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| "Universal Remote" |
This is by far one of my favorite readings so far this semester. It really discusses a lot of the things I am interested in, but was unaware of how to articulate them. This book has begun to give me a language to discuss the convergence of culture across multiple media platforms. One of the things that hit me while reading this, was the selection about the "universal remote" and how that, for the longest time, was the future of technology. Pretty soon we would have one little device that would do everything for us. This was partly based on science fiction movies and other futuristic films that depicted people using such technology. I believe it also emerged out of the fear of what technology could do. "Wow this thing can do everything! Next thing you know it will park my car for me!" Which ironically enough is now a common feature among luxury cars. The author states that this book is about, "the relationship between three things - media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence." The first part, convergence, is a term that describes this "universal remote". However we have seen that this convergence has happened in quite a different manner than science-fiction originally predicted. There is no universal remote, no single box or device that does everything you want for you. Instead we have seen a divergence of technology platforms. Just in the past couple of years, the tablet, an entirely new form of technology has emerged. A few years before the tablet, ereaders were developed and have been growing in popularity ever since. People have more devices than they know what to do with. Instead we have seen a convergence of media and content across these devices. You can now read a book on your phone and watch a movie on your tablet. The content has, and continues to, span across all devices. "What we are now seeing is the hardware diverging while the content converges..."Therefore this "universal remote" just does not exist, "Part of what makes the black box concept a fallacy is that it reduces media change to technological change and stripes aside the cultural levels we are considering here." There is something bigger than technology at stake and so many companies forget that fact. I think it is evident in companies advertisements. Way to often companies focus on the "technology" of a device and forget about the usability of the device. What are people actually going to do with your device? What CONTENT are they going to interact with and how? No how big is the processor, consumers don't care about that. (well most of them don't) Because, "convergence, as we can see, is both a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottom-up consumer-driven process.
I am very excited to continue to read this text. (mainly because there is a chapter on harry potter ;-)). I think the other summarizes it best towards the end of this first portion, "convergence culture represents a shift in the ways we thinking about our relations to media, that we are making that shift first through our relations with popular culture, but that the skills we acquire through play may have implications for how we learn, work, participate in the political process, and connect with other people around the world."
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