Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Convergence of Media

I do not think that the convergence of media onto one medium is a bad thing at all. I do not believe that this convergence is making us less intelligent either. Throughout history, people have always sought to make technologies readily available to them. Examples of this would be buying a television set for the family, gathering around the radio, opening up libraries, and reading newspapers. Radio and television used to be purely entertainment technologies, until news stations opened up on both of those mediums. Though smaller than the internet, news companies opening up on those mediums is a form of convergence.

The only difference between then and today, is that now all of our media is in one place. This one place is the internet. Society has never been able to access this much information so fast and easily, so naturally more and more people switch to this new converged form of media. Unfortunately, because of this other mediums are suffering if they are separated from the internet. Aside from users listening to the radio in cars, it is rare to see them listen to it in their homes when they can pull up Youtube.com on their laptops and play whatever song they want from their iTunes or other media player. It is unfortunate that many media will soon become relics like the home radio, libraries, and newspapers, but it is a sign of progress that they are replaced by more encompassing media. The internet will eventually take over television as well, but its decline will be more slow than the more outdated media such as the internet or the radio.

No comments:

Post a Comment