The future of media: evolution, revolution and disruption | Bernat Saiz | TEDxUPF

democracy dies in darkness this is the Washington Post slogan since 2017 the Washington Post is a hundred and forty years old newspaper and it's never had a tag line before how is it then that they've decided to use this particular sentence as their slogan don't get me wrong I like it I think it's a perfect declaration of intent the internet however when it was first made public decided to make fun of it how well fifteen metal albums whose titles are less dark than the Washington Post's new motto so apparently the internet decided that democracy dies in darkness sounded too dark so they proposed lighter sounding slogans instead of this one so instead of this one they proposed the Washington Post welcome to hell or the Washington Post screaming for vengeance kill em all vulgar display of power or my ultimate favorite The Washington Post all hope is gone but getting back to the original one the Washington Post takes such pride in their slogan they even decided to run a Superbowl campaign ad out of it the ad was viewed by millions of people and it was even uploaded to YouTube on YouTube over 13 over 1.3 million people saw the ads it also the video also has 13 million likes and over 10 million dislikes now I know what you may be thinking how is it possible than a video that has 1.3 million views has this amount of likes and and dislikes well this is because of how YouTube works if you want to use you bright now when you start watching a video and in the first two or three seconds you press like' or dislike' you a YouTube will count your like or dislike but it won't count your view as a view because YouTube things that AB you should count when it has been for more than two or three seconds but getting back to the ad itself the D ad talks about how knowing empowers people how it helps us decide how it sets us free it's difficult to disagree with this message so why did many people dislike the video to find out let's go on a journey to the YouTube comments of the videos of leads of comments of the video so this is what people said when four corporations own over 90% of the media that is the darkness democracy dies in the current mainstream media is the enemy of the people you are the darkness democracy dies in lol today's journalism's trash this is what democracy looks like not the commercial the comments so these people do not necessarily disagree with the fact that knowing empowers people they are just criticizing the fact that the media that is owned by so many few corporations is stating that knowing empowers people and it's praising about the importance of free knowledge so let's get back to these comments because this person is talking about how for corporations own over 90% of the media what is this person talking about let's get a global picture on it so in 1993 over 90 percent of all US media was owned by more less 50 corporations 34 years later the same 90 percent of media was owned not by 50 companies but by 5 so it's easy to understand why the people that commented on the video may agree with the message of the video but also why they are criticizing the fact that the media is stating or is praising about the importance of free knowledge but I'm not here to talk about the ownership of media I'm here to talk about the future of media because one of the things that characterizes media nowadays a part of the concentration of ownership is the fact that it hasn't changed that much in the past hundred years I mean of course it has changed but the underlying structure hasn't think about it something happens a journalist covers it then that person that journalist stocks with sources gets more information gets pictures or video to complement everything everything everything gets bagged gets uploaded to the internet or published in a newspaper broadcasted on radio television and and that's that's pretty much it technolog technological advantages allowed for the improvement in the production and distribution of information but the internet was the technological advancement that allowed for a true change in media the internet allowed media to rely less on traditional processes as well as less on traditional structures such as radio antennas TV towers etc the internet also allowed for the empowerment of audiences before the internet feedback was rowdy mentary I mean people could write letters to the editor stop buying a newspaper if they disagree with it but that was it now with the internet people can post comments they can create their own media outlets wholly unfiltered and independent they can create blogs websites podcasts even view tube shows like in television so if the Internet has allowed for this evolution because again the underlying structure remains the same what is the true revolutionary and disruptive future of media now media is just another industry so to get a hold of what awaits us we just need to look at other industry stuff that have gone under stat the same process for example the entertainment industry and to do so let's quickly talk about Netflix for a moment you see Netflix began its original distribution strategy by sending physical copies of DVDs be a postal mail then in 2007 they switched they switched their strategy to distributing content via online streaming now that was a revolution because it changed the whole movie rental services industry Netflix nowadays is is thriving and some Netflix movies have even won Oscars this of course has caused some dis confirmative within the industry up to the point in which famous film directors such as Steven Spielberg thinking that Netflix movies should be banned from the Oscars because they have never been screened on a real movie theater now that is a disruption because it changes the whole paradigm of the industry Netflix is just one example but we could also talk about Spotify before Spotify if you wanted to listen to your favorite music you'd either have to go to a live concert buy a physical album or wait until your favorite music was played on radio so you could record it and listen it to it later but now we can we can pay a small fee every month or listen to the music to listen to all the music we want anywhere on any device all the time so Netflix and Spotify are both good examples of the transition of the consumption of the product we buy a movie we rent a physical movie or a music album to the use of the service we pay a fee and then we are subscribed to the entertainment industry on Netflix or on Spotify with news right now you pay for an information product you pay for a newspaper you pay for a subscription to a newspaper but in the future will we pay to be subscribed to an information service the same way the same way right now we pay to be entered paint on Netflix and Spotify will we pay to be informed in the future now the transition of the consumption of the product to the use of the service is just one of the key elements that will outline the path to the disruptive future of media but it will not be the key factor other technologies such as blockchain Big Data and artificial intelligence will be contributing factors to the disruptive future of media how well to do so we need to leave UPF for omen for a moment and fly to plaza catalunya in downtown barcelona now everything that follows is fiction but it may very well be how we consume information in the future for the sake of this example let's say that a news media outlet uses a groundbreaking technology that makes this big data blockchain technology and even artificial intelligence to get access to all the information it can so we can mix it up and then send it to journalists who can do their job in the information process being it moderating the process or producing content by themselves so let's say we are in plaza catalunya this would be the normal cell tower usage of the area I mean each white dot represents a phone again this is just a rough example and the blue dots would represent an individual activity in the area so let's say that suddenly the cell phone towers antennas detect that unusual amount of people are in plus a Catalunya this could mean many reasons this could mean many things of course I mean they they could be tourists but our artificial intelligence system could think that something may be happening in Plaza de Catalunya maybe a demonstration out of context so our system would go online and search if any demonstrations were being planned in the area of course our system would find out that effectively no demonstrations were planned so our system knows that people are in plaza catalunya so are they doing there our system could get access to the public surveillance cameras this all of these information is already public and it could get pictures to understand what are people doing there our system could get a hold of one of these images for example and see that effectively people on the area are either carrying banners or flags so our system in a few seconds could know that a lot of people are there when there usually aren't what are they doing there and what are they protesting about now our system could pack everything up and with another level of information such as social media location services could go in social media search for the plaza catalunya location and it could see what people in the area are posting tweets Instagram photos so again our system would have that a lot of people are there what are they're saying and what are they protesting about all of this without the intervention of any journalist so again our system would pack everything app and it would send it to journalists who could receive a potential story news alert on all of their devices then our journalist could get a hold of all the information start writing down and publish a story but again we don't even need a journalist we could use an AI system to write the story itself so media companies are already using AI systems to automatically write new stories nowadays again this was just an example but all the technologies I've mentioned already exist blockchain technology big data and artificial intelligence are already here we would just need them to put them all together the media is already undergoing an evolution thanks to the internet but the true revolution and the interruption of media are still yet to come for me it's not a question whether these will happen for me the real question is when will it happen and what will we do as a society to adopt it to make sure it means a better future for everyone thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 6,080

Rating: 4.9259257 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Humanities, Digital, Evolution, Journalism, Media, Technology

Id: JVp-5G3ZQno

Length: 13min 43sec (823 seconds)

Published: Thu May 16 2019