"New icons achieve scale so fast [...] linking us together and enabling us to do the work of creation and production ourselves" Flickr/Freestocks Some rights reserved
The BBC was created in a very different era. Back then, broadcasting was itself a democratising concept: the idea that everyone in the country might have access to information, education and entertainment opened up whole new horizons for our society. Paternalistic though it undoubtedly was, it was the kind of paternalism we needed. Power was so concentrated in the hands of a few that the BBC represented a major, almost revolutionary concession. It rightly became a global icon of what was then a new way of thinking.
Now though, times have changed. In every sector, and across the world, we are seeing a new era of democratisation, a new story of society, even a new kind of power. And we have new icons to match. Airbnb is perhaps the best example: founded only in 2008, it has over a million rooms in 192 countries. Hilton, by contrast, has taken nearly a century to broach half a million in around 80 countries. Such new icons achieve scale so fast by operating as platforms not broadcasters, linking us together and enabling us to do the work of creation and production ourselves, not doing it for us and projecting out at us. If that creates a window for disruption in hospitality (of all things), you can be sure the same is true of the media.
