The Pong of Electronic Publishing
New York Times Digital CEO Martin Nisenholtz gave an interesting keynote at the Software & Information Industry Association conference last week, looking at the history of electronic publishing and postulating that we are on the verge of a new era.
"The 'Pong of Electronic Publishing' means that we are entering a phase where Electronic publishers like nytimes.com will evolve from sorting, distributing and making accessible content created principally for other formats, to creating content that is native to the computing world from which we evolved," he said. "Pong was one of those magical moments in computing when an entirely new way of creating was popularized..."
He says the jury is still out on whether Weblogs are the 'Pong of Electronic Publishing,' in part because the form has not evolved into a profitable business.
But perhaps the most interesting part of his speech is when he discussed how the next phase of electronic publishing is "as much about social networking as it is about information retrieval."
He says the jury is still out on whether Weblogs are the 'Pong of Electronic Publishing,' in part because the form has not evolved into a profitable business.
But perhaps the most interesting part of his speech is when he discussed how the next phase of electronic publishing is "as much about social networking as it is about information retrieval."
He says:
New interfaces will develop that can support a multiplicity of "views" into a particular geography or issue. Today, production technologies and bandwidth limitations constrain our "view" to a linear tightly edited broadcast format. Even CPSAN, with several fully dedicated channels, can only provide us with one view at a time.
But imagine taking a world like Ultima Online - designed for massive numbers of videogame players - and apply it to the real world, where the players are reporting from all corners of the planet. This is a vibrant, interactive real-time view of the world.
Users in this context can zoom into the ongoing storyline taking place in dozens or even hundreds of locations. In this context, there is not a simply John Burns reporter in Bahgdad. There is a kind of ongoing John Burns channel that brings with it a continuous record. Many people make the mistake of thinking that a more distributed news capability obviates the need for professional journalists.
On the contrary, the judgment, synthesis and analysis journalists do become even more valuable as the information flow and complexity increase...
However, the range of this journalistic flow extends in several directions at once, portending new aggregation schemes. Not only do we have better access to global resources, but we also have an almost infinite array of niche subjects that can be mined. The limitations of the news hole are blown apart...
These participatory, navigable rich media universes will not be here for a very long while, certainly not within a 10-year timeframe in my view.
But the "pong" of this universe may come very soon. Perhaps, as I said, it's already here in the form of Web logs and I don't yet see it.
Ultimately this new form of journalistic expression extends in several directions at once:
Feb 02, 2004 | E-MAIL | SAVE | PRINT | PERMALINK | DISCUSS(0)
Discussion
0 comments about 'The Pong of Electronic Publishing'Post a comment
Site Map
