A couple weeks ago, the radio program This American Life did a special episode for Memorial Day called The Center for Lessons Learned which is based on a real organization called the Center for Army Lessons Learned. The program addressed a key question: “Four years into the Iraq War, what have we learned? ”
In this episode, producer Nancy Updike speaks to Conrad Crane, the head of the U.S. Army Military History Institute. He said something interesting, which is in connection with how the military approaches conflicts, but is also incredibly true about what’s going on in New Media.
There are two faith-based arguments out there. One is that — I guess you’d call it the historians who say that nothing is new, everything is based on the past, and if you understand the past, then you’re prepared for the future. Then there’s the, I guess you call them the technocrats, who say, ‘No, no, no, technology has changed everything, it’s all brand new, the past is irrelevant.’ And, uh, it’s always been a problem for any generals trying to predict what the future’s going to be like, how much is new and how much is old. Nobody ever gets it right. You know, Sir Michael Howard, the famous British military historian, said, ‘Nobody ever gets it right.’ The question is how can you make sure that you’re not so wrong that you can’t make up for your mistakes?
I see this exact same argument playing out in the New Media space all the time. I’ve been working in the cable industry for 16 years and so I’ve seen the development of broadband content and interactive television and so on and people seem to always be getting it wrong. At least when you’re wrong in your media prognostication, no person dies, just maybe a company or two.
In my new Spot-on column, I take a look at the media, particularly television, and examine how media consumption has become so complicated that you can go crazy just trying to keep up. So many different platforms and formats, so many different ways to watch TV and movies or listen to music or video games to play and still only 24 hours in a day. It’s all great, but I sympathize if you long for simpler times.
I also look at the TV show Lost, which is doing some really interesting things with Web 2.0 applications. It’s a show that really benefits from existing in a world with DVRs, iTunes, blogs, wikis, social networking sites, podcasts, and so on. I hope we’ll see more shows in the coming season that take advantage of such things.
From Couch Potato to Long Distance Runner
Tags: new media, television, Web 2.0, Lost