Why?
Justine and I are silent, watching the horrors unfold on our desktops.
It’s here, it’s now, it’s what we’ve all been dreading in London. It’s unclear exactly what 'it' is but it looks bad; it’s outside the window, it’s our city, it’s hurting. Our eyes are and voices are choked: like many we should have been in the thick of it; just by chance we weren’t. Like 9/11 no-one will forget where they were today.
...and we are online.
>> Passengers evacuate an underground train at Kings Cross (Photo: Alexander Chadwick)
>> You can donate to the victims trust here.
>> Guardian photostory pages
And we’re not alone. There are millions of us. Millions and millions and millions of eyes all burning. Millions of voices, millions of conversations. Blogger is on fire with posts, Flickr must be outranking CNN, photos from cell phones are appearing everywhere, text messages are pouring through as waves when the phone network comes back up, streams of ‘DON’T TRAVEL’ emails are hitting our accounts; the noise from chatrooms, messengers, and media is deafening.
We start to realise that broadcast media are playing safe they are just playing catch-up. We give up and try to stream news online - the BBC site keels over. [Later we’ll find out they were cranking out an unimaginable 40,000 page views per second. God knows what they had to do to get it back up, but I’m so proud they were there: we crossed a line in public service no one will forget]. All networks are taking News24 and its being streamed through the web. How? Just how? The load must be crippling.
There are three explosions, then four, then five. No one even knows what’s happening. We’re just staring, speechless. BBC report there’s a German media group running a story of a terrorist posting. Google it, front page, skim it – looks clear as anything - translate it anyways, follow the links.
I don’t really want to write about these events in London any more.
But there is something going on with media today,. Huge shocks to society trigger step-changes in the way we behave, the way we communicate, the way we interpret the world around us, even the way we think. They push us to the point where we are forced to innovate. Painfully, unexpectedly and unconsciously, like pressurised water, tiny cracks become the outlet for that pent-up demand. Flckr and WikiNews are doing this now. Whatever else comes out of today, it is a watershed for media: this is the day web reporting comes of age.
But the echoes of step changes are loud.. Remember the day Kenneth Starr published his report into the Clinton affairs? Tediously dull for the most part, but there were mirror sites hosting it across the world – all could see. Remember how pioneering blogger Matt Drudge gave the scoop on US politics; Private Eye on your desktop? Remember the Second Gulf War: watching American tanks move through Baghdad and the Minister of Information deny they were there? Remember the First Gluf Conflict: cameras on the Cruise, and those smart missiles that turned left in the streets to hone-in on their targets? This was war by television, a new era for media.
Today must be another one of those moments.
Behind the noise what is going on? First you have the immediacy: instant dissemination. This is the analogue model of media on steroids. Once upon a time the correspondent (team) sent the rushes home to Pathe news, had the reel edited and drove copies to cinemas. Then the post became faster images went down ISDN lines. Then satellites, mobiles and one person sat-phones.
Similar trends for audiences; ubiquity of access and barriers between platforms melting away, we are close to the ‘Martini’ culture: Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere. But this is an old model and a gentle progression that can be traced back through the days when my grandparents had the only television in the street, watched by twenty people crowding into the living room to marvel at the window on the world.
Today is revealing a new shift, and one that’s about individuals; their conversations, their experiences, their participation. Marx would be proud: the means of (cultural) production has been stolen by the masses. We’re seeing distributive authoring and the roar of individual voices. It’s a glimpse into what democracy means in the networked digital society. There’s also a democracy in the control which is heartening; could the WikiNews agenda be set like CNN’s? Never!
Format blending is everywhere. It’s also taking a step today. TV reports reference websites, web media get referenced from blogs, aggregators and RSS are becoming the new “start” pages (“Where do you want to go today? I’ll build my own portal thanks). Cell phones are suddenly BBC film cameras, Creative Commons is our new copyright law, vloggers and bloggers – we’re all tuning into you now.
Oh, and everything is non-linear too. Our journeys in news put us in the driving seat. We just don’t need you editors, we have our own links thanks! And the ”Daily Me”: we never needed you. We are techno-enabled and proudly use our toolkits. We can go where we please and believe who we trust. Reuters and AP are now shuffling alongside Alexander Chadwick and Steve Thornhill. News at Ten? News anytime please.
Today shows how comfortable people have become with decentralised media; how embrasive of the new access points. Stream News 24, stream web cams, stream vlogs; stream anything. It's like Flickr is the new Pathe Gazette, and everyone has been given free tickets to the cinema. Google is the new telegraph that relays those messages. Broadcast media may retain our loyalty; the models can still adapt; the brands may yet complete the transfer to the new network. Online: “honey, I’m home!” But here is where stakeholders in the events at the heart of the news can have a real voice: you can share your stories, and at last, thanks to some new tools you really are.
Amidst the carnage and terror, today gives us glimpses into the future. A future now in the sharpest of focus and rich with promise. Whatever horror is yet to come, we’ll all be here; together. We are connected and talking. We are intelligent and make our own judgments. We are diverse and tolerant. We can have free voices and can be enfranchised. We may, with both a little more time and hope, even find a way to stop these people from doing these terrible things. Take part in our conversations; share what is hurting; learn why this is wrong.
Post-scripts.
There was an irony about that day I missed at the time. DARPNET and ARPNET were created in the sixties as our defence from Cold War attacks. Knock out The Bay Area and communications would still get up the West Coast. It’s bitterly ironic that though the war never came, the same networks may still fulfil a similar purpose. It’s as if it were a specially constructed part of the very emergency plan that’s unfolded on London’s streets that day.
