History Repeats: Why AI Won’t “End” Filmmaking, Just Evolve It.

 Where to start! What about here. A 19-year-old in his bedroom and a synthesiser did what a group of musicians would accomplish. He wrote a trailblazing track called 19. It would be the end of music as we know it.

The automobile wiped away the equine industry before figures rose again in the 1950s. People, we come to realise, also preferred horses.

Video journalism and mobile journalism would obliterate traditional news gathering. It still hasn’t. I have got invoices for that being one of the UK pioneers.

Netflix vs Blockbuster is the corporate poster person for blunders of a monumental scale. This series of blunders is worth reading. It wasn’t that simple as a packaged story.

3D TVs will revolutionise the market. They didn’t then the industry found VR. That would do it. No! AR…

We’d rather have definitive answers rather than one’s that hedge their forecast. That’s the difference between Foxes and Hedgehogs (the philosophical kind) in predicting the future. In truth, TV punditry and commentators thrive on being Hedgehogs.

Trying to predict today is way hard enough. Based on yesterday that’s academia. Looking to tomorrow that’s the artist at work — those rare beings. Many subscribe, but few are chosen.

Who knew that cubism would foretell quantum physics? Everywhere all at once and perspective matters.

So yes AI will disrupt filmmaking. The traditional filmmaking industry will get a shock, adapt and evolve. Paul and Pauline Hardcastle will make their incredible AI film. It will be picked up by industry. The juggernaut will envelope them.

The other Paul and Paulines will create the parallel industry- something we’ve come to witness in the last twenty years from YouTube/ Social Media. We’ll eulogise them, fete them. Too right! Film marketing will go on hyperdrive.

Then the market will reconfigure and settle into a groove. Then we’ll await the next best thing, Presence Artificial Reality. You’re practically in your room in a film.

So my two pence. Yep get the goldrush going, before prospectors make their claims. Things change, yeah, and stay the same. Plus ca Change.

But why be a killjoy. That doesn’t sell. So I guess whatever works eh?

So brace yourself. AI is Here. Filmmaking’s Not Dying, It’s Just re-engineering itself for the next wave.

My AI film blending AI and in-camera.

And this is me, for context!

Google says Chinese will dominate web in 5 years time

The opening para on Readwriteweb reads

"Google CEO Eric Schmidt envisions a radically changed internet five years from now: dominated by Chinese-language and social media content, delivered over super-fast bandwidth in real time". More

I'm not in the least surprised.

I lecture students from some of China's leading universities and while this is a generalisation, they adopt and mash up, and their general knowledge about the West and tech is not reciprocated the other way. Reasons of course; again this is a perception.

Here I'm giving an undergrad class a task after a forty minute accelerated lecture. What is the future of the web?

Regarding broadband speeds, although the word has already been appropriated, the concept of Outernet - the net on everywhere - has been a constant theme for me, written up on Apple Pofiles.

Most likely our ambitions will run alongside these new variables, but I'd imagine there's some furious modeliing and trend extrapolation going on.

Was it John McHale that said: "The future of the past is in the future. The future of the present is in the past. The future of the future is the present".

Should that read the future ic Chinese?

Congrats BBC Newsnight Editor Peter Barron off to Google (video Interview,07)

It's a biggie of a story, and I wish I could say the above rare interview with the BBC Newsnight Editor last year gave some clues, but then I'd be fibbing.

But it's worth listening to Peter nonetheless talk about extreme transparency, blogging and the rest.

Peter as I said back in 2007 in this interview republished above is one of the most progressive television bods you'll meet.

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I hadn't intended the interview. I was showing Peter the gear to report digital broadcast stuff and how the next generation of journalists will really be IM6VJs ( interactive multimedia video journalists)
So as we finished talking and he was in a rush to another interview, I asked him a few questions. Now that's one of the pluses of carrying a small digi-camera, the A1 in your bag.

"

Peter, whom I first got to know from my tenure at Newsnight as a researcher in 1990 and then a freelance producer at Channel 4 News, is, I'm certain many will say, a good catch for the internet behemoth, Google.

He joins as head of communications and public affairs for the UK, Ireland and Benelux regions.

It certainly is Newsnight's loss, but perhaps signals something greater; that the divide between broadcasting and digital tech media is not like it was.

Yes execs have always shuffled from one job to another, but a high profile move like this at a time when there's a push and pull between broadcasters and Net media will give steam to others to throw away their inhibitions and go digital tech media.

Mind you, only recently Erik Huggers, from Microsoft joined the BBC and is now the BBC director of future media and technology, so it cuts both ways and perhaps suggest there's little between both camps.

You could also argue we shouldn't read to much into Peter's move; its a personal choice after all. The email response I got from him indicates he's raring to go.

Many congratulations to him.

I'm a few minutes away from posting my interview with former Sky News head of News Nick Pollard. If you listen to that, you'll realise no editor is safe.

NB: Alas Peter's departure means I have missed the opportunity of doing a VJ piece behind the scenes, that we discussed.
On viewmagazine.tv you'll find a range of interviews including Bradley Horrowitz ( Yahoo) and Peter Horrocks, BBC Head of Multimedia News.