Since the late 1980’s, we’ve been hearing about the coming “convergence” of existing media with emerging media. From Hypercard hype, to George Gilder’s groundbreaking treatise on new media, Life Beyond Television, to the present day hype fest surrounding convergence, broadband, interactive, and other flavor of the month terms, there has been a hope and promise of media one day “bridging the proscenium” of the broadcast model and delivering true narrowcast content. Until very recently, this promise has fallen flat on its face when it comes to actual delivery.
The landscape is littered with the corpses of abandoned interactive T.V., integrated “tele-puter”, and on demand media projects.
Is it any wonder that interactive media professionals, investors, and consumers alike are jaded to the near quarterly output of the mainstream medias “next biggest thing? However, media professionals should not let the media’s proclivity to drive terms and concepts into the ground cause them to lose sight of the fact that a lot of these ideas are fundamentally good, potentially profitable, and moreover, almost certainly ripe with the potential of changing the way we communicate with each other, receive and process information and entertainment, and by extrapolation, view and relate to the world around us.
Looks interesting… also interesting is Mightywords where one can publich papers like this.