By Kevin Meyer
Baekdal
has a fascinating article, complete with some fantastic illustrative
graphics, showing how our sources of information and news have changed over
the past couple centuries... and how they will continue to evolve.
Below is just the overall summary graphic, shrunk considerably, so visit the
original site to really dive into it in detail.
![Marketflow1]()
You'll note that the time scale is
a bit skewed, but just because so much change has happened so recently.
The article goes into considerable
detail of the changes occurring during each time frame, but
I'd like to summarize the most important ones here.
In the 1800, the
only way you could really interact with other people was to go out and meet
them. It was all about face-to-face communication. If you wanted to sell a
product, you would go to the local marketplace, where you would setup a
stand. But this also meant that the only way for you to get information - or
to give information back - was to be at the right place at the right time.
You didn't really know what happened in another part of the city.
Moving on into the long era of
newspapers.
By the year 1900,
the newspapers and magazine had revolutionized how we communicated. Now we
could get news from places we have never been. We could communicate our ideas
to people we had never seen. And we could sell our products to people far
away.
That was truly a revolution...
until the radio changed the game.
During the next 60 years the newspapers dominated our lives.
Except that
during the 1920s a new information source started to attract people's
attention - the Radio. Suddenly you could listen to another person's voice
100 of miles away. But most importantly, you could get the latest information
LIVE. It was another tremendous evolution is the history of information.
Moving on to...
During the next 40 years a new technical revolution, the
television, was introduced. It started to real get public interest in the
1950s, and by the year 1990 it was huge. It had surpassed the newspapers and
magazines, and it was slowly obliterating the radio. Now people could not
only hear information, they could also see it.
The 1970s-1990s was also the time where the newspaper executives
were realizing that something was going terrible wrong with their market.
Information, fast, immediate, and
visual. What's next?
1998 was the year when the internet changed from being a geeky
place that had little relevance, to ‘every company needs to have a website'.
It was a place where everyone could get information from everywhere - at
least in theory. People also started to realize that the internet was more
than just information. You could give something back. You could join the
conversation. You could be a part of the experience instead of just a
spectator.
Notice anything? The
velocity of information evolution is accelerating... rapidly.
In 2004, only 6 years later, the internet had revolutionized how
we approach information.
For the first time in our lives we were being exposed to more
information than we could consume. In the age of newspapers we had to choose
what we wanted to see. But in 2004 we had to choose what we didn't want to
see. This had a devastating effect on the traditional forms of information.
2004 was also year when a new phenomenon started to take off -
Social Networking. The concept had been slowly gaining ground with the
concept of blogs. It was an easy, simple and affordable way for everyone to
share their ideas. And you could post a comment. For the first time, everyone
could create their own sphere of information without doing ‘technical
things'.
We've gone from centuries to
decades to a few years... and now significant change is happening in the span
of months. Perhaps in the future we'll look back on this and see each
change as just a smaller step in the larger electronic/online information
revolution, but each change is still nearly as dramatic as the change from
newspapers to radio.
2007 was also the turning point for the traditional websites. It
was once the most important change, but now people compared the traditional
websites to newspapers - a static and passive form of information. We wanted
active information. We wanted to be a part of it, not just looking at it.
The blogs also started to get in trouble. Just as TV had
eliminated radio (because it was better and richer way to give people LIVE
information) so are social networks eliminating blogs. A social profile is a
more active way for people to share what they care about.
And where are we today?
The new internet is completely dominating our world. The
newspapers are dead in the water, and people are watching less TV than ever.
The new king of information is everyone, using social networking tools to
connect and communicate.
Even the traditional website is dying from the relentless force
of the constant stream of rich information from the social networks. But 2009
is also going to be the start of the next revolution. Because everything we
know is about to change.
We're just at the beginning of the
next revolution? So what's next?
Social news is quickly taking over our need for staying
up-to-date with what goes on in the world. News is no longer being reported
by journalists, now it comes from everyone. And it is being reported directly
from the source to you - bypassing the traditional media channels. Instead of
having a journalist reporting what some analyst are saying, you hear it from
the analyst herself. Social news is about getting news from the source,
directly, and unfiltered.
And a new concept in the form of targeted information is slowly
emerging. We are already seeing an increasing number of services on mobile
phones, where you can get information for the area that you are in.
Now imagine the year 2020...
The traditional printed newspapers no longer exists, television
in the form of preset channels is replaced by single shows that you can watch
whenever you like. The websites have a much lesser role, as their
primary function will be to serve as a hub for all the activities that you do
elsewhere.
Social news, as described previously, is going to be the most
important way that people communicate. The traditional journalistic reporting
is by now completely replaced getting information directly from the source.
Everything will incorporate some form of targeting. You will be in control
over every single bit of information that flows your way.
In 2010, two new concepts will start to emerge. One of them is
intelligent information, where information streams can combine bits from many
different news sources. Not just by pulling data, but summarizing it,
breaking it apart and extracting the valuable parts.
The concept of having to get the paper, sit in front of your TV,
or look at your computer, will be long gone. Information will not be
something you have to get. It comes to you, wherever you are, in whatever
situation you happen to be in. The information stream will be a natural part
of every second of your life. It is not something you get, it is something
you have.
I know a lot of people bemoan the
loss of "journalists"... but what are (or "were"?)
journalists anyways? Yes they are trained, but they are also a
filter. And as we know, any filter has a bias,
admitted or not. Looking back it's actually frightening
that newspapers, often just one newspaper in a town or city, was considered a
reputable source for information.
Compare that to today where we can
receive live tweets directly from the protesters in Iran, create dynamic and
lively social
communities around niche interests with immediate information
flow, learn new concepts
when and where you want, and ponder and learn from the insights of great minds who in another
era would never have been heard from.
How will future information
evolution affect you... and your organization?
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