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This is part 2 in a series discussing how the digital revolution is currently reshaping society. Don’t know what’s going on? Go back: Part 1.

Leo Laporte did a keynote speech at Blogworld ‘07, where he discusses his comparisons between old media and new media, what it means to be an internet content producer, and the effects this whole shift will have on our favourite institutions. It’s tremendously interesting, although it will take a bit of time, clocking in at 45 minutes (he starts 15 minutes in).

Leo’s main discussion point is about how the Internet has leveled the playing field, in media, in education, in creativity, etc. It has enabled over a billion people, so far, to connect simultaneously with one another and make their voices heard.We have to be clear about the Internet however, because there’s two parts to every solution: the software and the hardware. The Internet, obviously, is the software part of this. Luckily, access to the Internet, like many things these days, was handled quite well by the economies of scale, bringing us both an increase in speed, along with a decrease in price, as more people started subscribing.

This increase in speed was incredibly important, allowing people to share more than just static HTML pages: images, audio, video, etc. Again, the scaling effect takes hold, enabling not only higher quality content to be both uploaded and downloaded, but also way more of it. I can remember watching the Star Wars: Episode 1 trailer, an exclusive for Quicktime back in the day. The trailer was tiny, and took forever to load on dial-up, but hey, it sure was cool. Before the internet, trailers were relegated to movie theatres and videos. Nowadays, you can get these trailers, and far longer video content, streaming or downloaded, in HD!

You can just as easily compare this to images. We started off with small, low resolution images, and slowly the web became graphic intensive. Now we are at the point where photographers, or just families, can share *all* their photos online, either for free or a very low cost. This would not have happened without the speeds we now have.

Plus, that’s without mentioning the shift from film to digital cameras, something that happening a lot quicker than one would’ve presumed. I can still remember all the pros saying they’ll never switch (now look at them), or going to London Drugs and the salesguy telling us that the 3 megapixel digital was good for small prints but that it could never beat film. The economies of scale again took hold, and here we are.

So sure, people have access to faster speeds and a more diverse Internet than ever before. This is important, but the game changer is what people choose to do with it. This is where we get into social media, or web 2.0 - where what you once thought about the news, information, and networking gets completely thrown out the window. And for good reason.

Old media is a very bland format. It’s the lone teacher preaching editorialized information to a full classroom - except on a much larger scale. This is nothing more than limiting access to information.

Yes, when the Internet first started, people could create their own sites for the world to see. But that didn’t mean the world was watching.

Google made it easy to find stuff on the web. That was a huge shift. But the social shift occurred with Wikipedia: where anyone in the world, even people with no knowledge of HTML, could instantly improve or update a citizen’s encyclopedia. It’s obviously been a proven success, and despite some worries from the laggards, it’s actually been found to be more accurate than most other sites or certified encyclopedias. Just goes to show that we’re smarter when we pool our information together than going it alone.

With Wikipedia, it’s all about the community. It’s the thousands of diehards, constantly skimming pages for updates and verifying information, that makes it all work. And then of course, it’s the millions of people out there, who might want to add their own information on a lesser known topic, or perhaps reword certain phrases to improve readibility, or maybe add their own images to an entry. It’s the community that makes it work. This is the social web.

Let’s take a slightly different example. There’s always been producers and consumers of information and content. As I mentioned earlier, this role of producer used to be extremely limited to the rich and famous. Not so with web 2.0, where all you need is access to the web and you are off. You can blog, you can podcast, you can videocast - *you* are the content producer now. And people are listening.

This low barrier to entry is enabling hundreds of thousands of people to get their voices, opinions, and information out there, which is utterly overhauling the way old media works.

Facebook, flickr, digg, Google’s apps, YouTube, forums, etc.

It’s transforming the web, and society, because it’s taking the internet to the next step. It’s creating connections and networks between all the people online. As most should know, change starts with a discussion. Having these conversations, openly available to a worldwide audience, with the possibility for them to join in on a two way dialogue - it’s an incredible way to level the playing field, whether that’s location, age, gender, income, etc.

And all you need is an internet connection.