Friday, July 29, 2005

Disruptive technology, or: Why traditional media remains shellshocked even now

My trusty AAF SmartBrief brings me interesting tidbits every day. And the one I just read reinforces the fact that it ain't just us, folks. EVERYONE gets to change.

Here's the deal: A bunch of media people got together for the proverbial *Hollywood executive retreat* to talk about why DVD sales are dropping, DVRs a threatening ad revenue and what the media companies are going to do about it.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the old media companies just sat there.
"Google was talking about video search and Intel talked about WiMAX, and all the new media companies were talking about changing the existing business models. The traditional media companies sat there and listened to them with their heads in the sand, like it's business as usual," a conference attendee said.


I relay this anecdote to you, readers, because as a community I'd like us to remember: this extreme technology growth and rate of change isn't just happening to us--althought of course it always feels like it is--it's happening everywhere. In industries that we may not think have a connection with Internet/Web services at all.

And yet, here it is, disruptive as all get out. And older, traditional ways of doing things will not cut the mustard. But there's no clear sense of what new tool best cuts mustard. And someone is going to walk in the kitchen soon (just to carry through the metaphor a bit past the point of no return...) why are we so busy trying to CUT mustard? Can't we just put it in a plastic squeeze jar? Do we really need mustard anyway? I prefer to mix my own sandwich spice..."

1 comment:

Alice said...

Meant to include in this post: NPR covered CurrentTV this morning. You remember--IAG covered it waaay back in April.

I just saw a post on Adrants that likens it to BlogTV...it brings the power of television production into the hands of the people.