The New News

I got a tad emotion in my last post, I probably didn't really explain myself very well.

Allow me to clarify.

The screencast of the July 7th page on wikipedia pretty much summed up my feelings. What I was witnessing was the endevour of normal folk to provide each other with the most up-to-the-minute information they possibly could. They weren't journalists or professional photographers, just people on the street with their phones or at home behind their computers who wanted to help.

Then it dawned on me. For the first time I noticed that the media wasn't bothering to wait for their various correspondants to get to the scene, they were asking for our help, we were the correspondants. They wanted our photos, videos, opinions and accounts: and in many instances, wikipedia is just one of them, it was the blogger type sites that were providing the most up-to-date content; especially when you consider how difficult it could be during those hours to access the beeb and other main news outlets.

The screencast summed this all up, it was poetic, bittersweet.

Along with the warm feeling this sort of grassroots activity gives me, it reiterated my love for the internet.

No other for of communication is so dynamic, so bottom up, so pluralistic. TV is great, but it is also passive, in many cases you are force fed and while 'have your say' type bits attempt to bridge this gap they are a pretty poor showing. The internet offers everything and most importantly it offers it for everyone.