Like I said earlier today, I have a real passion for new media. I came across this lecture from Clay Shirky from NYU. In it he talks about the benefits of the shift from consumptive media to collaborative media.
We are moving away from the era of old media. At least how we deal with it is changing. After an episode of LOST the first thing I do is log on to LOSTpedia.com. With such a complex plot and with so many red herrings I find that the collaborative effort online helps me get a greater understanding of what is happening on the island. Soon this will be the case for everything.
Shirky talks about how the first generation in the industrial revolution drank itself into a coma because they couldn’t handle the massive cultural change. It was generations later where we started reaping the benefits of the progress made. He predicts something like that is going to happen with the internet. I am eager to see how are we going to move to something greater than LOLcats and pirated software?
My other big question is this: With many collaborators comes an issue with quality. Wikipedia is a great resource but often wrong. Some times intentionally so. How are we going to use the new media in a way that allows for quality thought to raise to the top?
