Right now, the timeline doesn’t just move quickly. It thinks back. It adapts. It anticipates. It generates. And it does all of that at a tempo no human nervous system can match.

That shift has a nasty side-effect: we start confusing pace for truth. When media arrives faster than we can process it, we lean on shortcuts – vibes, trust, repetition, “I saw it everywhere so it must be real”. That was already a problem in the post-social era. In the post-AI era, it’s a structural chaos.

And if you work in media, it’s not abstract – it’s your job. Your workflow. Your audience relationship. Your legal risk. Your credibility. Your ability to make something that’s not just content sludge. (People were making sludge way before AI arrived after all!)

The wrong questions keep winning

A lot of the public conversation is still stuck on the same stale prompts: “Is it AI?” and “Will it take jobs?” They’re understandable, but they’re also limited. They keep us in reactive mode, arguing about labels while the machinery changes underneath us.

At AI Cafe V7.0 in Manchester, Krishna Stott (Bellyfeel) and Phil Birchenall (Diagonal Thinking) are bringing a lightning talk called “The New Media Literacy: How to Think When the Tools Think Back” – and the whole point is that we need better questions than the ones we’ve been recycling for a decade.

Not “is it AI?” – but questions for right now.

A media literacy that isn’t just how to spot a deepfake or check a source, but how to understand the behaviour of tools that can generate, remix, and persuade at machine speed – and how audiences react to that.

This talk is not anti-tech. It’s anti-confusion.

AI Cafe isn’t about arriving with neat answers. It’s about showing up and realising the questions have changed – and that your instincts (whether excited, angry, or exhausted) can be sharpened into something useful.

AI Cafe V7.0 is at RNCM Bar and Cafe, Manchester, on Wednesday 28 January 2026, starting 6:00pm. (tickets)

If you work in media, teach it, study it, or just feel slightly battered by the pace of the feed, this is a good room to be in. Expect to come with questions – and leave with better ones.