Bill Thompson (@billt) on two cultures: those literate in code and everyone else

Bill Thompson, well-known for the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet, and his pieces for the BBC (e.g) gave a  version of his ‘Two Cultures’ speech [which he first made in Cambridge on May 27] at OpenTech in London last Saturday. It was billed like this:

“It’s fifty years since CP Snow’s famous lecture on the Two Cultures – science and literature. We seem to have a different divide these days, between ‘people like us’ and the rest. What might be done about this?”

Thompson (@billt on Twitter) believes that computer literacy should mean more than word processing, a sentiment that seemed to go down well in the hall. You can read more about his views in this BBC article: “We don’t need a nation of programmers, but we do need to be confident that everyone knows what programmers do and what programs look like.”

Richard Elen (@Brideswell) filmed it, and has helpfully shared this video on the Bridewell Associates Blog. So if you weren’t there, sit back and enjoy some glorious geekery; even the intro includes a joke about writing in binary (his title for his speech is the ‘10 cultures’)…

• NB: Elen has also rounded up some other OpenTech materials online at this link.

Bill Thompson on “The Two Cultures Problem”: OpenTech 2009 from Richard Elen on Vimeo.

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Round-up: Media Futures conference 2009 – ‘Beyond Broadcast’

“Gradually more power cuts – the future is more certain than you think (…) With 90 per cent certainty I can tell you that tomorrow will be Saturday.”
James Woudhuysen, professor of forecasting, De Montford University

“Content is not king, it’s about how people use it. SMS is one of the most expensive mediums but still massively popular.”
Matt Locke, commissioning editor, education new media, Channel 4

The above quotes were just a small sample of the varied and interesting points discussed at Media Futures 2009 in London last Friday.

The conference explored the future of the media as we move ‘beyond broadcast’.

Speakers and guests included the BBC’s Richard Sambrook, POLIS director Charlie Beckett and TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher.

Themes for discussion included desirable, feasible, challenging and viable futures for the industry.

Television
Video on Demand (VOD) was a popular topic, which divided opinions. Avner Ronen, founder of Boxee, a video service that connects your TV to online streaming media, argued that personal video recorders (PVR) were soon to be obsolete.

But as media analysts, including Toby Syfret from Enders, were quick to point out, TV still has a lot of life left in it. According to his analysis, despite the success of services such as the BBC iPlayer, watching streamed content remains a niche market with just 0.5 per cent of total viewing time being spent on computers.

Newspapers
Panellists were agreed on the future for local newspapers. Patrick Barwise, professor of management and marketing at London Business School said: “Local newspapers won’t come back, the classified advertising model that held them together has changed.”

After the conference I ran into Bill Thompson, the BBC’s technology columnist. Listen below to hear his views on the future for journalists:

Alex Wood is a multimedia journalist and social media consultant based in London. You can find him on twitter here.

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Finding the ‘new new journalism’

Last night’s debate at LSE entitled ‘The New New Journalism’ was definitely a head scratcher and rather than try and analyse the back and forth in one post, here are some key points made by the speakers:

Tessa Mayes (campaigning investigative journalist): “We’re in danger within journalism of losing and forgetting what it is that we do and what it is that we need journalism to do in society. Journalists are simply becoming information managers.”

From the audience: “Information must be the master of the technology and not the other way round.”

Bill Thompson (journalist, commentator and contributor to the BBC’s technology section): “There is nothing at all essential, vital or needed about journalism. As technology develops, roles for editor and journalists will still exist, but the relationship will bear no resemblance to what they are now.”

Bill Thompson: said he (optimistically) hopes that the demand for original content will reassert the balance between this type of material and content being ’shifted’ between media.

Julia Whitney (head of design and user experience for news, sport and weather at the BBC): Design of media sites, news sites, online communities ‘has everything to do with how meaning is generated’.

In my view the two most valid points made during the conversation were:

Bill Thompson’s suggestion that ultimately society doesn’t need journalism and journalists should be wary of the fact that they don’t exist in a protected, god-given role.

Secondly, Suw Charman-Anderson’s view from the audience on management issues, which she eloquently expresses on her blog:

“I made this point at the very end of the evening, that much of the problem in news organisations is down to broken management structures and dysfunctional management techniques. Bad decisions are being made by people unwilling to listen to those with the knowledge, but who are several paygrades down the food chain. Good journalists do not always make good managers and, ironically, are not always the best communicators.”

Your thoughts are welcome.

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• Bill Thompson (@billt) on two cultures: those literate in code and everyone else

BBC: Bill Thompson on journalism in the ‘network age’

While the majority of online news continues to be produced or edited by professionals, online journalism teacher Bill Thompson says journalists should not ignore the benefits of closer collaboration with citizens – in particular when reporting outside the western world.

“The idea of the “foreign correspondent”, sent off to a strange land to report on the activities of the “natives” for the benefit of those who require their strange customs to be interpreted and sanitised is a relic of a pre-network age.”

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