So which will libraries be, old media or new media?
The ubiquitous Jian Ghomeshi ("CBC pop culture specialist") is doing a series called
The End
This includes The End of Radio, TV and
The End of Print
which will air May 20, 2006 at 9:30 pm ET/PT on CBC Newsworld.
All episodes will be available online as Windows Media or QuickTime, currently only The End of Radio is up. From a library perspective, the blurbage for End of Print is interesting
Google Print, a full-text search engine of every book ever published launched the project late last year with much fanfare. The project has the potential to replace yellowing card-catalogs with a book search product as powerful and comprehensive as Google's search engine for the web.
Yeah, we really should think about some way to put that Public Catalogue Online so that it can be Accessed.
<rant>I do have an ongoing issue with the CBC (and other channels) that try to "youthify" their networks by bringing in youth experts who are... middle aged. George Stroumboulopoulos is not edgy. He's ancient. Street Cents is the only show that succeeds somewhat in this area, what with it using people who are actually like, under 30 years old.</rant>
The Economist recently looked at media from the reverse perspective, discussing blogs, wikis, and other usual suspects in a Survey on New Media - Among the Audience.
the Trotts decided to build a better “blogging tool”, which they called Movable Type. “Likening it to the printing press seemed like a natural thing because it was clearly revolutionary; it was not meant to be arrogant or grandiose,” says Ms Trott to the approving nod of Mr Trott, who is extremely shy and rarely talks. ...
These two incarnations of movable type make convenient (and very approximate) historical book-ends. They bracket the era of mass media that is familiar to everybody today. The second Movable Type, however, also marks the beginning of a very gradual transition to a new era, which might be called the age of personal or participatory media. This culture is already familiar to teenagers and twenty-somethings, especially in rich countries. Most older people, if they are aware of the transition at all, find it puzzling.
Calling it the “internet era” is not helpful. By way of infrastructure, full-scale participatory media presume not so much the availability of the (decades-old) internet as of widespread, “always-on”, broadband access to it. So far, this exists only in South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan, whereas America and other large media markets are several years behind. Indeed, even today's broadband infrastructure was built for the previous era, not the coming one. ...
The age of participation
... Last November, the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 57% of American teenagers create content for the internet—from text to pictures, music and video. In this new-media culture, says Paul Saffo, a director at the Institute for the Future in California, people no longer passively “consume” media (and thus advertising, its main revenue source) but actively participate in them
In addition to the articles, there are five audio interviews (MP3 format).
The Globe referenced the Economist article on wikis in an editorial
Wikipedia's world, and where it points us
Monday, May 1, 2006, Page A12
The Wikipedia model is not perfect, but its success has implications that go far beyond how people conduct research. It puts a question mark over the whole idea that information must move from credentialed producer to passive consumer. That presents established companies and organizations with a big challenge. Media groups will have to find a way to emulate Wikipedia and bring readers and viewers inside the tent, as this newspaper is trying to do by, among other things, inviting on-line comments and organizing question-and-answer sessions with journalists. ... Government itself, that ultimate control freak, will have to open up to the views of its Web-empowered citizens. In the same way that Wikipedia presumes "collaboration among users will improve articles over time," government should learn to accept that collaboration among citizens can change things for the better.
If we can harness our collective wisdom the way Wikipedia has, the potential for unleashing human creativity is enormous. Instead of a camel, we just might create a unicorn.
This did not impress some people, such as
PAUL AXELROD
dean, Faculty of Education, York University
Toronto -- Your benign defence of Wikipedia (Wikipedia's World, And Where It Points Us -- editorial, May 1) is misplaced and naive. It is one thing to hail the Internet as a "democratic" venue for the expression of opinion, informed or otherwise. It is quite another for an "encyclopedia" with no academic standards and no discretion with respect to the choice of authors to pose as some kind of intellectual authority, and, worse, to be legitimized as such by The Globe.
It's one of three comments under the heading Weni, widi, wiki.
Writing on May 6, 2006, Shannon Rupp covered the issue of Wikipedia's reliability for the Globe
Working through Wikipedia's vanity fair
...
Wikipedia's name gives the wrong impression, said Simon Fraser University communications professor Richard Smith. The open-source site (meaning it can be written and edited by anyone) is called an encyclopedia only for lack of a better term.
"It's socially produced knowledge. But they didn't know what they were producing when they began," Prof. Smith said, explaining that many of the volunteer editors are authorities on their subjects. "It's like being cool in high school: You build up social capital. You do something uncool and you're gone. If you lied on Wikipedia, you would shame yourself."
... new media or old, the same guideline applies: Always consider the source.
The Globe also had an article about modern photography. It went something like "Flickr Flickr, Flickrflickrflickr". That's it. Everyone is now officially banned from talking about Flickr. Find a new example. The article is One Giant Web Gallery.
Also in Globe world, Dave Chalk discussed web video in Nothing on TV? Where's my Canadian iTunes TV, that's what I want to know.
Lastly, Digg unearthed a past BayCHI event
Beyond Search: Social and Personal Ways of Finding Information
Neil Hunt, Netflix; David Porter, Live365; Tom Conrad, Pandora; Kevin Rose, Digg; Joshua Schachter, del.icio.us; Rashmi Sinha, Moderator
There is audio (1h48m, MP3) as well as notes.
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