If Edinburgh Festival fully embraces internet age, something truly great can happen – Scotsman comment

A chess teacher gives a talk to a club in the American Midwest watched by an audience of 1.9 million people. A university professor gives a lecture on early medieval history to a class of more than 800,000 students.

Nick Barley, of Edinburgh International Book Festival Programme, has called for the city's festivals to be hybrid events that appeal to both in-person and online audiences around the world (Picture: Lisa Ferguson)

Life in the internet age can sound fantastical to those who grew up before it dawned.

There are still some who have failed to grasp just how revolutionary a technology it is, but one of the few silver linings of the Covid pandemic has been that it has forced us to embrace the online world as never before.

Now the director of Edinburgh International Book Festival, Nick Barley, has called for Scotland’s capital to become the “world’s leading hybrid festival city”, in which people are able to watch talks and shows both in person and online.

“We've still got to work out what that means – but it has to work for the citizens of Edinburgh, it has to work for visitors to the city and it has to work for people watching online, in Sydney, Seattle and Singapore,” he said.

Some might suggest this should have been done some time ago. Jonathan Schrantz’s discussion of the Urusov gambit at the St Louis Chess Club was uploaded to YouTube in May 2016. Professor Paul Freedman’s lecture on Rome's Greatness and First Crises at Yale University dates back to April 2012.

This is far from what is known as internet ‘clickbait’. The Edinburgh Festival, in all its forms, is full of a myriad of just-as-fascinating discussions and performances. Taking it out to the world really can be the start of something truly great.

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