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我想談談已全然改觀的媒體現況,及任何想要將訊息散播到全世界各地的意義何在,我要透過幾個故事來描述這場變局。
我就從這個故事講起,去年11月的總統大選,你們可能有在報紙上讀過相關報導,有人擔心全美某些地方可能會有壓抑選民的情況,於是產生了一個拍攝選舉的計畫,其原始概念是每位公民,只要擁有照相或攝影手機,即能記錄他們的投票所,以監視各種壓抑選民的小手段,之後會將檔案集中上傳到一個地方,其運作模式就類似一種公民監督,公民不只是在場投票,更是在協助維護整場選舉的神聖性,所以這個模式假設我們都參與其中,整件事最重要的並非技術資本,而是社交資本。
但這些工具的社交吸引力,直到技術改進之前並不顯著,只有當這些新穎的工具問世,其使用者才開始遍及於社會,只在每個人都將這些工具視為理所當然時,因為現在這類媒體已經愈來愈具社交性,創意在任何地方都可能發生,人們可以將我們都參與其中的概念視為理所當然,所以我們開始看到的媒體情況是,創意可以發生在任何地方,而且是一傳十,十傳百,這是場重大的變局,無需再強調的是,我們現在所處的年代,我們這一代所處的時間點,是表達能力最大幅提升的年代,從人類歷史的角度上來看,這是很誇口的斷言,但我會試著合理解釋。
過去500年中只有四個時期,媒體的改觀幅度大到可以稱得上是「革命性」,第一個是著名的印刷機、活字印刷、油性墨汁及所有複雜的發明,讓大量印刷成真,並從1400年代中期開始顛覆歐洲,隨後,在幾百年前,雙向溝通發明問市,對話式的媒體,首先是電報,然後是電話,前者是緩慢、透過文字對話,後者則為實時、透過聲音對話,然後,約在150年前,預錄媒體的革命取代了印刷品,首先是相片、錄音,然後是電影,全都經編碼錄到實物中,最後,約在100年前,電磁波頻譜技術成熟,聲音及影像得以透過空氣、電台及電視傳播,這是我們在20世紀所熟悉的媒體情況,也是我們當中特定年紀族群成長的記憶與熟悉的事物。
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以下為系統擷取之英文原文
I want to talk about the transformed media landscape, and what it means for anybody who has a message they want to get out to anywhere in the world. And I want to illustrate that by telling a couple of stories about that transformation.
I'll start here. Last November there was a presidential election. You probably read something about it in the papers. And there was some concern that in some parts of the country there might be voter suppression. And so a plan came up to video the vote. And the idea was that individual citizens with phones capable of taking photos or making video would document their polling places, on the lookout for any kind of voter suppression techniques. And would upload this to a central place. And that this would operate as a kind of citizen observation. That citizens would not be there just to cast individual votes. But also to help insure the sanctity of the vote overall.
So this is a pattern that assumes we're all in this together. What matters here isn't technical capital. It's social capital. These tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring. It isn't when the shiny new tools show up that their uses start permeating society. It's when everybody is able to take them for granted. Because now that media is increasingly social, innovation can happen anywhere that people can take for granted the idea that we're all in this together.
And so we're starting to see a media landscape in which innovation is happening everywhere. And moving from one spot to another. That is a huge transformation. Not to put too fine a point on it, the moment we're living through, the moment our historical generation is living through is the largest increase in expressive capability in human history. Now that's a big claim. I'm going to try to back it up.
There are only four periods in the last 500 years where media has changed enough to qualify for the label Revolution. The first one is the famous one, the printing press. Movable type, oil-based inks, that whole complex of innovations that made printing possible and turned Europe upside-down, starting in the middle of the 1400s. Then a couple of hundred years ago there was innovation in two way communication. Conversational media, first the telegraph, then the telephone. Slow, text based conversations, then real-time voice based conversations. Then, about 150 years ago, there was a revolution in recorded media other than print. First photos, then recorded sound, then movies, all encoded onto physical objects. And finally about 100 years ago, the harnessing of electromagnetic spectrum to send sound and images through the air, radio and television. This is the media landscape as we knew it in the 20th century. This is what those of us of a certain age grew up with, and are used to.
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但這之間有個奇怪的不對稱關係,擅於創造對話的媒體,不擅創造社群;而擅於創造社群的媒體,卻不擅創造對話,如果你想要來場對話,在當時,你僅能和單一對象對話,如果你要向一個社群喊話,你必需將同一個訊息傳送給社群中的每個人,無論是透過廣播或是印刷品,這樣的媒體情況,即是二十世紀的古董方式,這就是改變的玩意兒,這個看起來像是孔雀開屏的圖形,是Bill Cheswick的網路圖,他追蹤每條個人網路,並以顏色進行編碼,網路是史上第一種天生即可同時支援社群與對話的媒介,不同於電話一對一的模式,或是電視、電台、雜誌及書籍,一對多的模式,網路是多對多的模式,媒體第一次成為天生即能支援這樣多對多的對話,這是其中一項大變革。
第二項大變革是當所有的媒體都經數位化,網路也成為載體,接納所有其他的媒體,這意謂著電話移到網路、雜誌移到網路、電影移到網路,這更意謂著每一種媒介都和任何一種媒介緊連在一起,換個方式來說,逐漸地,媒體不再只是資訊的來源,而逐漸地,更像是一個合作站點,因為看到、耳聞或觀察到或聽到任何事的社群,現在都可以聚在一起並和彼此分享所知。
第三項重大變革是之前的視聽眾,如同Dan Gilmore定義,現在也是製作者,而不只是消費者,每次有新消費成員加入這個媒體現況,也就代表一位新製作者的加入,因為相同的設備,電話、電腦,讓你能同時消費和製作,就好像你買了一本書,他們再免費加贈印刷機一般,也像你的電話能變成電台,如果你按對按鈕的話,這是很重大的變化,對比於我們所熟悉的媒體情況,而這不只是有沒有網路的問題,網路開放大眾使用已幾近20年了,但它仍在改變,因為媒體的社交性變得更強,模式也仍在改變,甚至是介於,知道如何妥善處理網路的社群之間。
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But there is a curious asymmetry here. The media that is good at creating conversations is no good at creating groups. And that's good at creating groups is no good at creating conversations. If you want to have a conversation in this world, you have it with one other person. If you want to address a group, you get the same message and you give it to everybody in the group. Whether you're doing that with a broadcasting tower or a printing press. That was the media landscape as we had it in the twentieth century.
And this is what changed. This thing that looks like a peacock hit a windscreen is Bill Cheswick's map of the Internet. He traces the edges of the individual networks and then color codes them. The Internet is the first medium in history that has native support for groups and conversation at the same time. Where as the phone gave us the one to one pattern. And television, radio, magazines, books, gave us the one to many pattern. The Internet gives us the many to many pattern. For the first time media is natively good at supporting these kinds of conversations. That's one of the big changes.
The second big change is that as all media gets digitized the Internet also becomes the mode of carriage for all other media. Meaning that phone calls migrate to the Internet. Magazines migrate to the Internet. Movies migrate to the Internet. And that means that every medium is right next door to every other medium. Put another way, media is increasingly less just a source of information. And it is increasingly more a site of coordination. Because groups that see or hear or watch or listen to something can now gather around and talk to each other as well.
And the third big change is that members of the former audience, as Dan Gilmore calls them, can now also be producers and not consumers. Every time a new consumer joins this media landscape a new producer joins as well. Because the same equipment, phones, computers, let you consume and produce. It's as if, when you bought a book, they threw in the printing press for free. It's like you had a phone that could turn into a radio if you pressed the right buttons. That is a huge change in the media landscape we're used to. And it's not just Internet or no Internet. We've had the Internet in its public form for almost 20 years now. And it's still changing as the media becomes more social. It's still changing patterns even among groups who know how to deal with the Internet well.
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第二個故事,去年(2008)五月,中國四川省發生了可怕的地震,規模達7.9級,芮氏地震規模顯示大區域內受到巨大摧殘,地震一發生就被報導出來,民眾透過他們的手機發送簡訊、照下建築物,他們攝錄下搖晃的建築物,然後上傳到QQ,中國最大的網路服務,他們還用Twitter發出簡訊,所以地震才發生,新聞就報導出來了,也因為社交連繫,包括中國各地的在學生或世界上其他在中國設點的企業,全世界的聽眾,都聽到了這則新聞,英國BBC是透過Twitter首聞中國地震,Twitter宣佈地震確實的時間,比美國地質調查局在網上公佈任何訊息的時間還早了幾分鐘,上次中國發生如此巨大地震時,官方在三個月後才承認有地震。
(笑聲)
他們可能還想這麼蠻幹,而不願看到這些照片上線,但他們這次別無選擇,因為其國民從正面出招,就連政府也是從其國民口中獲知地震的消息,而非官方的新華社,這類走報事件有如燎原大火,一下子,Twitter前10條最常點閱的連結,這可是個全球性的短訊服務,10條有9條是關於該次地震,民眾整理資料,將人引到新聞所在,將人引到美國地質調查局,第十名是小貓使用跑步機,但這就是網路世界。
(笑聲)
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Second story, last May, China in the Sichuan province had a terrible earthquake, 7.9 magnitude, massive destruction in a wide area, as the Richter Scale has it. And the earthquake was reported as it was happening. People were texting from their phones. They were taking photos of buildings. They were taking videos of buildings shaking. They were uploading it to QQ, China's largest Internet service. They were Twittering it. And so as the quake was happening the news was reported. And because of the social connections, Chinese students coming elsewhere, and going to school. Or businesses in the rest of the world opening offices in China. There were people listening all over the world, hearing this news. The BBC got their first wind of the Chinese quake from Twitter. Twitter announced the existence of the quake several minutes before the US Geological Survey had anything up online for anybody to read. The last time China had a quake of that magnitude it took them three months to admit that it had happened.
(Laughter)
Now they might have liked to have done that here, rather than seeing these pictures go up online. But they weren't given that choice. Because their own citizens beat them to the punch. Even the government learned of the earthquake from their own citizens, rather than from the Xinhua News Agency. And this stuff rippled like wildfire. For a while there the top 10 most clicked links on Twitter, the global short messaging service, nine of the top 10 links were about the quake. People collating information, pointing people to news sources, pointing people to the US geological survey. The 10th one was kittens on a treadmill, but that's the Internet for you.
(Laughter)
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但其他前九條都在第一個小時發出訊息,捐款的網站也在半天的時間就設立,捐款從世界各地湧入,這真是很驚人,全球協同的回應,而中國官方,在這個媒體開放的時期,決定讓訊息自由流竄,他們決定讓公民自由地報導此事,然後有件事爆出來了,民眾開始瞭解到,在四川省,如此多學校建築倒塌的原因,因為悲劇性的地震發生在上學日,但如此多學校建築倒塌的原因,是因為貪腐的官員收賄,讓那些不合格的建築物過關,所以他們開始,公民記者開始報導這類新聞,這兒有張令人難以相信的照片,你可能已經在《紐約時報》的頭版看過,一名當地官員真的當街跪臥在地,就在這些示威者的面前,為了要讓示威者離開,他們必需說:「我們將會盡一切撫慰你們,但請停止公然示威了」。
但這些人的情緒都很激動,因為一胎化政策,他們已經失去了後代,對看著唯一小孩死去的人來說,現在什麼都不重要了,所以示威繼續,最後,中國政府開始鎮壓,公民媒體太超過了,他們開始逮捕示威者,他們開始關閉報導示威的媒體,中國可能是全世界最成功的網路審查經理,使用一種被廣為形容成是「中國防火長城」的東西,「中國防火長城」是一組監視點,預設媒體是由一群專業人士所製作,大部份來自外頭的世界,僅有稀疏的區塊得以顯現,而且製作速度相對緩慢,就因為這四點特徵,他們才有辦法在媒體進入中國時加以過濾,但就像馬奇諾防線(意指不管用的防線),中國防火長城設錯了方向,針對這場挑戰而言,因為上述四點,在這個環境中沒有一項屬實,媒體製作來自當地,且由業餘人士所製作,製作的速度很快,而且數量驚人,情況根本防不勝防,所以,中國政府數十年來成功過濾網頁的經驗面臨抉擇考驗 ─ 全面允許或關閉網路服務。
因為業餘媒體的轉型是如此巨大,他們沒有其他的解決方法,事實上,同樣的決策發生在本週(2009),六四天安門事件20週年,官方在兩天前宣佈,暫時關閉Twitter服務,因為他們無法用其他方法實施管控,他們將整個活栓轉死,以上所提改變不只影響想要審查訊息的人,也同時影響想要傳送訊息的人,因為這真的完全改變了媒體生態,不僅是一個特別的策略,從二十世紀開始,經典的媒體問題便是組織如何將訊息傳遞到散佈在網路中的每個人,螢幕上是二十世紀的答案,將訊息整理齊全,一次性發給所有人,全國性的訊息、目標為個體,相對稀少的製作人員,這是極其昂貴的做法,所以,競爭不多,這曾是傳訊的方法,現在全部終結了。
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But nine of the 10 in those first hours. And within half a day donation sites were up. And donations were pouring in from all around the world. This was an incredible, coordinated global response. And the Chinese then, in one of their periods of media openness decided that they were going to let it go. That they were going to let this citizen reporting fly. And then this happened. People began to figure out, in the Sichuan Provence, that the reason so many school buildings had collapsed, because tragically the earthquake happened during a school day, the reason so many school buildings collapsed is that corrupt officials had taken bribes to allow those building to be built to less than code. And so they started, the citizen journalists started
reporting that as well. And there was an incredible picture. You may have seen in on the front page of the New York Times. A local official literally prostrated himself in the street, in front of these protesters. In order to get them to go away. Essentially to say, "We will do anything to placate you. just please stop protesting in public."
But these are people who have been radicalized. Because thanks to the one child policy they have lost everyone in their next generation. Someone who has seen the death of a single child now has nothing to lose. And so the protest kept going. And finally the Chinese cracked down. That was enough of citizen media. And so they began to arrest the protesters. They began to shut down the media that the protests were happening on.
China is probably the most successful manager of Internet censorship, in the world, using something that is widely described as the Great Firewall of China. And the Great Firewall of China is a set of observation points that assume that media is produced by professionals, it mostly comes in from the outside world, it comes in in relatively sparse chunks, and it comes in relatively slowly. And because of those four characteristics they are able to filter it as it comes into the country. But like the Maginot Line, the great firewall of China was facing in the wrong direction for this challenge. Because not one of those four things was true in this environment. The media was produced locally. It was produced by amateurs. It was produced quickly. And it was produced at such an incredible abundance that there was no way to filter it as it appeared. And so now the Chinese government, who for a dozen years, has quite successfully filtered the web, is now in the position of having to decide whether to allow or shut down entire services. Because the transformation to amateur media is so enormous that they can't deal with it any other way.
And in fact that is happening this week. On the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen they just two days ago announced that they were simply shutting down access to Twitter. Because there was no way to filter it other than that. They had to turn the spigot entirely off. Now these changes don't just affect people who want to censor messages. They also affect people who want to send messages.
Because this is really a transformation of the ecosystem as a whole. Not just a particular strategy. The classic media problem, from the twentieth century is how does an organization have a message that they want to get out to a group of people distributed at the edges of a network. And here is the twentieth century answer. Bundle up the message. Send the same message to everybody. National message. Targeted individuals. Relatively sparse number of producers. Very expensive to do. So there is not a lot of competition. This is how you reach people. All of that is over.
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我們現處的情況是,媒體全球化、社交化、無所不在,而且便宜,現在,大部份組織在傳送訊息給外面的世界、散佈給視聽眾時,都已習慣上述變革,視聽眾可以貢獻意見,一開始會有點怪,但不久你便會習慣,就像大部份的人一樣,但那還不是我們所面臨最瘋狂的變革,最瘋狂的變革在此(見螢幕圖),事實是,視聽眾已經彼此連結在一起,昔日的消費者,現在成了製作者,視聽眾可以彼此直接交談,因為業餘人士遠多於專業人士,也因為網路的規格及複雜性實際上是參與者數目的平方,這意謂著網路成長時,數目會變得極大,僅是過去十年,大部份市面上公開的媒體都還是由專業人士所製作,那些日子已經結束,一去不返,新的疆界產生,那就是免費內容的供應,這也帶出我最後一個故事。
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We are increasingly in a landscape where media is global. social, ubiquitous and cheap. Now most organizations that are trying to send messages to the outside world, to the distributed collection of the audience, are now used to this change. The audience can talk back. And that's a little freaky. But you can get used to it after a while, as people do.
But that's not the really crazy change that we're living in the middle of. The really crazy change is here. It's the fact that they are no longer disconnected from each other. The fact that former consumers are now producers. The fact that the audience can talk directly to one another. Because there is a lot more amateurs than professionals. And because the size of the network, the complexity of the network is actually the square of the number of participants. Meaning that the network, when it grows large, grows very very large.
As recently at last decade, Most of the media that was available for public consumption was produced by professionals. Those days are over, never to return. It is the green lines now, that are the source of the free content. Which brings me to my last story. We saw some of the most imaginative use of social media during the Obama campaign.
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我們看到一些最富想像力的社交媒體運用於歐巴馬的競選活動中,我並非指最富想像力的政治運用,而是有史以來最富想像力的運用,歐巴馬所做的其中一項,即著名的歐巴馬競選活動,所做的是,他們巧妙地建立了「我的歐巴馬點com」 ─ myBO.com,吸引了數以百萬計的公民湧入參與,並設法提供幫助,在站內引起了熱烈的討論,同時,去年(2009)的此時,歐巴馬宣佈他將改變自己對FISA的立場,即「外國情報監察法案」,他在一月時宣稱自己不會簽署同意這項法案,因為它授予電信免責權給可能未經授權監視美國人的行為,但到了夏天,大選正夯之際,他說:「我重新審視這項法案後,已改變心意,我將投下贊成票」,讓許多他自己網站上的支持者跳出來嗆聲,這是他們推擁出的參議員歐巴馬,他們隨後改了名字,請正視FISA法案!
這個社群被創造出後的幾天,就成為myBO.com網站中成長最快的社群,幾週後,更成為最大的社群,歐巴馬必需發佈新聞稿,他必需做出回應,他必需說:「我考量過這個法案,我瞭解你們的本意,但仔細衡量後,我仍然要投下贊成票,但我要跟您們說的是我明白你們不同意我的作法,但我願承擔此事的所有後果」,這稿並沒討好任何人,但有趣的事開始發酵,社群中的民眾開始明瞭,歐巴馬從沒要他們噤聲,歐巴馬的競選團隊中,沒有任何人試著要隱藏這個社群,或讓它難以加入,或否定它的存在,甚至刪除它,乃至下站。
他們瞭解到自己在myBO.com的角色是召集支持者,而非控制他們,而這便是一種像教養的東西,真正成熟地使用這種媒體,媒體,我們所知的媒體現況,就像過去一樣熟悉,簡單的概念就是由專業人士處理之後,將訊息發送給業餘人士,此況將不再,在媒體全球化、社交化、無所不在,而且便宜的世界裡,在一個昔日視聽眾逐漸成為全職參與製作的媒體世界裡,在這樣的世界裡,媒體愈來愈不是精雕單一的訊息來讓個體消費,而更常是創造出一個聚集與支援社群的環境,而我們所面臨的抉擇,我是指任何想要讓自己的訊息被聽見的人,而且是散播到全世界,抉擇已非我們是否想要在這樣的媒體環境中運作,因為我們已身處這樣的媒體環境當中,我們現在共同面對的問題是,「如何能最有效地運用這種媒體?即使那意謂著改變我們慣有的做法」。
感謝聆聽。
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And I don't mean most imaginative use in politics. I mean most imaginative use ever. And one of the things Obama did, was they famously, the Obama campaign did, was they famously put up My Barak Obama dot com, myBO.com And millions of citizens rushed in to participate, and to try and figure out how to help. An incredible conversation sprung up there. And then, this time last year, Obama announced that he was going to change his vote on FISA, The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He had said, in January, that he would not sign a bill that granted telecom immunity for possibly warrantless spying on American persons. By the summer, in the middle of the general campaign, He said, "I've thought about the issue more. I've changed my mind. I'm going to vote for this bill." And many of his own supporters on his own site went very publicly berserk.
It was Senator Obama when they created it. They changed the name later. Please get FISA right. Within days of this group being created it was the fastest growing group on myBO.com. Within weeks of its being created it was the largest group. Obama had to issue a press release. He had to issue a reply. And he said essentially, "I have considered the issue. I understand where you are coming from. But having considered it all, I'm still going to vote the way I'm going to vote. But I wanted to reach out to you and say, I understand that you disagree with me, and I'm going to take my lumps on this one."
This didn't please anybody. But then a funny thing happened in the conversation. People in that group realized that Obama had never shut them down. Nobody in the Obama campaign had ever tried to hide the group or make it harder to join, to deny its existence, to delete it, to take to off the site. They had understood that their role with myBO.com was to convene their supporters but not to control their supporters.
And that is the kind of discipline that it takes to make really mature use of this media. Media, the media landscape that we knew, as familiar as it was, as easy conceptually as it was to deal with the idea that professionals broadcast messages to amateurs, is increasingly slipping away. In a world where media is global, social, ubiquitous and cheap, in a world of media where the former audience are now increasingly full participants, in that world, media is less and less often about crafting a single message to be consumed by individuals. It is more and more often a way of creating an environment for convening and supporting groups.
And the choice we face, I mean anybody who has a message they want to have heard anywhere in the world, isn't whether or not that is the media environment we want to operate in. That's the media environment we've got. The question we all face now is, "How can we make best use of this media? Even though it means changing the way we've always done it." Thank you very much.