Is it only media, No!, the technological wave is being felt at every workplace but you can survive it.
Remember Y2K? I mean the year 2000 when every big and small company rushed to safeguard their data anticipating a millennium bug that could wipe out calendar information.
The technology of the future has the power today to replace human beings if they don’t evolve to be accommodated by the change.
Every industry from manufacturing to service has been benefited by the growth of technology, been a party to it and enjoyed it while it has laid off many employees.
If we were to take an example, the media industry today has completely changed. Earlier, a TV crew had to carry an expensive camera with restricted battery life to cover an event, today they are using top of the chain Samsung and Apple phones to cover events.
Which means that camera operator, reporter and other supporting crewmembers that used to travel together, has been reduced to a single person who could cover an event, edit and file the report on the go.
Therefore, here is a look at what the future holds and how could I not be vulnerable to the growing needs of my technology driven company.
Technologies of future
I have always dreamed of working for an organization like Bloomberg.
It has set new standards of news segregation, reporting, and filling.
Today, Bloomberg uses a technological arm called Cyborg, which dissects and feeds reports in the publishing system.
Cyborg is particularly helpful for business and data journalists; Cyborg can chew data, dissect it, create a report and spit it out.
It is untiring, accurate and fast that Bloomberg needs to be to beat its closest rival, the Reuters in a fast-paced digital world.
The same is also becoming a reality for The Washington Post, Los Angeles, and The Associated Press, which are using robots for reporting from a university level football match to the Presidential elections data.
AI, VR, AR, IoT, 5G, Cloud and much more
Innovate! That has become the calling card of the Journalism industry.
CNN is working extensively with companies in Japan that are currently working on innovative technologies.
These technologies, when used in journalism, can get you to the place where the news broke.
Imagine, President Trump, taking the oath office and you sitting in India at your home is as close as others can be.
This isn’t something that will come, this is happening right now, Samsung VR Gear priced INR 5000 Rs right now on Amazon is being used for the same.
Quartz, a multisource news aggregator is using Augmented Reality (AR) to deliver high-quality articles that are not only sourced from the best on the internet but carefully handpicked.
If you were to use Quartz on any iPhone 8 and above, you would easily make a difference in how the content is being delivered.
A bot, which minimizes human intervention, is selecting these articles and technically once the machine itself learns what to do next, there is no requirement of the employee who used to the same work.
So far, we had been consuming news and content on TV, on Computer or on phone but with the introduction of Internet of Things (IoT), this content would also be available on your durable products.
While you cook in the kitchen your fridge can read your latest handpicked news that has been selected depending on your choice of news-from business to fashion- all of it done by machine.
USA Today is making a story through virtual reality that plays news like a hologram for the reader and the hologram is not human it’s a machine that has generated that anchor.
Finally, 5G, it is not coming in India soon but when it does it would be at mean speed and mean cost.
5G will offer a download speed of 10 Gbps (Gigabytes per second) phew! that is fast, 4G currently offers 100 Mbps (Megabytes per second)- so that’s the difference.
Now, Imagine a Newsroom with Bloomberg’s Cyborg, speed of 5G, a machine that learns about your reader and plays it when he has full concentration. Isn’t your job at the line?
Is it on the line?
I would say, No! it is not because what we are talking about here is a big technological explosion.
These technologies will augment a newsroom or workplace with human support.
They might not eat up your job instantly but when you would only rely only on technology and not your instincts then, they would bite you hard.
I would only advise that when we talk about technology as a great thing to have come in our lives, we must be wary of it as well.
Therefore, it is up to you and me to avoid this hard bite and take the assistance of these technologies to generate powerful, cutting edge reports that are delivered directly to the reader when he is free.
And, for all who think it is hard to get through technology, believe me, you have survived waves of technological reforms and you would survive this one as well.
FaultLines 