Evolving media - Tools to help us build a new society

Tonight’s celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the first Late, Late Show reach back to a different time.

We’ve often been told that the past is a different country but looking back across that half-century, Ireland seems more a different planet than a different country.

Gay Byrne, The Late Late Show’s founding father, so often seemed like one of those early American wagon train captains portrayed by John Wayne or Kirk Douglas, leading enthusiastic if bewildered pilgrims through a wilderness to their imagined promised land. He cajoled and prodded, making Ireland less afraid of the world that had probably outstripped a pre-EU and determinedly insular Éire. Though he was sometimes groundbreaking — sometimes catty and horribly judgmental too — he had a ready and willing audience, an audience increasingly ill at ease with the orthodoxy of their day. He was the right person at the right place and at the right time to play a central role in reshaping this society. Essentially, he replaced the pulpit, so fierce in moulding the citizenry of this country — or, as we were collectively known, the flock — with Studio 1 in Montrose.

It seems impossible to imagine that any individual, even if they were to preside over a national broadcaster’s flagship programme for close on four decades, could enjoy or be given such sway today. The great media and information revolution has made the idea of an individual — or corporation even — having such power to influence seem quaint and far-fetched. Of course this is a good thing but there are consequences too, collateral damage if you like. Like any other generation living through a great revolution we cannot be sure of its cost or achievements. Like the Chinese minister said when asked about the outcomes of the French revolution, it’s far too early to say.

The Late Late has been replaced by a million bloggers, millions on Twitter, and many millions more on Facebook. These technologies have been revolutionary and facilitated revolution. The ongoing Arab Spring, the opposition to Putin’s presidency-for-life aspirations, and opposition to the more autocratic extremes of the Chinese government have all been challenged like never before through the media that have replaced Gay Byrne. This universal conversation has changed democratic politics and electioneering too. The sharpest example of this still remains the way in which Barack Obama’s campaign used social media to overcome all of the hatred and racism that allowed him be America’s first non-white president.

It is also the place where Lady Gaga offers gagahugs — think about sincerity here for a moment — and the milestones of adolescence are discussed if not yet passed.

It is a great, largely unfiltered tsunami of factoids and opinions, of agendas and lobbying, all fighting for space in the consciousness of media users. Like the wagon train without John Wayne, it can go anywhere but maybe not arrive anywhere either.

We are probably, or at least hopefully, coming to the end of the Wild West period of social media, where anyone can say more or less whatever they like about anyone and expect traction in whatever debate is at hand. We may be at a point where, if things go right, we could start anew — and this is a very old-fashioned idea to equate with maturing social media — a Renaissance in how we interact with each other, of how we tease out ideas and change society from the one our parents gave us to the one we will leave to our children.