Bidding Farewell to Centralized Media

As those who've known me for some time will understand, mass media has long troubled me.

Having been raised in rather socially-minded circles, as a young student of geopolitics, I grew up appreciating how mass media was a critical and dangerous weapon capable of convincing "the masses" of just about anything: it could divide a population among itself around emotionally-charged domestic issues, it could unify that same population against some foreign countries but not others, and it could therefore muster support for wars that furthered less-than-obvious interests.

Suffice it to say, I used to think of myself as sufficiently inoculated against mass media's propaganda that I wasn't being impacted by it.

But I was devastated to discover the degree to which I had been brainwashed after a visit to Egypt that served as a wake-up call for me. I was so disappointed in myself and disturbed by how much mass media had changed my perspective that I chose to share this story when I was given the chance to cover a topic that mattered to me on a TEDx stage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgHQG3oD5p0 ).

But I won't retell that particular story.

Instead, I want to share my optimism for what's happened to media over the last 10 years. We've gone from a world where nearly all media was centralized and thus could be financed and directed rather seamlessly to one where more and more of the media we consume is decentralized with varied opinions over varied channels.

I believe my generation (Gen X) and perhaps older Millennials will be the last generations wherein a majority of our populations will have had our social and geopolitical perspectives framed nearly entirely by centralized mass media. Gen Z will be the first generation to gain its much more globally-aware perspectives from decentralized media sources. And this is true around the world thanks to the commoditization of Internet access to even the most underprivileged of countries.

Citizen journalists can now capture what's happening anywhere in the world and share it across channels that reach nearly everyone on earth. Any of us can consume their content, comment with our perspective on it, or share it with our circles publicly or privately.

Imagine Generation Alpha (those born after approximately 2010) who'll grow up in a post-centralized media world with fewer local biases than any humans who've ever lived. They'll be able to see the world from a uniquely different lens: as one global place with shared knowledge, shared empathy, and shared unity.

Utopian as this vision is, I believe it's one worth pursuing in the face of a reality that will promote a polarized "us vs. them" world. I hope my generation can support the access to and the free movement of information without censorship or vilification of platforms and sources that challenge our 20th-century media perspectives.