Never before in human history has so much information been available to so many people. But that doesn’t make our lives any better, unless we know what to do with it.
There’s a whole new specialty in journalism these days, which involves sifting through millions of pieces of data to find needles in haystacks. That’s because freedom of information, when there is too much of it, becomes the same as obfuscation. There is simply too much to digest.
I bring this up because I was overwhelmed by the 10-hour video stream presented from backstage at Covent Garden on Monday.
One of the world’s great opera houses flung open its stage doors for an entire day, allowing us a reasonably candid view of what it takes to make an evening of opera (Harrison Birtwistle’s The Minotaur) happen.
That’s fabulous. It’s beautifully done. But who has 10 hours to spare, and how many individuals would be interested in every bit of detail?
Is this really the best way to make a great, living artform more accessible? I would expect that, say, a series of two-dozen, 5-minute webisodes would achieve the same transparency, but in a format anyone can check out anytime, even while riding the streetcar to work.
You can stream it on demand at the Guardian’s website here. Let me know what you think.
John Terauds