The world is now reluctantly but wisely conceding that a new age has forced itself in. Most, including some eminent members of a government think tank, still retain such a glamour of the industrial age that they have simply called it “Industrial Revolution 4.1”. This is understandable: to tame our hubris and intemperance in disowning and discarding what we have toiled to build over the last many centuries will be difficult; it is also difficult to bypass the legacy of understanding every new development as a progress of industry, something that humans so passionately and painstakingly created, amplified and sustained. However, this view point, inevitably, is incorrect. The industrial age has attenuated. Long live the “Internet Age”.
I would like to suggest four facets that are likely to define this new age. First, that isolation is going to be a way of life; maybe not quite like the times of COVID, but similar and in a more institutionalized manner. Secondly, the predominant industrial age tendency towards mindless overexploitation of natural resources will be seriously revisited; “back to nature” will be a compulsion as well as a call of the times. Thirdly, perhaps as a corollary, the dignity of labor and the salience of physical work in daily lives will get reestablished. To some these aspects may appear overly sanguine but they definitely fall within the realm of possibility.
Finally, and what I would like to focus on, the role of media as we see it today in communication and information dissemination will transmute inalterably. I believe each one of us in the internet age will be our own media – a TV channel, a broadcaster and an OTT platform. Blogs and vlogs will replace the newspapers and magazines of the world. The media landscape is likely to transform so comprehensively and fundamentally that in the very next decade we may see all that came prior such as channels, networks and platforms as nothing more than amusing, almost indulgent, nostalgia.
Media Business – A Melting Cauldron
There was a time when most media companies were linear, i.e. their major occupation was to deal in aspects of media in varying modes, print or electronic. So they could be in broadcasting or printing, and when the internet became ubiquitous, they could be a search engine or a platform. So Google became a search engine and Facebook a platform. Conventional broadcasting now comprised of companies who were offering news, entertainment, or a combination of both. In India, we had companies like Star, Zee and Sony doing so. But today, spurred on by OTT, a most exciting experiment that has birthed streaming service providers, this distinction is increasingly getting not just blurred but downright collapsed.
The fact that companies set up purely as e-commerce enterprises now have significant presence as purveyors of content previously considered exclusive preserve of media companies, such as Amazon Prime, only exhibits this smudging of the once clear lines dividing the various facets of media. I believe the media business landscape in the internet age will be one where every major enterprise will have a finger in this pie, not because it’s a core business interest, but because they would need it to sub-serve, perpetuate, enlarge and maximise themselves with this most essential digital footprint; and this will be the purview not just of the corporation, but the individual too.
Regulation – The Continuing Bone of Contention
Notwithstanding whether we have giant corporations or an individual (anyone recalls T-Series versus PewDiePie?) as our media standard bearers, regulation of media content will remain a pertinent issue. In India, notwithstanding the initiative taken by the government to resolve the contentious issues of content regulation by recognising mechanisms of self-regulation and offering it legal protection, the broadcasters and OTT intermediaries seem keen to keep this thorny issue protracted. The new MIB regulations and IT rules have been aggressively challenged in high courts. A prominent section of broadcasters and OTT players would like the government to be completely out of sight as far as content regulation is concerned.
The basic argument they articulate, couched in intelligently-worded statements and petitions, essentially seek supremacy of freedom of expression as enshrined in the Constitution with the state having no interference in this matter as the Industry is willing to self-regulate its content in a transparent manner. Their objection is that by retaining the role of ultimate and final arbiter in a content-related dispute, the government has negated the very essence of self-regulation.
While the Courts adjudicate over this matter, and it may be expedient to await a verdict, the more significant issue is the apparently reluctant and increasingly inadequate process of consultation and consensus-building. A reasonable via-media to resolve contested issues is eminently possible and this effort must concurrently continue irrespective of the judicial processes underway.
Conclusion – Condone, Confront, Conquer or Comply?
The key question to be asked of the state in the internet age is how is it to deal with the increasing power and hold that internet companies have on the lives and the future of people. This threat to the position of state has been anticipated in many quarters and a debate is raging on, sometimes openly, but more often obliquely. Irrespective of the form of government, democratic or authoritarian, monarchical or anarchical, the threat to the notion of state as we have understood it this century is real.
We cannot soothe ourselves with tenuous beliefs in a future with enlightened despotism of the internet giants held in place by the invisible hands of the free market. Given humans propensity to manipulate, those who control the internet will be prey to the same weaknesses and proclivities as the people who run the state. No technology can make humans more reasonable or less selfish.
If the state as we understand it is to survive, it will not accept this constant erosion of its hold and authority demurely or passively. Its patience will neither be infinite nor indefinite. Countries with lower levels of education and higher levels of authoritarianism will definitely better address any possible menace of internet induced unrest. China, for example, does not feel as threatened as India. But the bigger issue will always be: should the state as we have understood it survive? Or should it metamorphose, transfigure, mutate? Also, is any change or lack thereof really in anyone’s hands?
The internet age holds a lot of promise but will also bring with it unknown, unanticipated and unchartered possibilities, many of which could be unpleasantly uneasy and unduly unsettling. The time to recognise and talk about them is now. Let the conversation begin.
scribo ad LX 