The digital paradigm shift is creating disruption across numerous industries, and none so vividly and remarkably as that of media and its ubiquitous platforms of engagement and play. These rapid transformations may challenge many as the speed of change supersedes the ensuing critical questions we have about ethics, transparency and the infinitely sexy world of big data, and many others. But as we step back, pull out and take a wide pan of society today, it is clear that convergence is a two-edged sword: That for each compromise of our privacy and stormy debate on ethics, there is an equally harrowing story about those rescued from death; for each of our first world problems of digital obsession, there are thousands of communities transformed by knowledge and experience through their digital connections; and that for all the fear we exhibit in the West about robots and AI, the fear some Sith Lord lies awake in the darknet, we have given people a candle in that darkness, too. Tools to gather evidence of mass genocide live as it unfolds, voices of regimes that used to be silent, the unleashing of a creative syncopation onto a digital canvas that reinvents the concept of engagement and yet, in contrarian fashion, has given birth to a movement inspired by consciousness, wisdom and even paganism.
