relatively low-cost of professional non-linear editing software and cameras has allowed independent filmmakers to work on a shoestring budget and create Oscar-nominated films such as "Super Size Me."

Not only that, but the low barrier to entry for producing and distributing media is helping evolve our culture to be much more media literate and capable of developing and nurturing talent. Talent is rewarded with social capital such as reputation and attention through incoming hypertext links and Internet traffic. Once the page views excel a certain threshold, then Internet-based advertising can support the creation of content full time. It used to be that either you were a starving artist or you'd have blockbuster success, but now the Internet is supporting micropayment and advertising-based revenue models that will be able to support a new tier of middle class artists.