Near Future Stories about the Web

Can we really predict how much the Web will change five years from now? New Yorker Staff Writer Ken Auletta asked a few notable icons of Internet culture wrestled this question at The New Yorker Conference/2012: Stories From The Near Future in May of 2007.

• Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post claims that the rise of citizen Journalists will make the profession more accountable, spelling an end to the use of anonymous sources. When the future is divided between the mainstream media and citizen journalists, transparency will become commonplace. Citizen journalists aren't as willing to sell their independence to gain access to a story. This will make fact-checking even more important. Is Huffington tacitly approving Robin Miller's prescription for saving the newspaper trade? You may recall his USC Annenberg article that we read earlier. According to Hufington, the hybrid future is already here.



• Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist, imagines that many of the world's social problems may be improved through the advance of online social communities. Like Huffington, he agrees that truth has no hiding place on the Web. He even muses that we may see the Web allowing us a restoration of constitutional democracy



• Barry Diller, creator of Fox Broadcasting Company, tells us that we will all be much more comfortable doing business online. The Web's bandwidth will increase and e-commerce applications will improve, improving the usability of online transaction services.

In general, the interviewer canvasses his panel's views thouroughly. I found this episode the New Yorker Conference Podcast a bit difficult to sit through, however. The interviewees spend a lot of time cross-checking eachother's analysis of what may or may not happen five years from now.

New Yorker writer Larissa MacFarquhar uses a much simpler interviewing style than Auletta, one that is friendly to small-screen Podcast devices. Conducting the Solutions: 2012 episode for the same conference, MacFarquhar allows her panelists to express their views from start-to-finish. She asks a few leading questions during the interview and leaves out the panel discussions at the end. Her interviewing style is still deeply informative, but the narrative is simpler. This is well-suited to an audience that may be watching this podcast in transit, on a small video I-Pod screen.

We are beginning to see Apple TV drives available in stores. This may be a more appropriate venue for Auletta's more complex approach to interviewing. Perhaps Apple TV will take off, perhaps not. Until then, as the T sways and screeches along the curved tracks, I'll gravitate to the simpler interviews with more linear narratives.

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