Brian Graden's Interview with Joseph Gordon-Levitt Part 8
This interview with Brian Graden and Joseph Gordon-Levitt was conducted at the 2015 ProMax Conference. Content has been edited for clarity. See part seven here.
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If I took away one thing from everything I read in advance of today, it seems that finding a way to be as authentic as Mountain Dew or Joe or whomever, is the absolute key to using new media.
Last question. I know you’ve built communities and engagement which I know is a top priority for many people here, and I read something that said, “It really isn’t about talking to the audience anymore, it’s about getting them to talk to you” and that’s something I think that HitRecord has done beautifully. For all of us, do you have any thoughts or takeaways today?
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
I would add on to what you just said. If what it has to be is not only me talking to an audience or an audience talking to me, but it has to be an interchange. If all you’re gonna do is be like, “Hey, give us your content, we’re not giving you anything,” this doesn’t feel like a conversation to me. I would really think that media is going to become something more like a conversation because that’s really the history of human communication, not people sitting on a couch just listening every night. I don’t know how really natural that is, but that’s been sort of imposed on us just by virtue of the way that technology works for the last hundred years or so.
In older times people would gather around and tell stories at the tavern or around the fire and it’s not like everyone gathered around the fire at this event. It was all just sitting there listening while one person told the story. I don’t imagine that’s probably what happened, it was probably lots of people all pitching in and yeah, someone might take the mic so to speak and tell a part of the story, but someone else would be like, “No that’s not how it happened, don’t you remember blah blah blah,” and then someone else would be like “I heard that blah blah blah,” and that’s how stories get told. That’s how human communication naturally happens and what’s cool is that our internet technology is facilitating that again. I think at this point the technology is sort of ahead of the culture because we’re used to being consumers of the media more than being participants.
I know your parents as well as your brother Daniel, who were on the site with you had a collaborative worldview that very much informs I think everything you’re trying to do.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Yeah, that’s right. My parents are lefties, or the kind of people who believe that it’s good to have everybody rather than just a few haves and have nots, and that kind of thing and the truth about broadcast media is that it’s a very stratified system where there’s a few haves. You could say a sort of exclusive clique of a media industry who makes everything, and then everyone else in the world has to sit and watch it. I’m not sure that that’s really the healthiest thing for us as a human race, and I’m really excited to be alive right now where the technology is facilitating a new way for media to work. It’s sort of on us the human being to figure out how to use that technology in a way that really is conversant and allows more and more people to participate.
That seems like a great place to end it. Thank you, Joe, very much and thanks all of you guys.