I think this talk is significant for everyone but there are a few concepts I'd like to address specifically in terms of "the media." For the purposes of this post I am going to specifically address newspapers.
Newspapers have been slow to adapt to the Internet. One inherent problem is profitability. The Internet provides information at no charge; Newspapers profit by selling information. Old business models will not work in this environment.
There were a few attempts to continue a subscription based service online, most notably by the New York Times, but they didn't last long.
Local and national publications are creating more sophisticated websites and looking for profit from advertising, but they are organisms in an environment hostile to their physiology.
In the past, local papers reported national and international news by themselves subscribing to the AP wire. A story that broke elsewhere went on the wire and became the shared property of all participating newspapers, each repackaging the information and selling it to specific markets.
I submit that what was once the function of the AP service, is now the function of any Internet search engine. I no longer read a local reproduction of a story on the AP wire, I merely go to the original story which can easily be located on the Internet.
Knowing what to look for is certainly a service I appreciate; but I don't need a local reporter to trouble him or herself with re-writing what is already written.
I think this is where the concept of linking data with data to which Mr. Kelly refers comes into play. Newspapers are trying to profit by enticing people to view their "pages" but the network of pages is already an old paradigm. I have no need to visit your page to get data when the data itself is available to the network.
How will Newspapers sell me this data in the future?
There is certainly a need for local reporting and news; otherwise there would be no original data on the Internet to search; but the re-selling of data is going to be a thing of the past.
If the network of things truly becomes a reality, then I wonder what form reporting will take. Imagine that an airliner, when crashing, essentially reported the story itself to the network it was a part of. All of the newsworthy information would be immediately online; who, what, when, where and potentially why.
It may be that this last question will be the sole realm of the journalist: a data detective in a future where most information is freely available. His or her purpose: to find missing pieces of data and add them to the network.
But who employs such a person? A free market economy suggests the answer is simply: the people who want the data. But it might not be the realm of a specific person to add all missing data; instead it would fall on those concerned with specific data. In the case of the airliner, a company engineer who wants to prevent further catastrophe.
I don't know the answer to all of these questions but I will say this about newspapers:
They will innovate or they will die; but people will always need the news.
-Robot Crusoe
EDIT: The embeded video would not play so I have replaced it with a link.
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