Experts debate quality of social media content at Dubai summit

Delegates at the 'Innovation in media industry' session on the last day of 2015 Knowledge Summit in Dubai. - Supplied photo

Innovation and technology are rapidly changing the face of modern filmmaking, media production and medical science, according to experts at the 2015 Knowledge Summit in Dubai.
David Bennet, chief development officer of the National Geographic Society, noted that the proliferation of small, high-quality cameras have allowed the world to get a glimpse of things that were not possible 10 years ago.
"We all started out with these tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment, even million dollars of cameras," he said. "Now, with a GoPro that costs a few hundred Euros and can be edited on an iPad, we can give a backpack to a photographer, videographer or an explorer and they can come back with high-quality content you could never get before.
"We've seen videos of someone in a canoe over a waterfall or on top of a building or on a trapeze. Those are images you could never have taken with traditional technology."
Bennet said social media platforms such as Instagram have also vastly increased the potential reach of National Geographic and other media organisations.
"There are 40 billion photographs on Instagram. We've taken more photographs as a people in the last 18 months than we took since the invention in the camera ... There are 65 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every hour," he said.
But another panelist, Nayla Al Khaja, an Emirati film director, screenwriter and producer, said she worried that the ease at which content can be produced and widely distributed is reducing the quality of the material itself, particularly with regards to filmmaking.
"What concerns me is how content is being diluted. Everyone out there has so much access to equipment that can shoot really fast, and you get 10- or 15-second clips for Instagram," she said. "What happens is that quality works can go down in their rhythm and aesthetic value. "There are a lot of pros and cons in innovation. Obviously ... anyone can create a film, but not anyone can create a good story.... A lot of people are becoming famous because of the process. I'm not sure they're becoming famous because of the content."
The Knowledge Summit ended on Wednesday with a speech by Jason Luis Silva, a futurist who has created a series of popular of short films titled Shots of Awe, which explores the future of technology's role in humanity.
Silva said rapid advances in biotechnology might even change the way the human body functions. "Biotechnology means mastering the information processes of technology, because biology is software, and code. DNA is a language, and we can now start to write and edit and script that language.
"Just like you download the new iOS for your iPhone, we're going to be able to download new software for our genes," he said.
bernd@khaleejtimes.com

• Dubai