Many Voices

A digital mosaic of the world in real time

We are a world whose parameters are set by technology, yet we are slow to respond.

When the technology of communications allowed us only 3 television channels, all programs were linear and the same nightly news progam was seen by 30 million people, all at the same time.

When the technology of cable arrived, the first cable channels tried simply to imitate what the networks had been – all things to all people – essentialy mini networks.

One of my first jobs, in fact, had been as a correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor’s nightly TV news show that aired on The  Discovery Channel – Monitor.

Slowly, over time, the cable channels began to diversify and simplify – they became niche providers. Travel Channel does travel; HGTV does houses; Food Network does food, and so on.

While the platforms diversified, the content providers did not.

Although there might, now with the addition of the web, be thousands and thousands of channels, the sources of content remained fairly limited.

Thus when video comes to the web, we get Hulu, which essentially repurposes conventional TV shows.  The web news sites such as Drudge or Huffington essentially repurpose NY Times or WaPo stories as their own.

Many platforms, few voices.

Now, in Iran, we are seeing the other side of the equation starting to fill in.

The same technology that made many platforms possible  – millions of platforms in search of content; now makes many voices possible as well. Twitter, blogs, flipcams, iPhone – these are all technologies for creation – not distribution.

So now, in Iran, we have many voices and man platforms.

Of course, this is a sea-change in the way journalism and news have worked for more than 100 years.  It had always been few platforms – just newspapers or a few radio and TV stations; and few voices – ‘professional’ journalists and TV crews.

Now both sides have engendered a change.

Many platforms.

Many voices.

How do we respond?

As usual, we are slow to respond.  We tend to stick with old models. Thus, our model of packaging, of presenting many voices is still stuck in the ‘limited voices’ model for the most part.  The New York Times or CNN gives us a few selects from the thousands and thousands of ‘tweets’ that they are receiving. They print of publish a handful.

This is wrong.

What is wrong is that the architecture of presentation is still mired in a world of ‘limited voices’.

What then is the new architecture?  The architecture of journalism for a world in which there are hundreds of thousands of voices all at the same time?

Our answer is not to be found in conventional newspapers or in anchored evening news shows.

I think, rather, our model might be found in the world of art.

What we are looking at in Iran is really a mosaic.

A million different tiles, all different, yet when seen from a distance and in combination, they create a far larger picture.

What we need is the ability to step back and see the larger picture – and a wall upon which to hang it.