Anyone looking at the media in general, and radio in particular, will see that we are experiencing a time of great change in the way that media is made and shared. Indeed, the idea that we ‘share’ media, rather than distribute it is a very new thing that has only emerged over the last few years. Audiences are no longer simply seen as large blocks of ears or eyes that can be shifted around by advertisers, but are thought of more as users or partners in an ongoing media experience. It’s no longer sufficient to simply offer a viewable-or-listenable-only product. Instead, to keep people engaged we have to provide an ongoing relationship between the producers of different media products and the audience that consume them. It is less likely that we are going to think of media as a consumer experience in the old fashioned sense, but instead we are increasingly likely to think of media as a shared experience where we can swap ideas and thoughts with other people who have the same kind of tastes that we do. To use some jargon, we are a community based on our shared interest in the meanings generated through our consumption of different types of media.
Indeed, this goes even further. With the advent of accessible and serviceable laptops, smart phones and now the iPad, we aren’t just likely to think of ourselves as consumers at all. Instead we are becoming producers who have access to the tools of media production in ways like never before. If you want to download video editing software, there are free applications that do a very professional job. Or graphic design, or audio production. The days of the tools of media production being confined and restricted to a few small studios and professionals are over. It’s possible for anyone with access to the internet, a relatively cheap laptop, and a microphone or camera to create and produce their own content in a way that suits them, and then share it via Youtube or Myspace or Facebook to your friends and followers around the world. But none of this is news. We’ve been doing it for ages. The point is, this is new, and very different from the way things happened in the past. We are in a new age.
So, it things have changed, how have they changed? What do we need to look out for in this new, exciting world of shared media production? What are the emerging themes that shape and direct the willingness of people to put themselves out there as communicators and collaborators of shared media? On a personal level this might be found on our Facebook page as we string together the incidents and occurrences from our lives. Sharing photos, achievements, disappointments and triumphs to a network of friends and family who reassure us that we are not much different than they are, or, don’t think about things much differently than they do. Sex, money, jobs, beer, exercise, fashion, clubbing, whatever it is that you do, you can share it. We talk informally with friends and maintain a level of visibility never achieved before. Out lives have become performances and mediated events for all to see.
But is there a problem? Somehow, to many of us, the personal use of social media seems so much more exciting and enriching than our working lives. While we get great joy from sharing our holiday photographs, our work life somehow seems to lag behind. There is a resistance to change when it comes to our employed life. We are reluctant to show the boss what it is that we do and how we do it. We are reluctant to share our thoughts in a way that might get us in trouble with colleagues and managers. We think twice before we commit ourselves to sharing our thoughts about a project at work – incase it lands us with more work and more and more responsibility. We don’t even know if our colleagues will support us, or if they will mock our efforts, steal our ideas and the chances of getting the attention of our bosses.
So, what do we do? Do we change how we are and how we want to interact with one another at work and beyond? Or, do we start to think seriously about how social media will impact on our working practices, our working relationships, our ability to express ourselves, and the kind of organisation that we are part of? The question is what are the working practices of the future? What will the next generation of employees be expecting from their working life if they are already primed and ready to use Facebook and Twitter as a way of making friends, setting goals, checking on progress, letting off steam, and being creative problem solvers in the process. If employers restrict access, and frown upon social media, what will be the consequence for a company in terms of the levels of creativity, innovation and responsibility that employees will demonstrate?
This new socially mediated environment gives us a great way to share knowledge and solutions to problems. Need an answer to something, Wikipedia can give you an overview and point you in the direction of more detailed debate. Want to share your thinking about how things seem and how they really are? There are numerous bloggers who have reached the same conclusions, who talk with similarly minded people and who are willing to voice their opinions in as entertaining, provocative or hateful way as you can cope with. This is the age where we share knowledge to solve problems. Where we build our knowledge base in collaboration with others, step-by-step, idea-by-idea. The age of the Wiki is the age of growing and organic knowledge, where users agree on what can be edited, and where skills are shared in return for help in kind. The age of ‘we-think’ is new, not as an idea, but on the scale that we are able to achieve with internet technologies of communication and interaction.
In this new age, this emerging epoch, who gets to call themselves a ‘creative’ person or an ‘innovator’ is about to become a huge political and social issue. In the past, certain people saw themselves as the gatekeepers of creativity. You had to be qualified, experienced, born with the inspiration. Now, anyone who has access to the internet can put content online and people will view it, read it, download it, listen to it, share it, and form an opinion about it. The barriers have been broken. The floodgates are in full flow, and creative and innovative work is bursting forth like never before. We are at the start of a cultural renaissance, where thousands, if not millions, of people are producing media work for themselves. In the past the emergence of a Picasso or a Michelangelo was restricted to specific locations at definitive times. Now, there might be thousands of innovative artists all charging forward in a mass outpouring of creativity across the world in electronic formats. They might have only small numbers of followers. They might be famous for only a very short time, and they may only produce a small number of products that get everyone’s attention, but the aggregate number en masse will make this renaissance feel very different from previous occasions.
Two crucial differences that we need to think about in this round of cultural change are technology and democracy. How does the emerging technology of the internet, the web, of media production, of social networking, of virtual communities, change the way that we interact and work together? The prototype technologies that we are all getting excited about now will look very different in five or ten years time. There will be more mobilisation, more real-time updating, more synchronisation, less boundaries, more integration. Things will be faster, more mixed up and more dynamic. The technology that is driving this mobilisation of ideas is in its infancy now. We have not yet learnt how to incorporate the more traditional forms of media into the new systems yet. We still talk of Television and Radio, of Films and Books. In the social media age it will not be enough to simply put an ‘i’ in front of everything and expect people to guess that it is a new experience. We will have to do more, faster and in a much more integrated way.
The question is, then, where will the ideas be coming from, and who will be putting them forward? This is a question of democracy. The emerging generation of problem solvers and creative innovators are not going to be satisfied with a hierarchical form of organisation, or relationships, in organisations founded on deference. Instead, the emerging creative innovators will be independent, social and pragmatic. They will work strategically, and will engage with projects more because they find them satisfying, than because they are forced to do them to earn a living. Indeed, many innovators will earn a living one way, but will work as part of a networked community that allows them to satisfy their intellectual powers in a very different way. The creative innovators of the future will be dynamic, non-traditional, non-linear and dispersed around the world.
So who will be in charge? Who will define what people do and how they do it? The simple answer is the people and the community itself. This will be a relationship that works in a non-hierarchical sense. It will have a flat form of organisation. Management will be facilitators and support providers, rather than directors and controllers. The workplace of the future has to be nimble and flexible in the way that it responds to change. Lines of communication will have to be open and clear, and the ability of a wide range of contributors to dip in-and-out of the conversation will be essential. It won’t be sufficient to make decisions behind closed doors, but instead our choices will have to be open and public. There will be a real challenge to the psyche of many people, brought up in the age of deference and restricted organisation. What was once acceptable to be done in private alone, is no longer sustainable. Decisions, actions and thoughts have to be developed in public. Bringing in a wider range of views about the process of decision making and production will help organisations get closer to the people who use them, who support them and who want to see them prosper.
The question is, then, how will DemonFM help to support people moving in to this way of working? How will DemonFM provide a space for people to try out and experiment with new ideas about innovation, creativity, social media and social production? What can DemonFM do that will leave our volunteers set for the future? What can DemonFM do to imagine the solutions to the problems that other people are not even thinking about yet? What kind of developmental space can DemonFM be in this emerging world of new ideas and new ways of doing things?
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