AUG 20 — When television started, it was a very exclusive industry. Only those who had the resources (i.e. money) could be involved. This was the case for all media. The Internet comes around and turns the whole business model upside down. Basically, barriers of entry like cost and technology disappeared.
Twenty-four hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Mega news organisations like CNN and BBC use user-generated content and call it citizen journalism. There’s nothing wrong with user-generated content. In fact, most people know that I am a big advocate of it. However, only a minority is of good quality while a majority of it is crap.
But there is good news. A few days ago, a mother called me for advice for her 10-year-old son. He was doing a video project for school and had problems digitising footage. When I was 10 years old, I was playing in the drain looking for tadpoles. The idea of making videos didn’t even exist for me until way later into my university days.
What I’m trying to say is that video now is so common. Even mobile phones have video capabilities and all computers come with basic video editing software. Primary and secondary schools have extra curriculum programmes that teach students video-making skills (but so many kids just learn on their own!).
If this continues, I foresee that video will slowly make an entrance into the actual curriculum of schools in the near future. The need for video literacy will then become as essential as the conventional literacy of reading and writing.
Imagine countries having national policies to improve the video literacy rate and knowing how to make videos becomes a canon of basic human rights! When it comes to reading and writing, everyone needs to know how to do it. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that these people will be professional writers.
So when it comes to video, this is the way I see it too. People will be communicating with each other using video as commonly as the printed text. They will need to be video literate to be able to survive in the world. However, it doesn’t mean that they will be professional video-makers.
What does this mean for the media? Since everyone is video literate, the quality of video production will improve. Even user-generated content will have the video- making grammar that everyone can understand so it wouldn’t be as crap as it is today.
When the day comes where every single person in the world makes videos just like how they all read and write, that’s the world I hope my kid grows up in.
* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.
