On The Alcove with Mark Molaro, a YouTube videographer and journalist, Paul Levinson was interviewed on the topic of where new media is going . Paul Levinson is a pioneer and highly reputable individual in the new media field. Mr. Levinson will make a bushel of online journalists, vloggers and new media crusaders extravagant when he lets us know that he thinks new media is heading in precisely the same direction that Mark Molaro has taken his YouTube show. A field that is driven by individual producers versus the former model that was dominated by a few elites producing content for millions of consumers. The consumer is in fact the producer now, an idea that seems to be justified with the decline of broadcast television that is continuing on a downward slope while new independent amateur content viewable on sites such as YouTube and Blip TV continues to rise at ludicrous speed.
A very interesting question asked by Molaro was the question of whether or not this new consumer becomes the producer age has a dark side to it? This is certainly a common interpretation by many people: there is simply too much information, there is information overload and it’s absolutely impossible to keep up–I’m in fact one of these skeptics. Levinson makes an interesting paradox, however, when he refers to what most of us would consider “information overload” as “information under-load.” Levinson points out that when you walk into a library or bookstore there are far more books than you could ever imagine to read in a lifetime, yet we don’t get overwhelmed. Why is this? Levinson states that “since we were kids we were taught how to navigate through this.” Here in lies the difference between the most traditional forms of media, such as books and newspapers, and the internet. We simply don’t quite know how to navigate through this new and vast information source. This was a fantastic point and really puts into perspective that the internet and new media model is just very young and needs time to really mature before we’re going to completely understand it without being overwhelmed.
This was a fantastic interview that I highly recommend checking out. Levinson and Molaro raise some very important points and answer some questions in much need of answering. As well, it is a fantastic look at how one can be successful as an individual, non-elite content producer can be in Mark Molaro.
Mr. Levinson is the Chair of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University and, as well, is a writer, penning novels such as “Digital Mcluhan” and “The Soft Edge”
