Friday 5 April 2013

What Does the Future Hold for Citizen Media

Now that we are completely surrounded by ways to become involved in the media, what does this bode for the future? In a world where nearly everything has become interactive it's hard to avoid becoming involved at some point, whether it be through the internet or maybe sharing a video of an event to a friend, we are always showing our involvement on a larger scale than previously. This idea of the "global village" coined by Marshall McLuhan has almost reached a peak in that we've become so connected that really the only step forward can be physical teleportation since we can essentially travel anywhere in the world through the internet in a matter of seconds.
  
But does this necessarily mean the future will be bright participatory media? If we're going off of  the majority of YouTube comments then you'd think we're actually going in the opposite direction, but arguments, "flame wars", and hate filled comments should be expected when dealing with anonymity on a global scale. This doesn't mean that it is representative of everyone on the internet, everyone knows that as author Henry David Thoreau once said "the mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest", as a group of people will collectively be at their worst. Fear not though! As there are plenty of things to negatively portray the future of citizen media, there are also plenty to show a positive outcome.
  
Dan Gillmor discusses in his article why citizen media is important and how far it has come, but he also gives 10 tips on how to make it become something worthwhile and a positive aspect of daily life. In short, although citizen media can have its drawbacks, the sheer fact that we live in a society that has access to these technologies and the ability to have our voices heard is astronomically better than any other era of civilization. The fact that each of us has our own personal digital camera in our own pockets would be mind-blowing to someone from 20 years ago and the ease of sharing these moments we individually capture greatly connects our world. With that being said, I'm really looking forward to seeing how we carry this knowledge into the future and what younger generations will make of these ideas.

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