The Future of the News in the Age of Web 3.0

November 29, 2018 – Every morning I look forward to reading the two daily newspapers that come to our door. I like the feel of newsprint and the ability to scan through numerous pages with articles that I might normally read if only getting my news from online sources. But these newspapers are showing the sign of the times. One has abandoned local business reporting buying into American news feeds. Even its travel section is authored by Americans writing from their perspective. That makes it funny when you read an article about visiting somewhere in Canada.

The news as a business is definitely undergoing a disruptive revolution as more of us learn about the world through digital sources. This in a Web 2.0 world has already created controversy with social media becoming a common place for people to find out what is going on around them and elsewhere on the planet. Imagine then when we see the Spatial Web or Web 3.0 become our reality.

Web 3.0 will become ubiquitous globally as 5G networks replace existing 4G and 3G cellular services. What differentiates 5G from these older communication technologies is the explosion in data points. With 5G we will be living in a physical world that is virtually mapped by numerous points of connectivity fed by trillions of sensors and devices.

Web 3.0 means transformational changes to communications and learning on an unprecedented scale.

The Spatial Web is Transforming Network News

How do you read the news today? Do you access it through a smartphone, a tablet, or do you find it in print, on the radio, or through television? Do you follow the news from cable networks, or from public or private national broadcasters? The news media was once seen as a public service even by those for-profit networks like ABC, NBC and CBS in the United States, and CTV, Global, and CBC in Canada. It’s likely the same in other countries as well where the news was never meant to turn a profit. But that has surely changed with all forms of news media today generating more than $150 billion USD annually.

Where we once saw broadcast news as largely devoid of bias (of course it never has been) today we see starkly different realities portrayed by national and cable news networks. Opinion content interlaced into the facts of a breaking story muddy the waters. If a story doesn’t fit the ideology of the broadcaster it doesn’t get aired. So the news today is more about shaping stories to fit primary viewing audiences that the broadcasters have I identified as viewers and listeners.

But in a world of a trillion sensors and billions of wireless and wired access points, news in the Spatial Web is likely to be far different than the picture I have painted above. Smart sensors may become the way we learn about a breaking story. AI-collected information combined with on the spot crowdsourced reporters, like the news stringers of the past, may become the way we experience journalism. The threat to ideologically-based news broadcasters when news sourcing becomes democratized by Web 3.0 and other disruptive technologies like the blockchain and virtual reality, will make for an entirely different individual experience.

Mesh networks will flower in the world of Web 3.0. That means hundreds or thousands of people with smart devices will be able to form a common local network connection that could be a neighbourhood or an entire city and share their own news. Will this make for more objective journalism? Think about Web 3.0 facilitating crowdsourced news during a weather or other physical event like an earthquake. Because smart devices will be able to interconnect in localities even in the absence of wired data and communication nodes, on-site reporting will be stark and immediate. It will be able to help first responders to go where they are needed immediately. Or in a protest similar to what broke out in many Arab countries during the so-called Arab Spring, on the spot video and reporting will give audiences a never seen before perspective on the unfolding story.

Add virtual and augmented reality glasses to the mix and viewers will be able to identify physical objects, learn background on the history, all while watching the news unfold in real time. For the viewer, it means becoming a virtual participant of the events, a powerful educational experience. Self-learning about the news could achieve a more civically engaged population, ready to vote in the next election cycle because people will know what’s going on and no longer will be dependent on what their news media feed delivers to them.

Peter Diamandis, the futurist, writes, “The future promises an era in which news is verified and balanced; wherein public ledgers, AI and new web interfaces bring you into the action and respect your intelligence — not manipulate your ignorance.”