Back from Sweden

My keynote Sunday at Växjö University's Participatory Academy went well, with quite a bit of interaction with the students and educators in the audience.

I've posted a Flickr set of photos here.

Another highlight was the time I spent with Pernilla Severson and Lars Mogensen at Malmö, particularly the hourlong meeting with Pernilla's students about their media habits. Monday night I gave a talk at Malmö University on darknets and mashup culture. More about that at my Darknet blog.

It was my first time in Sweden, so here are some snapshot impressions:

Thumbs up:

- Great weather — 70 degrees most of the time (take a memo, Al Gore)
- amazing, how just about everyone spoke English — and did it well
- everyone I met was quite friendly
- clean ‘n’ tidy streets and parks
- like the unisex bathrooms
- Swedish showers are the best I've seen in Europe
- corny but delightful: the gathering at the Glassworks where the locals sang such standards as “Hell and Gore” and “Did the Saints Have Snaps?”
- dependable train service, comfortable rides
- Nice continental breakfasts

Thumbs down:

- Lack of decaf coffee got my nerves all jangly
- Other than breakfast, the meals won’t make you forget French or Italian cuisine anytime soon.
- the dreaded but not expected jet lag. from west to east seems to be more severe than the other way.

Mobile phone service connects buyers, sellers

Here at the Aspen Institute one of the folks I've spent a lot of time with is Kamal Quadir from Bangladesh, founder of Cellbazaar. As Textually put it:

Bangladesh's top mobile phone operator GrameenPhone, and USA-based CellBazaar have introduced a service connecting buyers and sellers in an electronic marketplace over the mobile phone.

"It's like a more direct, more primitive e-Bay, a phone-based equivalent of newspaper classified advertisements. The concept was developed at the MIT Media Lab.

The service will enable sellers to list details of their products, produce or even services in a database while buyers can look for any of this information through SMS. It will not handle transactions, but will simply put buyers and sellers in contact with each other via mobile phone.

Kamal has described it as a sort of Craigslist for the developing world, where millions of people in Bangladesh, for example, are using mobile phones to cut out the middleman who rips off farmers and merchants and thereby benefit both buyers and sellers.

Interviewed by Argentina's La Nacion

I was interviewed by La Nacion, Argentina's second largest newspaper, about the personal media revolution. It's here:

"La información será creada por millones de personas, no por una elite." J.D. Lasica, un referente mundial en nuevos medios, habló con LANACION.com sobre la generación digital y los cambios que se vienen.

In case you don't read Spanish, I'll post the Q&A in English here:

What are the main characteristics of the shift in media consumption?

Power is slowly, but inevitably, shifting from the media elite to the rest of us. Television, movies and music are being democratized.

For example, television is evolving from a one-way set of pipes delivering big media content to an ecosystem where both professional and amateur programming coexist. We're just beginning to see the promise of Internet television, which will carry hundreds of thousands of channels created by talented amateurs.

Traditional media have no choice but to embrace these emerging forms of citizens media. The Digital Generation expects to produce and design their own media. They also want to remix and interact with traditional forms of media -- movies, television, music, games -- from the world they've grown up in. Media companies that continue to engage in a lecture model will fade into irrelevance.

Do you think that viral video sharing is a new headache for established media?

Viral video sharing is just the first wave of an important new trend: an increasing appetite by the public for home-grown voices and original programming. Viral video is a crude early manifestation of this. People will create more polished, sophisticated programming in the years ahead.

The other issue involves use of copyrighted video and music in amateur productions. User need to respect copyrights, and media companies should be more receptive to licensing their content so that the public remixes old works in intriguing new ways. This trend toward user-generated programming is real and lasting, and the broadcasters will ignore it at their peril.

Do you think that the use of personal media could help democracy? How?

Yes. Too many citizens are alienated from the political process because they believe their voices won't matter. Empowering people through personal media has the potential to reawaken civic engagement.

Just imagine, for a moment, if hundreds of people created podcasts or video blogs about issues taking place in their communities. That will happen -- sooner than you think -- and I think it has the potential for a profound change in our relationship with the political establishment. Power and influence will flow to those who use it.

The music business just sees piracy in peer-to-peer file sharing programs, while others see some new ways of interaction and consumption. What's your position?

Peer to peer will be a major part of music and video distribution for the rest of our lives. Warner Bros. recently signed a deal with BitTorrent to distribute its movies online, so we're seeing the entertainment companies begin to accept this new reality.

The music companies always talk about piracy, but if they truly opened their catalogs to different online business strategies, they would make a lot more money -- even if piracy increased at the same time -- and we would be richer culturally as music became a more important part of our lives.

Unfortunately, the music labels are more interested in protecteting their entrenched business models than in trying out innovative new approaches.

Can you tell us an example of how the wiki helped you write your book?

More and more authors are inviting readers in to help collaborate on new books. In my case, I used the Darknet blog and wiki to solicit suggestions from readers about real-life examples of how the media was preventing the Digital Generation from using their legally purchased digital devices from playing legally purchased content in ways they've come to expect. One example was the Sony digital recorders that won't allow you to transfer a recording to your computer.

Your weblogs are licensed through Creative Commons while your book has all rights reserved. Why the difference?

Unfortunately, very few book publishers have embraced the Creative Commons model. Mine was no exception, although I argued that they should. Fortunately, my publisher allowed me to publish several chapters on the darkent.com blog.

Have the media companies felt the impact of grassroots journalism?

We're at the beginning of a disruptive era for media, as traditional business models come tumbling down and old institutions fumble their way through the new mediasphere of blogging, podcasting, video blogging, etc. The ideals represented by these new media forms -- openness, conversation, sharing, a place for the user -- will be embraced by the traditional media when they discover that it makes good business sense.

We're entering a new era where information and entertainment will be created by millions of people, not an established elite. That should be seen by newspapers and TV and radio stations as an opportunity rather than a threat. A few news organizations have begun citizen journalism sections, showcasing original reports, photos and video. This week I'm heading to an international conference in Seoul, South Korea, to discuss how citizen journalism is changing the face of the news media.

Do you believe that there's something that could be called a "download generation"? If yes, what are the main characteristics?

I call it the Digital Generation because more and more of our lives are being spent online, and almost all of the content we create will wind up in digital form. Some will be downloaded so that we can watch videos or listen to music on demand, while other forms of content will be streamed and accessible only when we're connected to the Internet.

The Digital Generation will expect to interact with media on their own terms. That means, they want to watch video and listen to music and audio on any device, at any time, in any place. They also want to engage with media as interactive participants rather than passive consumers.

Which is the most interesting web application that you have seen lately? Why?

What's fascinating is how many interesting new web applications are springing up. Look at Ning.com, which offers more than a dozen free open-source web applications. I'm partial to sites that let you annotate video, like Jumpcut.com, or collect your favorite video clips in one place, like Eyespot.com. Great stuff.

Le pouvoir passe aux mains des créateurs de contenus

The French newspaper Les Echos just published a Q&A I did with a reporter there about the personal media revolution. It's not online, but I persuaded them to send me a PDF of the page, and I uploaded it to Ourmedia.

I can't read French, but for those of you who can, have at it. (Ourmedia page | PDF doc)

Closing out Cannes

Today's the last day of the Cannes Film Festival. I attended — for the first time — this past week and felt the rush of an international event filled with beautiful people. Here are 35 shots in a Flickr photo set.

Technorati tags: Cannes, photos, film , photography

Witness putting tools for empowerment online

Over the past couple of months, I've been having discussions with the good folks at Witness.org about how Witness and Ourmedia could work together. Witness has announced an ambitious plan to build a set of publishing tools that would let those in repressive or abusive conditions shine a spotlight on what's happening in their countries. We already have parts of that publishing infrastructure built, so it makes sense to join forces.

Tonight on PBS's "Charlie Rose," Witness founder Peter Gabriel (above) and executive director Gillian Caldwell spoke eloquently about their stirring vision, which is now within reach. I transcribed this exchange:

Peter Gabriel: Part of the original mission [at Witness] was to get cameras out to the world, but in a way, cameras are traveling out to the world anyway disguised inside phones. And in, say, Orwell’s vision in 1984, one of the means through which those in power controlled those who weren’t, was through observation, and in a way it’s trying to flip that on its head. If we get cameras out everywhere, perhaps through observation, the small guy, the little guy, can keep an eye on those in power—

Charlie Rose: It’s like the little guy watching Big Brother.

Gabriel: Exactly. You know, the whole Internet revolution is about putting power down at the bottom rather than just up at the top. So we’re now at a real point of transition, and the dream is that we can have a website where anyone who is desperate and suffering that has images can get them uploaded. Effectively there would be a new human right: If you suffer abuse, you get your story recorded, seen and heard. ...

The dream for Witness.org has always been to be a service to all those in the human rights movement rather than a competitor.

Gillian also showed off a new book I need to get: Video for Change : A How-To Guide on Using Video in Advocacy and Activism.

Microsoft censors blogs at Chinese Portal

AP: Microsoft is cooperating with China's government to censor the company's newly launched Chinese-language Web portal, a spokesman for the tech giant said.

On Monday, Agence France-Presse, the French news agency, said bloggers were not allowed to post terms to MSN Spaces such as "democracy,""human rights" and "Taiwan independence." Attempts to enter those words were said to generate a message saying the language was prohibited. ...

China's estimated online population is 87 million, second only to the United States.

Blogs not yet a revolution in South Africa

Johannesburg, South Africa: Bloggers take on the world of media

South Africans – the 7% who use the Internet – are slowly waking up to the blog phenomenon. A number of local sites offer easy blogging, and a couple of thousand have been set up, but I can find only one or two worth reading.

That's the same story I heard from a South African newspaper editor I met at the University of Texas, Austin.

Let the Net speak for itself

An opinion piece by Geoffrey Nunberg in Sunday's San Jose Mercury News: Letting the Net speak for itself. Fears of an Anglo-Sacon takeover of the online world are unfounded.

Indian media blog silenced

In OJR, Mark Glaser has this: Indian media blog shuts down after legal threats from Times of India.

It's an exclusive in-depth look at the Indian media criticism blog Mediaah shutting down after legal threats from the Times of India. While newspapers are flourising in India, media criticism is not . Glaser looks at the deeper issues behind this as well as the online campaign by Indian bloggers to fight the Times' threats.