WEBVTT

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Paul Levinson: So, how are you doing?
(Audience) Good!

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PL: That was a a nice introduction.

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So I'm trying to decide should I talk
about science fiction, time travel,

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the First Amendment,

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but I'll stick
to what I'm supposed to talk about

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which is I think one
of the most revolutionary developments

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in our history as a species.

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What I'm talking about is a development

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which for the first time
has put the power

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not only to communicate to one another
which we've always had

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but the power to communicate
to the world at large

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in everyone's hands

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and not only through the written word

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but through speech
and audiovisual content.

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That is a major path-breaking development

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and let me just start by giving you
a couple of examples,

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and then we'll trace
a little bit of the history of that

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to put it into a proper context.

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I'm sure most of you know

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that Barack Obama won
his reelection campaign a few months ago,

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and I'm sure most of you also know,
if you follow the news at all,

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that one of the key factors
in Obama's victory

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was Mitt Romney's statement

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that 47% the American population

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were not of interest to him,
his supporters, and the Republican Party.

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In a very contemptuous way, Romney said

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47% of Americans are only
interested in a handout;

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we're never going
to get their vote anyway.

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That was actually a statement

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that a political candidate
might well have made

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to his or her rich supporters,

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and in fact, that is indeed
the physical premise

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where Romney made that statement.

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But as I'm sure most of you also know,

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it was not just those people
at that fundraising event

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who heard and saw
Romney make that statement.

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In fact, eventually, most Americans
saw that statement.

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Why was that?

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A bartender had brought in
a little video camera

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not much bigger at all
than a typical smartphone,

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had put it on the bar,
had pointed it to Romney,

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had turned on the recording
and just let the video recording run

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while Romney made that statement.

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We could talk about
the ethics of doing that.

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Is it ethical to record someone

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when they don't know
they're being recorded?

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I think those are
very interesting issues there;

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I think by and large,

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it's not particularly the height of ethics

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to record someone when they don't know
they're being recorded,

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but as in most things in life,

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sometimes we have a collision

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of ethical problems and ethical concerns.

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And so, against that questionable practice

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of recording someone
without his or her knowledge,

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you have the other important point

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that don't the American people
deserve to know

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who they are voting for?

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I think of those two issues

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the greater good resides with

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the American people knowing
a little bit more about the candidates.

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As a matter of fact,

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what happened was this very hour
of Romney making those remarks

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was not only recorded
on this little video camera

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it was put up on YouTube, and it was
eventually picked up by the mass media.

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And so, although the actual recording
took place in May,

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it wasn't until September
that everyone began talking about it.

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One of the words
in my talk is transmedia.

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And it's important to recognize

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that social media, in and of themselves,

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don't have the power all the time
to get information out to the world.

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In fact, what you often need
are the traditional mass media

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to come into the system

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and amplify the message

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that the social medium has created

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and put up to the world
in the first place.

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So that's a key component
of this revolution.

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It's transmedia,
meaning it rarely operates

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just from one medium
going to other media

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or just one medium going
to other inconsequential media;

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rather, it operates

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by going from one medium
to other media

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and then hitting the jackpot
of the more consequential mass media

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which still have an enormous
amount of power in our society.

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Often, we hear people talking
about television versus the Internet,

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cable television versus YouTube,

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the newspaper versus Twitter

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as a source of news.

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In fact that's not, I think,

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the most accurate way to look
at this current media environment,

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because what you find on Twitter
are links to news reporting

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in the New York Times, in newspapers,
on television, and so forth.

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Conversely what you find
in the New York Times,

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and on conventional,
traditional news broadcasts

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are clips from YouTube
and various events

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that otherwise you would not see
covered in the mass media.

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So to use a fancy word,
this is a synergistic

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- or another phrase -

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mutually catalytic development

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in which the social media contribute,
and the mass media contribute.

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There's a transnational
aspect to this as well,

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and obviously, whoever is elected
President of the United States

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is by definition --

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that event by definition is something
that has international import.

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So in fact Romney's 47% remark

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was not only seen by Americans
who voted in the election,

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but was seen by people
all over the world.

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Marshall McLuhan, back in 1962,

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observed that new electronic media

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were turning the world
into a global village,

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and I'm sure many of you have
heard that term "global village,"

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but back in 1962,

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the environment was really

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neither global nor a village,

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because back in 1962

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and what got McLuhan to make
that point in the first place,

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what you had were national audiences
watching television programs

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there was no international
communication really.

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The first international satellite Telstar
was launched in that period of time,

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but it didn't really have any programming
that was conveying to the world.

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So it was not yet global
nor was it a village,

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because in a normal village

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the citizens of that village
can talk to one another

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- just like you can talk to each other -

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and can move a conversation along,

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can question information
not just receive information.

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On traditional television,

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there is a one-way communication

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in which we are receivers of information,

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but we have no way to really question
or even comment upon the information.

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All that changes
when we get into social media.

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So if you look at videos on YouTube,

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some of them have thousands of comments,

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and I always think, when I see that,

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that, "Ah, here is democracy at work,"

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because here in these comments,
you see people

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not only receiving news
but sending back information,

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sending back commentary.

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So the global village that McLuhan
talked about in 1962

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was really a metaphor back then
or a sign pointing to the future.

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I often like to say that McLuhan
was not writing about his time,

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he was writing about our time:

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not because he was clairvoyant,
but because he understood

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with such depth how human beings
wanted to communicate

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that he realized we would be
moving in a direction

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in which we did have a village.

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And so, Romney's remarks were indeed

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truly seen by a global audience.

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Let me just give you another example,
a very different example.

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Occupy Wall Street --

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which was a a global movement

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that coincided to some extent
with the Arab Spring

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and let me tell you
about one person in particular

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who in my view did one of the best jobs

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reporting what was happening
in Occupy Wall Street.

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We're talking about
something that happened

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a year or two ago.

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I was teaching a class

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at Fordham University in the Fall of 2011

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when Occupy Wall Street was going
strong in New York City,

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around the country, around the world

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I went back to my office,
and I looked at my email.

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And right before I was about to sign off
and shut down my computer and drive home,

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I looked one more time at my Twitter.

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I saw her just a little tweet which said

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Tim Pool giving live coverage

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to an Occupy Wall Street protest
that was going on at Baruch College.

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Baruch College, if you don't know, is part
of the City University of New York System

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down in the a East Twenties in Manhattan.

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I clicked on the link on YouTube
and pretty quickly I was brought to a page

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where there was live streaming coverage,
literally, of that demonstration.

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And I was able to see that in real time.

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It would be hours before
any of the mass media picked that up.

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And, as was the case with YouTube,

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there were people who were commenting
on what they were seeing:

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literally, the police moving in, pushing
demonstrators out of the way,

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in my view, illegally, because it was
violating their First Amendment rights.

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But all that was actually shown

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in real time through Tim Pool's reporting.

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And it was seen internationally, literally
in real time, through his reporting.

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And by the way Tim Pool
continued to do that,

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he had a New Year's Eve live feed

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of another series
of Occupy Wall Street events.

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It shows you
what a great party person I am.

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It's amazing my wife puts up with me,

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because that's what I was doing at least
for an hour or two on New Year's Eve,

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looking at Tim Pool's live coverage.

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But that's extremely significant,

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and by the way,
it has legal import as well,

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because the New York City police
arrested many people

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that they said
were violating this or that law.

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In most cases, on no evidence,

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and in one case, I was very happy to see,

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the case was thrown out of court,

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the person who had been arrested
by the NYPD was found not guilty

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and the reason was Tim Pool
had been there with his little phone

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-- he just uses a smartphone

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hooked up to an internet connection
to report what happened

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at another event in which someone
had been arrested

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for breaking through a police line
which in fact never happened.

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So this has profound
legal consequences as well.

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But let me put
some of this in historical context,

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and end with a little trip
through history,

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just so you have an idea of why I think

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this is such a path-breaking development

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in our communication history.

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Once upon a time, a long long time ago,

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we're talking about thousands
and thousands and thousands of years ago,

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the only way
we communicated was by talking,

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and in that environment
as limited as it was,

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because you couldn't communicate
beyond your physical surroundings,

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anybody could talk,
and anyone could respond.

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And then, we moved
into a written environment,

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in which the information
was saved, preserved

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in scrolls, in parchment,
papyrus, and eventually paper;

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and it was the same thing:
anyone could write, anyone could read,

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but very limited distribution.

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In the Renaissance, in the 1450s,

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Gutenberg, as we all know,
introduced the printing press.

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Suddenly, millions and millions
of people could read

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what anyone had written.

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But now, a problem was introduced:

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who was to decide who would do
that dissemination?

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An editor or a publisher had to decide.

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And so, what was set up
was this profound asymmetry

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of who knows how many ideas,
how many written works were out there,

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could have been out there?

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But only a small fraction of them
ever made it into print.

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In the 20th century,

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we had the introduction
of electronic broadcasting media:

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this improved greatly the dissemination.

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Millions of people could hear the news,
see the news instantly.

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Extraordinary!

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But once again, who decided
what would be in that news?

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The answer was again: a producer,

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a television production crew, an editor.

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And who knows how many stories
were left uncovered?

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It was not until the Internet
that this began to change.

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There actually was one little important
development before the Internet:

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the rise of photocopying.

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McLuhan again said the Xerox turns
every author into a publisher.

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Unfortunately, Xerox manuscripts
don't look like books,

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but again McLuhan was onto something

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because you didn't need anyone's
permission to Xerox your manuscript.

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But that is really small potatoes,

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compared to the power
that's now in all of your hands;

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each and every one of you,
you have an idea,

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you have an opinion about something,
you see something that's happening,

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you don't need anyone's permission,

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you can upload it to your YouTube channel,
you can put it on your blog,

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and you, like this bartender in Florida

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who reported Mitt Romney's 47% comment,

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you can change the world.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)