Digital Convergence, Digital Divergence

In an article entitled Mediasaurus, Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park, compares contemporary mass media with the dinosaurs (Crichton 1993). The mass media, he writes, have become gigantic, clumsy creatures, ill suited and unable to adapt to the demands of the new environment of information technology with its flexible mini-media and computer networks. Consequently, they are obsolete, in short, on their way toward extinction. Crichton’s conclusion: “Today’s mass media is tomorrow’s fossil fuel.” If Crichton is right, the next question is: What are the implications for mass communication research? And where does that leave us media researchers? George Gilder, another commentator with a gift for the drastic, speaks of “life after television” (Gilder 1994). Gilder’s scenario resembles Crichton’s in many respects. He claims, for example, that television, in technical terms is dead, that just as the ‘centralistic mainframe computer’ and IBM collapsed in the 1980s, superseded by the PC, the centralistic television structures will now collapse, so that “in coming years, the very words ‘telephone’ and ‘television’ will ring as quaintly as the words ‘horseless carriage’, ‘icebox’, ‘talking telegraph’ or ‘picture radio’ ring today” (1994:12). Is there a life after television?, is Gilder’s question. And, one is tempted to add, for the mass communication researcher? Gilder’s answer to the first question is, Yes, it’s the PC and ‘telecomputer’. But what is the answer to the second question? The editors of the trend-setting computer and lifestyle journal, Wired, do not predict the out-andout demise of television as we know it today, but they expect broadcast television will be but one of many different channels in a new network of converging media: “As everything gets wired, media of all kinds are moving to the decentralized matrix known as the Net. While the traditional forms – broadcast, print – show few signs of vanishing, the Net is being invaded by new media species” (Kelly et al. 1997:12). The prime characteristic of this new fauna of network-based species of media is their diversity, ranging from mastodon media to micro-media. “The most revolutionary advance”, Wired continues, “may be the creation of a whole universe of small-scale (and not-so-small-scale) broadcast networks.... Networked media... can create broadcasting networks of any size and shape, especially the intermediate size between TV and, say, personal mailing lists. You can push-pull broadcast to Llama keepers or home schoolers.... [The Net will be] a Net of push-laden networks, a world of nichecasting – thousands of mini-networks, ranging from micro-TV stations to totally customized personal programming. ... Let a thousand media types bloom” (Ibid.: 21-22). Digital guru Nicholas Negroponte, finally, speaks of the changing media landscape in a similar vein: “The economic models of media today are