We made it!
The clock struck, and this place we inhabit rotated through just another cycle, monumentally to many, called 2010.Somehow, though you couldn't help wondering looking back thinking that person on the ward with a drip hanging, a monitor bleeping, called Meeja, was still in bad shape.
What a difference a day makes? Nada.
We've realised now that we prosumers are part of the game changing, so if Meeja is going to discharge from A&E anytime soon, it's going to be because of you, either as conscious media maker or consumer.
In retropsect, we'll probably look back and say the decade gone wasn't that bad. Historians tend to be a little kinder than media analysts.
The Media Show 17th Century
"You should have seen the calamity in the 17th Century", is the riposte, "Now that was wretched".OK there was no film or traditional cinema, but that's relative. What was there was going through cataclysmic births and rebirths e.g. Literature - a cycle that hit a rich vein in the 1900s only to be blighted by two murderous wars.
We can thank fortune, so far, it's not come to that, though the sniff of Westphalia lingers.
I'm excited though.
Not because of the marketing ploy that a new decade should yield new paradigms.
This, though that will happen through a collective wisdom of crowds, but that this year above the last couple should mark a period of consolidation.
That's my key word for now "consolidate".
The Chinese are Coming, Er No, they've been here just unnoticed. Google reports in 5 years time the Chinese will dominate the web.
Media Consolidation
In essence, there's nothing much we don't know that could creep up from behind and do a "tango" - that's the multiple award winning slap [ yes really!] by the way, and not the dance.There are many knows that we know and few unknowns that we're yet to know, though we also know that the unknowns are not known till we get to know them, then we're back in known territory.
Donald Rumsfeld, you are a bloody genius.
So we could trawl any number of the "follow" sites * e.g. Adam Westbrook, Mindy McAdams, Mike Jones Digital Basin, Koci's Multimedia Shooter, Grant's Videographer, Andy Dickinson, Journalism.co.uk, MediaStorm... and gain invaluable intel.
All the above and more* are givers - selflessly providing knowledge and inspiration, notwithstanding the emerging native talents edging into these Circles of Trust.
The end to the beginning of the Polymath
The issue at hand, momentarily then, isn't the lack of understanding - that was an issue pre 2005. The issue now is curating this vast knowledge on the one hand, and targeted selectivity on the other.Being a polymath is still to be encouraged, but as I tip toed across 2009 units of length to 2010, the jack of all things is oscillating again back to greater specialisms.
Specialism is perhaps also the wrong word; more a greater comparative understanding of one field than the other, though the understanding of the weaker field may still come with high knowledge value.
2010 will be a period when the experiment leaves the lab, when the 1000s of blogs/tweets/meeja all doing the same or not perhaps seek greater interdependency.
We've already seen this defacto in blog rolls, but as the gathering of the likes of Wemedia indicates, and Journalism.co.uk's Rewired event will illustrate there's intel gathering of a kind whose impact exceeds the mundaneness of "just another event".
Forming Expert Tanks
Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Rand Corporation, TED - all started with a few then amortized their intellectual capital to what they are today.Incidentally, whilst I'm talking about Journalism.co.uk. Britain's answer to Poynter (sorry Poynter) you've really got to tip your hat off to them. I say them, but it's barely a handful of people that drive that amazing site.
No small wonder, The Guardian keeps on poaching its staff.
So onwards and upwards, we're not cleanly out this recession, and Meeja's still feeling a bit poorly, but if we can court greater understandings, affiliations, cohabitations, unions, then 2010 onwards will be for the right reasons a turning point.
From my end, it kicks off in less than two weeks with "Collisions" - a brain storming collective of Artists gathering from around the world with Southbank Centre's Artists in Residence - which I'll write about in my next post.
Belated New Year tidings
+++
David
www.viewmagazine.tv
* apologies to the many sites that are equally brilliant
