The new media environment: digital and social media

Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future (Kluth 2006) described what's going on right now as a "Cambrian explosion" of technology-driven creativity, echoing the huge biological proliferation on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago. One area that is continually changing, updating and rebooting itself is that of media. The new mechanisms that these changes are producing are referred to collectively as "new media" —and more specifically as digital and social media. Some would argue that these new media have democratised and invigorated the media; others that they have sent them into a downward spiral. Whatever you think, change is inevitable, particularly as technology burgeons. Just as the invention of the transistor in the late 1940s was the start of the (then unimaginable) computer revolution, so we are now inventing technologies that will take us to who knows where. As information is one of the most important commodities in the world, the rise of information-based technology has transformed the way we receive and process information. Boundaries of all kinds are being blurred and if we thought we could see the future a generation ago, we certainly cannot see it now