Technology has made lots of jobs obsolete over the years. Remember telephone operators?
Back in the day, TV photojournalists routinely went out on stories with a sound person and even a lighting tech. The days of the three-person crew are long over.
Now, some video editors may become obsolete. New technology that can automatically transcribe voice tracks has helped to make raw video more searchable online. Now MSNBC tells Beet.tv that its automated voice indexing systems can create edited videos with “minimum human intervention.”
Handing off some editing duties to a machine could be a good thing. It’s no fun to cut SOTs, right? But it could mean that some jobs will be eliminated. Inevitable, perhaps, but not a happy thought for anyone now making their living as an editor.
