Wednesday, June 5, 2013

welcome to the prosumer age

I saw it coming several years ago. We are entering into a day and age where everyone is a simultaneous consumer and producer of media. This video also saw it coming, and in 2007 dubbed it "Prometeus - The Media Revolution" The first step into this new world was most certainly the creation of YouTube, which allows anyone with a decent quality camera to be an influencer on the national, or even global, scene. I mean that quite literally. Looking at the content on YouTube, I think the single most important factor in determining success is the camera quality and video editing skill... also the amount of jump cuts.

The recent decision of the Chicago Sun-Times to lay of it's entire photography staff and to move to an entirely iPhone-based photo source is very telling. I see two things happening here: A. People are respecting professional media less and less, and B. Apple is making damn good cameras. If the Chicago Sun-Times considers the iPhone to be the professional standard, we're all walking around with a ticking time bomb of media influence in our pockets. There's a great deal of empowerment that has come with the mobile revolution, and we are just now seeing its early effects.

In a day and age where information is readily available online, anyone can easily learn how to throw together some decent quality media. Are we approaching a peer-to-peer information age where the great media giants no longer stand tall? At what point will anyone with an iPhone be able to produce a studio quality movie that threatens the existence of Time-Warner? At what point does copyright become irrelevant? I'd like to think that day is fast approaching.

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