Final Blog

Theme3
Every form of technology that's become digital has also been transformed by its users/audience. Explain how at least three "old" media ( Books, tv, film, radio, newspapers) have adapted to new digital media forms, and how they have been changed by the process of becoming digital. Also describe the ways people use and change digitized media as consumers. Show some examples on your blog. Which "old" media do you think have promising futures in digital form, and which do you expect will die out soon? Support your answer with good arguments.

As obvious as it is that media changes the way people think and interact, people have also changed media itself. Besides being physically responsible for technology itself, we as humans also determine what becomes popular and what gets expanded on and what falls by the wayside. We have a huge impact on media and examples such as books, radio, TV, and movies have all come as far as they have because of the human influence. We really determine just how advanced a certain media can and will become.

Books and literature have been around from the beginning of time. Everything from ancient history all the way up to the present has been recorded in books. In recent times there has been much less of an emphasis on books due to the decreasing popularity of stopping and reading a book. So, of course, books went digital. New technologies such as Kindle and the IPad and IPhone allow countless numbers of books to be stored and read on handheld electronic devices. While the text and content are the same, the experience is very different. People can personalize their reading experience by performing operations such as zooming in or highlighting the text and according to author Ann Kirschner these features are changing reading for the better. In her podcast “For the Love of Reading” Kirschner attempts to read a book using four different mediums. The simple fact that a Charles Dickens classic such as Little Dorritt can be read four different ways really does show how far media has come in relation to books. Consumers are definitely to blame for this shaping the advancement of literature into another electronic genre. Not many people have the patience or time to read as they used to and technological developers took advantage of this. Because no one wanted to read traditionally, a more digitized way of reading was created. We as humans have shaped reading into an easier more effortless form through technology and I believe this new form will continue to still grow.

From books to E-books.

The radio is another classic form of media that has been around for ages. The radio was so evolutionary at its start that people had actually become almost like a huge conforming blob because of it. An example of this is found in the widespread panic that occurred due to a reading of Orson Well’s “War of the Worlds”. The next day there was an article in the New York Times, “Radio Listeners Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact,” that analyzed how the radio had really linked everyone together and caused this panic. The radio has also been manipulated by people from its very beginning. It has added and even changed forms and frequencies. Radio started as having just one frequency, AM, but soon people altered this by adding the FM frequency and eventually culminating in a totally new form, satellite radio. Besides the technological advances the radio has experience, there was an even bigger advancement that somewhat strayed from the actual radio.

This advancement was much more visual and is now known as the television, and though the radio was immensely popular in its day, there still is no comparison to America’s most persistent and influential medium. TV is present everywhere, there are a very miniscule amount of homes that do not own at least one TV and in most of the homes the TV is on 24/7. In class we learned how TV programs are shaped by popularity and how advertisers try to manipulate TV for their own uses. As in the other mediums, TV has also been shaped by the public. We create the shows, and each shows success depends on how we perceive it. If a show is not popular advertisers will not want to buy up commercial space, therefore the show will not make money. Besides this direct effect people have on TV, the advancements in TV also shape this popular technology. The invention of High Definition has made watching TV so much more enjoyable and exciting because of the crystal clear picture. Websites such as Hulu and the option of DVR have even eliminated the need for commercials and have also transformed how people watch TV. The TV experience is now much more customized and allows each individual to watch only what they want. In the future it is believed that there will not really be a need for commercials and to combat this Mittell mentions in The Velvet Trap that advertisers will now try to place their products in the actual shows themselves, because the viewing of commercials has dramatically reduced. People have once again influenced this medium and it was forced to adapt. The TV is a staple however and I don’t see TV distorting in the years to come as some other mediums have, I think it will only advance.

We are now in a shift, “from book fluency to screen fluency,” as Kevin Kelly states in his article, Becoming Screen Literate and movies are a huge part of this shift. Kelly notes that it seems that everywhere we turn movies and advertisements for movies are there. Once going to the movies was a novelty, something that was an adventure and experience and now it has become commonplace and almost boring. Movies seem to have lost most of their charm and popularity and because of this decrease in attention, the movie industry has had to adapt. Movies have become much more technologically advanced, with aspects like amazing special effects, 3-D elements, and famous actors and actresses starring in every role. People have had a major effect on the movie industry because many people simply just do not go anymore. With new developments like Netflix and Movies on Demand, the movie theater is in even more trouble. Netflix and On Demand allow people to order up a movie and have it either mailed to them or sent directly to their TV. If watching a movie is this easy, there doesn’t seem to be a need to actually go out to the movies at all. This new digitized form of this older medium has become extremely popular and very successful as far as technological advancements go. It will be interesting to see how far this new ‘screen fluent’ generation takes movies in the future.

Though many “old” media forms have become digital and transformed into new media forms, the older media has attempted to keep its integrity as best it can. People are determined to allow these old media to advance but not to the point where it is unrecognizable. As people shape the development of new media more and more, we can only hope the old media still retains some of what made it that omnipresent force it started out as.