Hi, I’m Jay Adelson, CEO of the social content website Digg. That’s Digg with two Gs.

I’ve been invited to talk about ideas, springing from the internet, that are changing the world – no pressure there or anything. Anyway, this piece is called the democratisation of information. But before I get started, I want to ask you to think about how most of us traditionally learn about the world around us – or at least how we did up until very recently. For example, you’ve probably had the experience of discovering a cool new song that you heard on the radio, and you probably learn about the news and events of the day, at least in part, from newspapers or local TV programmes or internet news sites. In these instances a person, or a small group of people, such as an editor, or a radio personality, make decisions about what’s important, interesting or entertaining on our behalf. They often do a great job of it, considering the constraints. Actually, until the internet, this was the only way. News editors had to make such judgments because space in newspapers and time in a television newscast were limited. The internet, of course, changes everything.

The internet has made information abundant and accessible to anyone with a computer or mobile phone. There’s virtually no time or space limit like you find in print or broadcast media, beyond our own attention spans and ability to make use of all the content and information available to us. And anyone can produce and distribute content for virtually no cost. Crazy as it sounds, I recently read that a terabyte of data is added to the internet every day.

Clearly the content is out there and the means to get to it, but how do you find it? The unlimited volume and dynamically changing amount of information on the internet often leaves people overwhelmed by their inability to locate or prioritise new content – whether it’s an article, a song, a video or whatever – that’s relevant to them. This is exacerbated by the proliferation of blogs and other sites that offer a wealth of content, but aren’t easily organised, searched or prioritised. With limited time, people typically surf through or aggregate content from a number of websites, or rely upon news and other sites where content is prioritised for them by editors that dictate what content is relevant. At the same time, there’s a groundswell of interest among internet users in actively contributing to the internet content and, perhaps more importantly, influencing the way information is viewed by others. While most people are passive viewers of information as it’s presented by the editorial filters of websites, blogs and news organisations, internet users are increasingly participating in the kind of digital democracy the internet enables. Relatively new concepts such as the social graph, social networking, citizen journalism and participatory media have emerged that enable people to connect and interact online in entirely new and interesting ways, as well as to sift through the abundance of stuff on the web. Many of these new communication models and mechanisms leverage community participation, or harness the collective ‘wisdom of crowds’ to help prioritise and summarise it all.

So all these forces that I’ve just described are dramatically changing our relationship with news, information, entertainment, and all forms of content. The access to incomprehensible amounts of content and information made possible by the internet, the growing desire of the internet community to participate in deciding what content is most relevant, and the recent emergence of new technologies and communication models are coalescing and moving us inexorably towards the democratisation of information. Ultimately, this shift is levelling the playing field in creating a more vibrant marketplace for content and ideas to everyone’s benefit.

So, what exactly does ‘democratisation of information’ mean? Just like in a democratic society, the democratisation of information means that content and information, from news stories to videos to music, get prioritised by the collective vote of the internet community. I think of democratisation of information to mean that every bit of information or content on the web has the same opportunity for exposure or discovery as every other piece of content. Thus, for example, an obscure blog or podcast has the same chance of exposure as a Wall Street Journal article. I also take the democratisation of information to mean that everyone can have a voice in what is deemed important or relevant or entertaining, versus only a few people making those decisions on our behalf and filtering what we know about the world through their own biases and view of how things should be.

I’m sure many of you are familiar with the video-sharing site YouTube. It’s one example of how the internet democratises information. Anyone can create and post videos to YouTube, and any video – from a home-made video made by a couple of teenagers to a high-production value video created by a marketing firm from a viral campaign – has the same chance of becoming popular. By empowering internet users to make these choices, the democratisation of information is impacting existing institutions such as traditional news and entertainment media, periodicals, review methodologies, and product or service purchase patterns by enabling equal opportunity of exposure, and finally delivering on the promise of a media that reflects the actual interest of the public.

The democratisation of information also makes it possible for citizen journalists to reach new and broader audiences. This has made it possible for breaking news to reach much larger audiences and spread quicker. This raw content, available on the internet, can quickly move up the hierarchy long before newsroom editorial cycles can process and publish news. For example, stories on the iPod nano announcement or photos of the London Underground terrorist bombings, reports about the Virginia Tech shootings – they spread on the internet by ordinary people who happened to be near the scenes, faster, and with more unfiltered information than traditional newsrooms were able to publish or broadcast. The more methodical, traditional reporting joined the conversation later, when each medium supported it.

Now, please don’t get me wrong: this does not mean the end of traditional newsgathering. In fact just the opposite is true. The newsgathering, research and fact-checking functions journalists provide are vital to a highly functioning society. As citizens, we develop relationships with journalists and editors and depend on them for consistency and credibility. In addition, in a world where information is democratised, journalists are no longer hindered by an older model where decisions about what gets reported and what doesn’t are made just by a few editors. If the same reporter’s story is compelling and well written, it will get discovered. The same is true for other content creators, such as musicians, authors, film directors, photographers, and so forth.

So here’s an example of the power of democratised information as it relates to news. This past summer Kevin Rose, Digg’s founder, and I, met up with a group of foreign journalists. Most of these journalists were from developing countries, and many were from war-torn regions. We had this great discussion about how the democratisation of media might impact them and their countries. In a private side conversation, one of the journalists told me about an event that happened in his country not too long ago, and it perfectly illustrates the benefits of democratised information. In his country the government has historically heavily influenced the headlines. While attending a government speech, hundreds of people – perhaps more – had shown up to protest the new policies being presented. What first began as shouting escalated to a situation that made it impossible for the speaker to continue with his presentation. As the story goes, suddenly and without warning riot police in full gear showed up and began arresting the protestors. There was some resistance, protestors were beaten, dragged and gassed. The next day the story that appeared in the local newspaper indicated that the protest was very small and peaceful, but as it turned out other first-hand accounts and some amateur photos of the events that day made it onto the internet, and some of these accounts were linked, and ended up being shared via a large, prominent social network, and as many citizens of this country had internet access the people ensured the story was published.

So as with political democracies, democratising information has its share of challenges. There’s no question it’s imperfect. Democracies – they’re messy, and there will always be people who try to manipulate the system similar to ballot box stuffing. Fortunately there are tried and tested ways to detect and stop this activity online. Also, unlike a political democracy, it’s possible to aggregate the view of millions, without the compromise of elected representation, because the computers and algorithms can scale to any size.

The democratisation of information can touch upon virtually every aspect of our daily lives. By sharing and elevating content in new ways people can discover new films or great music they otherwise wouldn’t have known about, and ultimately be exposed to more and more diverse ideas and points of view. However, in order for this idea to reach its full potential, as with any democratic process, there needs to be active participation by a large, diverse community of people. The internet is merely the platform.

So, the next time you see a really interesting news story, or a hilarious video, let the world know that you think it’s important. Cast your vote, email that link, write that blog entry, share it on your social network, SMS it, Twitter it, Pounce it, whatever – the more you participate, the louder your voice, and the closer we get to a media that truly reflects our interests.