7 July 2005 – The day of the London Bombings. Tragedy struck that day. A city thrown into chaos. Systems shut down, media isolation and communication blackouts. Sky News and The BBC were racing to the scene for the first picture, the first interview, but they were held back. Roads were closed and access restricted. First-hand news was therefore limited at best, dangerous at worst. But this is where the magic of the web came into play. At the time of the first bomb, almost within a minute of the first detonation, somebody, somewhere created a new Wikipedia entry. Others came to the table. Office workers sat at their desk, people working on laptops outside of coffee shops and folk simply walking by on their mobile phones. People were contributing. Many people were contributing. They all brought a piece of information to the puzzle. Communication was no longer controlled by the media gatekeepers but by all of us. Sky News and The BBC were referring to Wikipedia for up to one hour after the attack had happened.
And then this. A creative light somewhere put together a time lapse of the pages history from the time of the first bomb to some days and weeks later. The result is quite phenomenal. The day I came across this clip was the day I woke to the real magic of the web. I suddenly realised that the Internet was no longer a mysterious place reserved for the geeks in the computer lab. Everyone was contributing, and how! The level of detail now found on the 7 July wiki page is a testament to the creative ability and diligence of us all.
But then we start to ask the big questions like what motivates people? Why do people give up their evenings and weekends to do something that never pays back? Quite simply, why bother? Initially I was thinking about those folk who point a camera at every Simpson’s episode (or similar) and upload the content to YouTube. What is their reward? Perhaps these are the real revolutionaries – leading the charge against the media oligarchs. The other contributors motivations are perhaps more understandable – the creatives. The producers of film, photos, writing and systems code. If I open up flickr (a popular photo sharing website) I can see that 3,773 photographs have been uploaded in the last minute. We are moving towards the era of ‘Gift‘ in which the exchange of objects between groups builds relationships between them or ‘The Gift‘ economy – the obligation to give, the obligation to accept, and the obligation to reciprocate.
It also likely that any online effort is about building reputation capital, to coin a phrase. I found it quite interesting to read that twitter paid $6 to the designer of the bird graphic – Simon Oxley. It was simply sourced from the web using iStock Photo. An unfair exchange some might say given the success of the global tweet, but I wouldn’t bet against Simon offered a whole host of lucrative design projects. His reputation enhanced, the riches and work will follow.
Building reputation capital takes time and effort. It is not necessarily the contribution, but the contextual detail that sits around it. The title, the tags, the location, and the submission to groups and search engines. This aspect is important to the creator. Their content needs to be found and it is their responsibility to make that happen. It is only when the content gets some traction, an audience, do others want to contribute. People will add comments, new tags and possibly even improve the original media object. They will be sufficiently motivated to do so. They associate themselves to the successful entity.
I think we can take two things from this whirlwind tour of the web:
- It is the responsibility of the owner to promote their content with descriptive tags and contextual data.
- We can not underestimate the ability of the crowd and of peoples’ motivation to help out. This is where the magic of the web sits.
At Media Access Australia we would promote 1 over 2, but if 2 helps deliver 1 then all the better. Our ambition is to make all media accessible to all audiences at the point of delivery.
More on 1 – Owner Responsibility …
Translating audio and video files into text transcriptions is a resource intensive and time-consuming task. This is the challenge but one we can overcome. Firstly, it is in the interest of the organisation to transcribe their content. Outside of the accessibility agenda, text is easier to scan. We can learn more and we can learn quicker. Audio and video is a powerful source but it is a slow medium to consume. Transcripts improve the user experience. Text can also be read by spiders and search engines. As we mentioned before, the contextual detail is complete and searchable. Traffic is increased. The content has more influence.
‘Doing it for ourselves’ is one option, but invariably technology is often coming up alongside us offering a helping hand. I came across SpinVox – a company that can take spoken words and feed them into a Voice Message Conversion System. This technology has initially been adopted to translate voicemail messages into simple text messages, but there are rumblings that the technology will be adopted elsewhere. More here.
We can also look to mass media and the technologies adopted by the BBC and the ABC. Perfect voice recognition is some way off, possibly 40 years or more, possibly? By perfect, we mean taking multiple audio channels and picking out the spoken word. For example, a travel show where the presenter is driving in a jeep through the Serengeti. There is the sound of the engine, passengers, and even the sound of a distant elephant. This confuses the voice recognition software. Having said that, organisations like the ABC have adopted speech recognition for single voice broadcasting like news bulletins, sports events and live entertainment shows. Occasionally the subtitling feed is delayed by a few seconds as someone respeaks or corrects what is being broadcast. A trick that could be employed on the web in particular podcasts where the audio is often single track or single voice.
More on 2 – Crowdsourcing …
OhNoRobot.com is designed especially for web comics. Like audio and video, there is no textual information around comic books so search engines are unable to find this creative work. The comic book writer looses their audience. To overcome this problem OhNoRobot allowed readers, as well as the comic book writers themselves to transcribe the text and make it searchable. They offer a button that says ‘help transcribe’ or ‘improve transcription’. Like the Wikipedia example cited before OhNoRobot is inviting contributions from those who have their own motivations for doing so.
OhNoRobot is one example, but perhaps a better one is TED. TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. A stage where leaders in their respective field of thought can promote their unique ideas for the future. The site maintains over 500 talks that are available through video, and new content is always being added. Producing interactive transcripts for the deaf community and also transcripts for all nationalities is a monster task for a not-for-profit organistion like TED. The costs associated to such an endeavor would be too high. In true TED style, they have not allowed cost to be an excuse for open and accessible content. TED allows for any talk to be translated by volunteers worldwide. The most active translator Anton Hikov has translated over 68 talks. Anton is not alone. There are thousands of volunteers. In the words of TED – “translators donate their time, energy and expertise to share TED Talks with the world. Their generosity and talent allow these ideas to spread”. The process is not difficult as TED provides a simple online interface to translate or review a talk. They also promote the individual behind the translation. They cite the most prolific contributors and they list translators next to each media piece. Reputation Capital is increased for the translator.
I hope to be making contact with TED over the forthcoming weeks and I also hope to learn more about the online translation tool. If this is a simple plug-in then perhaps it can be shared across other media sites including Government 2.0? I will also do some research on the big media players and the voice recognition software they have adopted. Again, hopefully open source!? Another great gift from the magic of the web.
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Article prepared in my role as New Media Coordinator at Media Access Australia.
Originally listed under Gov2, in particular ‘The Vox Pop 2.0 Learning Journey‘. The Government 2.0 Taskforce is being formed against a backdrop of increased interest by governments worldwide in the potential uses of public sector information and online engagement.
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