Published Date 11/8/12 1:01 PM
DRAFT
The balance of power in alt-media is too unbalanced to create an effective alternative voice in the upcoming mainstream media crises. Lets look at video on the web and IPTV
Geeks
Producers
Consumers
Currently alt-media video is scuwred to the geeks, all the current CMS’s and tools are to complex and obscurantist to use. The technology needed to produce video content is in place, but only from the corporate providers. If we don’t worry about this then what is missing for video is the craft of story telling and the language of film. Geeks rule, producers are largely ineffective, and consumers very minority.
In mainstream, it is equally skewed to the producers (in this case the owners), geeks are hobbled by blind corporate structures and out of date management, and the consumers are just fed lowest common denominator drip. Sky TV and CNN
In the new social media spheres the consumers and producers have a much more balanced role, but are still healds by the walled gardens of the corporate mindset. The producers of the backbone services such as Twitter and Facebook.
What we have to build is a better balance between the geeks who produces the inherently complex tools in a form that are both accessible and useable by producers and consumers, the producers are left to produces what they wont in freedom and the consumers to consume it and in tern play a role in its production. The consumers choose to support the geeks and producers they favour.
This last outcome is both inevitable and very uncertain depending on which side of the bed you get out of in the morning.