It’s almost a week since I went to MACS, short for Media and Culture Studies. A group of academics from various disciplines meet (almost) monthly, mostly at the University of Queensland but the next one will probably be at QUT. Last Friday’s meeting was another “what I did in my holidays” presentation with five speakers.
For me, the most interesting perspective was from (the bespectacled) Sal Humphreys. One of the meetings she spoke of was “Amateur Hour” at New York Law School, which was a conference about the interface between user-generated content, Web 2.0 and traditional media.
Sal says the traditional media people don’t yet understand the new marketplace they are working in (one exception: the advertising industry). Most of the CEOs and VPs couldn’t get beyond piracy as undermining their industries, yet were happy to harness user-generated content for free. They were unable to see the contradiction in their position.
I wonder what it will take to open their eyes to that?
Tags: MACS, media, piracy, user-generated content, Web 2.0
