Update2.0: Rachel McAthy's reports on my speech on Journalism.co.uk, here and here.
Update: Jay Rosen's 8-tweet presentation, 'The Great Horizontal', had a lot of overlap with mine below - and a lot more lucid too (I think I'm a bit too ludic...).
Original post: Here's the presentation I've just delivered to the Media140 conference in Barcelona - hi to all the attendees, and I'd be delighted to hear your responses in comments below. If you want to talk to me directly, please mail here. BTW, the Twitter hashtag for the conference is #media140 or #media140cat.
Journalism, Networks, Ontology: Pat kane presentation at Media140 barcelona
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Some great questions afterwards - I've built and developed my original answers.
Q: In Castells' era of mass self-communication, how do we ensure that there isn't so much noise that noone can hear the crucial information?
A: This is my point about the editorial function - it has to be more ambitious, as a scarce expertise in an overloaded information environment. But perhaps professional editorial should not be tied to the old business models, bemoaning falling paper sales, shrinking classified ad revenues, and pining for a remonetisation of their sales through mobile and tablet devices. Perhaps they should be talking to charities and NGOs, or thinking about establishing trust funds with philanthropists to secure long-term editorial functioning. Yes there is the public service media option - but I would also like to think futuristically about that too.
Q: But doesn't reasserting the editorial function just mean that we're going back to the old, pre-internet days of gatekeepers and institutions of information authority?
A: No - because as Clay Shirky says, the costs of creating such an editorial institution are much lower than they ever were, given the "insanely easy group forming tools" that the Net provides. Take the range of ex-Wikileaks employees who are setting up what they regard as better services for handling leaked information (see Open Leaks). I also think that editorial skills becomes something that gets spread through the citizenry. That will pluralise the idea of "objectivity" that is often, in reality, hides an unacknowledged and unconscious world-view among many journalists.
