braintag

this new media thing comes in several different flavors: citizens media, citizen journalism, participatory panopticon...

i like participatory media.

[ communication > circumstance > context > understanding > monologue > dialogue > feedback > respect > responsibility > cooperation. ]

what happens when our communication becomes our media?

*Create and share content (video, audio, text)
*Pull content from any node on the network to any other.
*Allow for the propagation/distribution of that content to scale without a huge hit on resources (storage, bandwidth, education)

Aim to reduce the friction of creating and distributing media.

Friction can be good (as a control filter) but in media (or communication) it's bad. it's not about filtering, it's about restricting. think bloodflow, circulatory systems, traffic, blood clots, the circulatory system works because it's unconscious. is this babble?

channel space is limited by space and time. (same with shelf space)
scheduling blocks (30/60/120min) works for masses but doesn't work for any given individual. It's less convenient for the end-user.

TV is a one way medium. Community media is an attempt to lay two-way communication on top of it. Kinda like grafting conversation onto a bullhorn. ;)

Internet, however, is many to many (big up corante.) It's limits are access, education, bandwidth, proc power to encode and decode rich media. But that's becoming slightly less daunting. When a group of children in rural South America don't know how to program the clock on a VCR but they know how to sign on to AIM and start an audio chat, we are in a better place than we were 50 years ago. And it's a lot more important than knowing how to white balance a camera.

move the possible points of mediation to the edges.

In ten years of working with community television and radio, I have learned to never blame civilians for not being able to learn a professional trade. In fact, the problem with community media isn't the student but the tool. So it makes a lot more sense to simplify the process of producing a television show, by either making the tools simpler and lowering the time requirements necessary for a finished product (5/10/15 minute programs instead of 30/60/120)

The Professional Media is inaccessible to most civilians. You have to be noticed by someone in the professional media class to gain access. You have to learn the tools if you want to make your own media. Or you have to have the resources (money, time, power) if you want to build your own media network.

Layers of Professional Media:
Social and Professional Networks (includes Govt, commercial, and educational institutions, friends, family)
Journalists & Other Professional Peers
Editorial
Technical
Administrative

What is the use of a big network in an age of nodal media?
Big networks have brand recognition. Trust. Expensive and still useful video and audio distribution networks.

But if a channel is just an RSS playlist, what does big media offer beyond being big name aggregators?

What if we could convert their resources into catapults that help host and propagate the most interesting stories at the edges? Would this be a new type of media entity? Perhaps Current.TV is a early hybrid (internet > cable) form of this kind of media entity, pushing content from the edges to a larger audience. (This was the idea behind BrowseTV, BTW.)

Devices.
Videoblogging cameras are not the answer. Sanyo Xacti C5 is neat, useful, and quite clever. But even when they're tiny, camcorder-only devices are still bulky.

We need to get everything down to one device. One phone-based (the phone isn't the important part, really. We only piggyback on the phone b/c it has the portable bandwidth and near-ubiquitous geographic coverage. If WiMax gets big and voice becomes relegated to just another app, then we'll use whatever small comm device comes next.)

Syncasting.
Developing media with the intent that it will be time-shifted and space shifted in order to transfer it to a device more appropriate for its use. Photo copiers are the first example of a syncing device of this type. TiVo is next. Then podcasting. What comes after that? PSPcasting?

Importance of the caching device with the perfect environment of usefulness and compelling content.

ANT
Rocketboom
Momentshowing
PSPWare
mefeedia
Vimeo

We need a boingboing of video RSS. Someone "to sift through the chaff" (someone said this in the talk. Thought it was good.)