Television and hyperdistribution

This week we are talking about television and how the digital world is effecting the world of television. One of the key things which has come up is the idea of the "tyranny of digital distance" which was presented by Tama Leaver in his paper Watching Battlestar Galactica in Australia and the tyranny of digital distance.

Media diary: A day in my media life

With a new unit comes a new task, and this week I have spent one 24 hour period tracking my media consumption.

Woke up and checked my iPhone to see it was 7.15am. Late. Decided I would drive to work instead of taking the bus as usual. Finally got on the road at 7.45am which meant I hit traffic. Over the course of the next 75 minutes I listed to the radio while passing various billboards, buses and bus shelters covered with banal advertising. My only highlight was catching some tracks of the new Girl Talk album "All Day".

Convergence

A new study period for OUA has kicked off and again I am in the thick of it. This time round it's Web207 Web Media with a particular focus on media convergence. Wikipedia defines media convergence not only as a technological change, but a shift in industrial, social and cultural paradigms as described by Henry Jenkins in his book "Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide;

"the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences."

For me one of the best examples of media convergence over the last 10 years has been that of the evolution of the mobile phone. Once a device for making calls and sending messages, the phone has seen the inclusion of cameras, media players, satellite tracking and web browsing. At each stage we have seen both industry and society change and shift as devices have become capable of replacing individual devices with one converged media device.

Now with the advent of smartphones and their range of apps allowing us to do even more than we ever imagined,  we are again seeing a shift within industry and society as the portability of our phones converges with the power and usefulness of our home computers.

So where will this process of media convergence lead us, and what does it mean for the industries it impacts, are just a couple of questions I hope to find answers to over the coming weeks. In the mean time, if you have some thoughts or ideas on these questions then feel free to share them below.