Media 08 (Part 1)

I’m in a room full of people, hoping they won’t realize that I don’t belong. I should be in class back in Melbourne. Instead, I’m at Media 08 in Sydney, an event run by X | Media | Lab, “the internationally acclaimed think-tank and creative workshop for digital media professionals.”

Who am I kidding? Everyone's talking about widgets... huh? They blog (live) on their Macbooks. I take notes (slowly), with a pen.

I am (cringeworthy) old school in the new media world. Then again, technology isn’t my main passion.

It’s the social connections and communication in a borderless world, the alternate possibilities through screen culture. Or maybe I'm just telling myself that to make up for my digital retardation.

Vicky Taylor from the BBC talked about how on a single day in July, over 2 million people came to BBC site, during the floods around Gloucestershire. The BBC website gave people a much-needed forum to swap stories, share advice, and question authorities.


What does this mean about machines becoming more valuable than people, during a crisis?

Brendan introduced Mohamed Nanabhay by saying that Al-Jazeera are light-years ahead of BBC and CNN in terms of user-generated content.



The video got over a million hits. This mainstream media outlet is using (presently) "alternative" forms of production to alter the mainstream itself, from the inside out. Mohamed mentioned, the key driving force of new media is the participatory aspect - the reader is also now the creator:

“To find something comparable, you have to go back 500 years to the printing press, the birth of mass media… Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite. Now it’s the people who are taking control.”

– Rupert Murdoch, quoted in Wired, July 2006

He also used a quote at the end that reminded me of how integrity leads to freedom: “Telling the truth is hard. Not telling it is even harder.”

He mentioned industry trends of content going online whether you like it or not; internal resistance to change; the fact that we’re dealing with new business models. Where does internal resistance to change come from...what does it take to force people, or businesses, to change – is catastrophe the only true catalyst?