Vloggercon

I'm headed back to San Diego after a fun day in SF at Vloggercon. Lots of good discussion today, lots of energy, passion, and idealism. Discussion around politics, journalism, human rights, intellectual property, net neutrality, technology, etc. But the common thread running through all of it was: we are the media.

Vloggercon was held in a cool old town hall. As I sat inside and listened to members of the community debate, it reminded me that once, in our gloried past, policy decisions were made at this level. Representatives took the collective decisions of the community and rode with them to seats of government, where those decisions were written into law. Government by the people, for the people. Democracy.

Ah the good old days.

Unfortunately, topics of discourse are no longer determined at the local level. The issues that we hear about on a day-to-day basis, and the policy debates that pervade our culture, are distributed to each of us by a centralized mass media. We are no longer participants, we
are consumers and viewers. Spectators. Centralized media, as it turns out, is the enemy of democracy. Or, more accurately, centralized media is the enemy of democracy when controlled by those who are unwilling or unable to hold leaders accountable for their actions and
inactions.

Of course this is all changing. Mass media is becoming decentralized. Media creation is now occurring at the edge of the network, not the center. We are the journalists, the entertainers, the advertisers. My argument today at Vloggercon was that technology must be an enabler,
not an impediment. If devices and software are too complicated for the average person to use...the average person won't use them. However, if the average person CAN easily figure out how to use these powerful tools, i.e. shoot some video, perform some basic editing and
mixing, and then distribute to the world, then we will be one step closer to returning politics, discourse, debate, and government to the people.