There's an interesting "where will it all end?" piece from the chaps over at MediaGuardian.co.uk today. It's by Chris Shaw, a senior exec at Channel Five, who looks at what's happening with interactivity in news media:
This week I encountered a new media buzzword: Disintermediation. Sounds like Dalek talk to me. But apparently it spells doom for the traditional media.
Disintermediation means consumers can interact directly with the people running our newspapers, TV and radio. Whether its downloading new shows at will, broadcasting your own homemade video news stories, or just starting your own website or blog, disintermediation is apparently the path to free-market Nirvana where choice is king and content is governed exclusively by demand.
His doomsday scenario is that viewers will be asked to vote on which stories will top tomorrow night's news bulletin. I don't think that proposal is entirely specious, and in fact, I think it's limited by his vision of broadcast media. But let's not get into the arguments about whether Shaw is right or wrong, whether he's analysed the situation correctly or how those types of changes are already starting to take effect.
In fact, I found it interesting mainly because of the trickle-down effect of buzzwords. Shaw says he has just encountered "disintermediation" in the wild. Anyone watching new media would have seen this thrown around with excitement a lot five or ten years ago, but less so of late. This says it's been a net buzzword for at least 12 years, while Wikipedia lists one of its earliest appearances in an economics journal in 1981.
It's like a media-technology form of Chinese whispers. Anyone got any others?
