OVER AT CORANTE, Ernest Miller interviews Jeff Jarvis on the future of media:

* Control: I say the most revolutionary invention in media was not the Gutenberg press but the remote control. It and the cable box, the VCR, and the TiVo enabled us to control consumption of media — and we took advantage of that. Bad TV died; good TV rose in the ratings; HBO was born; TV exploded; TV improved — thanks to the good taste and newfound control of the American public.

* Creation: Now come tools that let us create media: blogging software (which is merely history’s cheapest easiest publishing tool connected to history’s best distribution network) and all those neat things that come with Macs today. They allow us to make text, photo, audio, and video media. And what we make has value. Jonathan Miller, head of AOL, told me that 60-70 percent of the time spent on his service is spent with content created by his audience. That’s where the money is.

Read the whole thing. He’s probably right that TV’s better overall — though I think that Gilligan’s Island beats Survivor: Vanuatu any day.