The Interoperability of Information and its Representation in New Media: A Case Study of a Global Content Provider

The diffusion of the internet is transforming our understanding of technology and impacts upon the forms through which meaning and signification are shaped by it. The dissociation between symbols and meaning is becoming more evident, as content delivered over the internet makes necessary its packaging and transmission in standardized, context-crossing, ways. At the same time, the forms by which we interpret technologically mediated symbol tokens is becoming flexible by, among other things, the creation of new interfaces. Strange as it may seem, the flexibilization of technological artefacts, coinciding with the ideal of a socially driven internet, also known as ‘web 2.0’, presupposes standardization. For, it is driven by the development and establishment of a series of protocols and standards necessary to render data interoperable.