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Are We Digital Dummies?: Director's Statement
Written by Andrew Blicq
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In 1978, the Winnipeg Free Press was a pillar of the city's downtown business community, its historic brick and stone building on Carlton Street a witness to and keeper of its history. Back then, the paper produced more than one version every day and when the massive presses on the main floor rumbled to life for the late edition, reporters and editors working on the 4th floor could literally feel the weight of their words shaking the concrete floor under their feet.
Andy Blicq is an independent television producer and director with more than 20 years experience. Last year he directed the critically-acclaimed documentary "The Secret World of Shoplifting". It was the highest rated documentary in the history of CBC's Doc Zone series and follows on another critically-acclaimed film, "The Truth About Liars". He has also produced, directed and written many independent programs and specials, including directing History Television's hit reality series "Pioneer Quest".All of this was a heady stuff for a newly-minted journalism grad, lucky enough to land an internship at one of Canada's great newspapers. I didn't know it then, but the Winnipeg Free Press and newspapers everywhere were about to face wrenching change. The signs were already there. The Free Press was one of the first to replace typewriters with computers. Editors and reporters worked at Jetsons-style, yellow and orange, metal terminals, while the guts of these new-fangled business machines filled most of a floor upstairs.
It's likely that the computer you are looking at right now is at least as powerful as the data bank that filled that floor. And it's not just the size of the machines that has changed. In 1978, a local reporter's number one newsgathering tool was a rotary phone. There was no Internet. Research meant calling around for facts and quotes. Background information was kept in the "morgue" down the hall, where every day library staff clipped out stories on every possible topic and filed them according to date and content, in large envelopes. Reporters assigned to a story, would shuffle down to the library, pull the file and start reading – a tedious exercise that left you ink-fingered.
The arrival of the Internet and later, Smart Phones, has changed all that...for the better. Global access to information on almost any imaginable topic is just a keystroke away. But that same digital world is also challenging the very future of newspapers like the Free Press – now turning out a morning paper from a new building in the suburbs. Readers have discovered an almost limitless appetite for instant news, information and entertainment and they're turning to their Smart Phones and the Internet to get it. The result: a decline in readers for newspapers and changes to the way consumers watch television and movies. I recently attended a presentation on 'life in the post-television era' - a world in which consumers will increasingly turn off the sets and turn to their computers, to snack on information and download programming when and where they want it.
All of this sounds like bad news for information providers and a perfect world for consumers, but when we set out to make Are We Digital Dummies? It quickly became clear that this was not the case. In interviews on downtown streets in Vancouver and Toronto Canadians expressed a rueful dismay over how much time they're spending texting and surfing the net for work and pleasure. And the experts we spoke to warned that when it comes to information gathering and thinking, we've swapped depth for speed. Others said we've reached or exceeded the limits of our ability to manage all that content. In short, we're swamped. And as one Canadian on the street pointed out, we simply can't turn it off.
"If it goes down it's like: Oh my God what do we do?" he said.
So if we can't turn it off, indeed, what do we do? We spent a year trying to answer that complicated question...and found, as you'll see, that the solution is both simple and personal. But putting that solution to work is not that easy in a world where it's now almost mandatory to stay connected.
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