Theverge.com reported today that Apple has now sold more than 700 million iPhones worldwide. (The photo is theirs).
That is a LOT of iPhones.
(Buy Apple shares, before the Watch hits the street).
Those 700 million iPhones are more than just phones (clearly); and more than iPods or little TV screens (TV Everywhere).
They are also nodes of content creation.
That is, every phone is capable of creating original text, photographs and video and sharing it with the world, for free.
All the time.
This is remarkable, when you think about it.
When you think about what TV networks (for example) used to spend to send (and still do!) a reporter and a satellite dish half way around the world to ‘report’ on something.
Why bother?
Why bother sending a ‘correspondent’ who doesn’t know the language (as a rule), doesn’t live there, doesn’t know the culture, the history, the locals, or much of anything else (except where the Intercontinental Hotel is).
But, for the most part, that is how we get our ‘news’.
Is it any wonder that we are so terribly uninformed and ill-informed?
Even when they do make the effort to open and maintain a local ‘bureau’ – and these are expensive! Why bother.
CBS News (no slouch in the News department) has 19 such bureaus around the world – from Atlanta to Jerusalem.
19 Bureaus.
19 reporters to cover a planet of 7 billion people.
That’s a LOT of work.
This notion of the ‘foreign correspondent’ is a remnant, really, of 19th Century newspaper journalism
“Dr. Livingstone, I presume”.
In those days, this was the only way to ‘report’ on what was happening.
(not that it was all that accurate, but who could tell the difference?)
Today, that archaic and charming concept – the ‘foreign correspondent’ still survives.
But in light of what technology has delivered, it is clearly both quaint and ridiculous.
And perhaps a bit embarrassing.
Do we really need to send ‘our people’ to ‘report’ on what ‘those people’ are doing?
Shades of Winston Churchill at Omdurman!
Not when ‘those people’ have iPhones – just like yours.
(Where do you think those 700 million phones are, anyway?)
And, of course, iPhone is just the tip of the iceberg. There are approximately 3 billion smart phones overall worldwide.
That is, that about one in every 2 people (more or less, to keep the math simple) has access to a device that lets them shoot video, stills or create text and share it with the rest of the world (through those same devices, remarkably), for free.
Isn’t THAT something.
You would think that someone smart would come along and harness this vast (almost incomprehensible) yet certainly incredible news and journalism asset and create something entirely new, derivative of what could be done here.
You would THINK someone would.
But it seems most news executives are too busy fretting over whether or not Matt Lauer is happy or Brian Williams can return.
And that’s the way it is.
(As they used to say at CBS News – when 19 bureaus meant something).
-Copyright 2015 Michael Rosenblum
1 Comment
Ilpo Mattila March 09, 2015
I hope all the inventors would read this and make some reflection. Thank you Michael! I have learned a lot from you (all in the internet). Ilpo M. vj from Finland.