For every kid that I bump into who is wandering the media industry looking for an entrance that closed some time ago, I come across another who is a bundle of ideas, energy and technological mastery. The next wave is not just knocking on doors, but seeking to knock them down.
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This is so true. The 16- 21 year olds think in terms of a media space that is laid out on a screen. Stills, video, music, hyper links, its all one amalgam presented on a 23″ monitor. They aren’t wondering about stills versus motion, digital versus film. Its all unified. They also know every design/editing app around. They get them from file sharing (pirate) services, and just work them until they master it. The only think they leave out is print, because they can’t DIY a web press from their parent’s house on a limited budget. It really is amazing, listening to these kids talk about their projects and seeing the final cuts.
Good article, should have been written a couple years earlier…
“Web crawlers grab expensive content and replicate it far away from the organizations that produce it. Various media labs are now testing algorithms that assemble facts into narratives that deliver information, no writers required. The results would not be mistaken for literary journalism, but on the Web, pretty good — or even not terrible — is often good enough.”
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If content is based primarily on tech and “good enough”, we will see a decline in quality of content, and diversity of culture. Income streams will be focused and narrow. Supporting less people, enabling a vicious cycle – race to the bottom.
When algorithms, and cyberbots are creating “good enough”, even the wonder kids mentioned above will receive no quarter. Counter and subculture dynamics will allow/create/support small niches of variety and difference.
Meanwhile, there will remain the obsessive image makers embrace of anecdotal evidence, and distorted perceptions:
“this (pick any): project/week/month/year was great. So my career must be healthy”.
“Just-in Focus appears to be doing great, so my boat will float too”.
“I just need to beat myself up a bit more, and max out a few more CCs… success is coming….”
As the pay cycles to half as much for four times the effort/resources.
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