Still playing a lot of catch up. Over at Global Voices I published an interview I did with Caucasus Editor Onnik Krikorian. And over at Idea Lab I published a text version of my talk at Media Camp Kyiv. Teaser:
Before movable type, Europeans depended on priests to know what was inside of a book. Now they simply open its cover. That is a revolutionary difference. But what is important to remember is that not everyone benefited from the printing press. Scribes all across Europe protested. There aren’t good records of their protests, but I can just imagine their reasoning: that people would be overwhelmed by too much information; that they would become isolated reading at home rather than coming to church; that mediocrity would prevail if publishing was put into the hands of ordinary people. Basically, all of the same criticisms we hear of the Internet today. In the end, the scribes lost and the printing press won. With the benefit of historical perspective, we view the result as inevitable. And we are seeing the same dynamic play out today with traditional journalism and the participatory internet.
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As you can see, it is becoming more and more difficult to find funding to support both media organizations and journalistic coverage. Then again, it might prove to be even more difficult to find anyone to pay attention to what you publish. It seems that the scarcity of attention is even more severe than the scarcity of funding.
My next post will focus specifically on that scarcity of attention. Other good intentions include: a recap of what I saw at Media Camp Kyiv, a response to Evgeny’s “Engaged society vs Twittering socity“, a video interview with Parvana Persiani about the arrest of Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli, a comparison of e-government strategies of Macedonia and Estonia, a followup post on digital craftsmanship, and a rant about social expertise versus anti-social expertise.
Then, finally, a long series on government transparency projects outside of the West.
Good intentions. And time for gin and tonics.
