Predicting the future of Media

Interesting post from Dave Winer about a bet made 5 years ago re the future of media, in 2002:

In 2007 we will ask an objective third party to tell us what were the top five stories of the year, each reduced to a single word or phrase. Then we will look up the phrases in Google. (Assuming Google is still here five years from now, and still high integrity.) If three or more of the top links point to the NY Times, Martin wins. If three or more point to weblogs, I win.

So, 2007 has rolled around and the results are about even (see here), but there is a strong probability that the NYT would have cleared the boards if the paywall had been down earlier (and in 2007 Wikipedia - effectively nonexistent in 2002) - took more hits on the subjexts than either NYT or. However, I wanted to pick up two other points that he mentions in his summary:

The world that I hoped would come about did not. While blogs have broken many stories, they have not, in general, turned into the authoritative sources I hoped they would in 2002. When the blogosphere resembles journalism it's often the tabloid kind.

This actually doesn't surprise - if you look at the history of new media it tends to go populist first.......I'm actually surprised there's been so much good stuff and relatively little porn ! The interesting thing is that Winer predicted a duopoly, but in fact what seems to be happening is that the MSM is starting to take on blogging characteristics. As Bill Gates once noted, revolutions are always a little underwhelming in 2 years, but in 10 years the impact is revolutionary

There was also an interesting point in the original predictions:

The pervasive big publishing philosophy of Dumb It Down, forces all stories through too narrow a channel to model the diverse and complex world we live in. When the Times covers my industry it seems they only know three stories -- Microsoft is evil, Java is the future (or open source or whatever the topic du jour is) and Apple is dead.

Now its Google who is Evil, Apple are the Future, and Microsoft is dead.....

Time passes eh