A certain coterie of metropolitan types, who probably rarely stepped beyond the M25, thought the flagship was bound to sink if it was sited anywhere beyond spitting distance of Soho, never mind 200 miles up the M1 then left and onward for another 20 minutes.

The decision might have been seen as maverick or bonkers by some, but it was based on sound principles and it has paid off. From the moment its doors opened, the NMPFT proved a crowd-pleaser, a cultural jewel to add to Yorkshire's crown, and a great new reason to visit Bradford, with many visitors staying long enough to find out what else the city had to offer.

Curators at the NMPFT – more recently renamed as the National Media Museum in deference to the many different media now used today – have regularly updated its world-class collections to reflect the fast evolution of the media in the past, but also demonstrate state-of-the art technology and look to how we might view the world and tell its stories in the future.

The mixture of sepia and space age and so much in between is very much part of the thrill of the place, which attracts a steady 750,000 visitors a year and also hosts a highly-regarded annual film festival.

Looking back 25 years for a moment, it's difficult to wrap one's head around how few TV channels we could watch back then in the purely analogue days, how most of us did not yet have a box in the corner that could record programmes while we were at work or in the pub, and – is this the most shocking? – how we lived in a world without mobile phones.

Anyone who did was probably working in the Armed Forces, and needed a paratrooper's biceps to carry the contraption whose weight and appearance resembled a car battery.

We still took our roll of film to be processed at the chemist. TV news programmes still had some content shot on separate reels of sound and film that had to be synchronised after being marked with a white pencil. Radio reception could be extremely dodgy in some coastal areas or deep valleys. Email was a thing unknown to all but Silicon Valley dwellers

Living as we are in the middle of an age dominated by technology, whether in the kitchen, the laboratory or the TV studio, we could mistakenly think we've already seen the biggest step changes. Things surely can't continue to evolve at the head-spinning rate we've experienced in the last 25 years?

But why not, and what does all this change mean, now that we all in many senses "own" the media, can manipulate material from many sources, and put our own lives and feelings into the ether for others to consume via the world wide web, as well as virtually experiencing the lives of others across the globe?

These questions and many others will be considered on October 18 in Bradford, when the NMM hosts, as part of its 25th birthday celebrations, a conference called Mediafest.

A day dedicated to exploring how society has consumed, created and participated in the media over a quarter of a century, the conference will include workshops, as well as a series of talks by UK media industry figures.

Up for discussion, among other themes, will be the changing climate of journalism, the future of digital technology, children's TV, cyber-psychology and what's next for the world of radio. Journalist and broadcaster Janet Street-Porter will also discuss her own colourful part in and consumption of the media.

"As a museum our biggest challenge is to keep on top of subjects that are changing so rapidly," says the head of the NMM, Colin Philpott. "We're about the present as well as the past, about events as well as 'stuff' in galleries.

"Keeping abreast of trends and showcasing the new is really important – whether we're talking about the user-friendliness of the BBC iPlayer or demonstrating how media content is no longer simply in the hands of producers."

One of the other speakers at Mediafest will be Ajaz Ahmed, co-founder of Leeds-based Freeserve, the internet service provider started in 1998 to offer easy and affordable web access, helping many people to get online for the first time. Freeserve attracted over 1.3 million users and was floated on the stock market in 1999, before being bought by Wanadoo the following year for £1.65bn. With the help of his digitally-enhanced crystal ball, Ahmed, who is from Huddersfield, has the inside track on the Next Big Thing in communications.

It's called Wimax, a technology available from next year that provides for wireless transmission of data via desktop or laptop computer or mobile phone. It will provide high-speed broadband without the need for cables, and will be accessible from wherever you are.

Along with that, and arriving somewhere near you very soon, will come The Cloud, a Google/Yahoo/Microsoft facility for centrally storing data, which you can log on and tap into at any time from anywhere.

From a meeting in Hong Kong or a cyber-café on your holidays you'll be able to move documents or pictures between locations by logging on from afar to The Cloud, and sending your data onward from there. The price will be "competitive" and anyway, the convenience will outweigh the cost, says Ahmed.

"Another exciting development coming along is SAAS, or Software As A Service, " he says. "At the moment, if you want to create Powerpoint presentations or spread sheets, you have to buy software and install it on your computer. In the future, you will be able to access in a web browser wherever you are, rather than only being able to access the software on your 'home' computer. It will be available on a one-off, monthly or annual subscription."

So, in other words, as the world continues to shrink and we bestride the continents wirelessly, technology is driving us on at a gallop, enabling dazzling feats of immediacy and the ability to work, work, work, 24/7. There will be no escape for the weak.

"That's true," says Ahmed. "But the greater the ability to communicate and work wherever, whenever, the greater the discipline we will need to switch off and not allow ourselves to be ruled by it."

All of the wizardry described above might sound like good news for the business consumer; the more obvious glad tidings for the ordinary user, who simply likes to dabble in these innovations, is that (according to Ahmed) mobile phones will include all of the technologies in their price plans, but bills are likely to go down.

Media and political commentator and journalist Charlie Beckett, who will give the keynote speech at Mediafest, says that many journalists and others in the media are both excited by and frightened of the rapidly-changing face of new media and the way ownership is passing over to ordinary people.

"New media, the digital stuff, is unstoppable and fun. It works for people. Comment forums and blogging are everywhere; at the same time, journalists are worried about their jobs because people are no longer necessarily getting their news from old-style mainstream newsrooms.

"There are about 150 million bloggers on the web, and not all are geniuses. But even if you discount 90 per cent of them as rubbish, that still leaves 1.5 million who are saying something worthwhile and it's going global. That's wonderful, really."

In Beckett's view, all this means that the journalist's role is changing, and we are needed more and more to point consumers in the direction of (and discuss) the quality information on the web.

One of his own simple pleasures – when he's not blogging about politics or the shape of the media – lies in perusing the evolution of sites such as mumsnet.com, which has exploded quickly from origins in parents exchanging tips to social networking, serious conversational forums and shopping. "They didn't sit down and plan it as a product, it just evolved and there's a great deal of information, analysis and support on there, responding to how people wanted to use it. This couldn't have happened a few years ago; there are enough people of all ages online now to have made it happen."

Beckett glories in the cornucopia of interests reflected on the internet. Embracing everything from sites plotting the movements of rare birds to small communities talking to each other, he says the web potentially gives everyone a voice. In his book Super Media, published this year, he argues that journalists should embrace the new element of their job, that of linking people to the best of the information that's "out there", and stop worrying that the web spells out the death of serious journalism.

"People are reading more books than ever, including more fiction, because books are cheaper to print than ever. We're generally better educated than ever, and people are interested in many things at the same time (Big Brother/Jane Austen/The New Statesman), so individuals aren't more difficult to pigeonhole than they were. There's no evidence that people are less interested in the serious stuff."

Mediafest – Saturday, October 18, 10am to 6pm, National Media Museum, Bradford

Box office: 0870 7010200 www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk