Week 6.1 - I wouldn’t say it was “convergence” but impatience.

I wouldn’t say it was “convergence” but impatience. There was a demand for everything to be accessible. Everywhere because our generation wanted it that way, “I can’t be bothered to walk to my commodore 64 to send an email, hey IT companies? Do you reckon you could make my commodore more portable?”

Cue Osborne 1

“eh. Too big”

Cue IBM 5100

And so on and so forth. It still hasn’t stopped. My point is that once humans get bored of how cool the new “thing” is they’ll ask for more, with something a little different. Apple knows this, with their planned obsolescence strategy, where they create a product that has things deliberately left out of it (like flash, grrr) so consumers will be the upgrade (this also pumps out products faster because Apple don’t have to wait to test everything.

I don’t think it’s “how we’ve grown up”, it’s what we’re used to; Were used to things being requested and then brought within a couple of seconds. Smartphone’s have caused this impatience to manifest, a panel from a comic by the oatmeal displays this well.



So does more accessible media through convergence help or hinder our society?

I feel Henry Jenkins said it best when he compared how we choose to use media today to how George Orwell thought our world would be like in Nineteen Eighty-Four(1949). Jenkins mentions that Orwell though that Big Brother would be watching us all the time, but society is watching Him, and using our technology for justice, not just pleasure.