A Convergence Culture in a Technological Expanding World

My first thoughts on Convergence Culture were simplistic to say the least, the basis being old media combining with new media to create an all new beast altogether. However, Henry Jenkins opened my eyes to a different view entirely. Jenkins talks about old and new media being linked through different mediums, ocassionally helped along by human interference.

In the theory of new media not clashing with old media, we could look at a recent news story that broke  in 2011 via social networking site Twitter. The story I talk of is that of Manchester United footballer Ryan Giggs' super-injunction on his alleged affair (The Telegraph, 2012). In this instance the new media helped old media progress around otherwise blocked channels to produce a story that they wanted to tell.

Jenkins states that, 'old media will never die... What dies are simply the tools we use to access media content.' (Jenkins, 2006) For an example of this we can look at how we have received music over the years, vinyl, cassette tape, mini disc, cd, mp3, and so on. These tools have advanced to something that we can receive now that has no physical prescence.

Jankins also mentions 'The Black Box Fallacy', which is a theory that a 'black box' could control all mediums that we need. Many of us hae these 'black boxes', just think of your laptop, it contains your music, videos, internet, news and more.


It could be said that Jenkins believes that there will never be an 'Ultimate Black Box' and there may never be, although we are getting very close to it.

Take the soon to be released next generation of gaming consoles, the Xbox One boasts of being your entire media centre for your home. It includes a blu-ray drive, along with applications for television, music, live events, internet, social networking, phone calls, video calls, forums and much more. The iPhone 5 also has applications for everything that I've previously mentioned, although it has a smaller screen.
Our technology is evolving rapidly, although I believe that old media will always have a part in our culture as this is truely a convergence culture.




REFERENCES

Jenkins, H. (2006) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York and London: New York University Press.

The Telegraph (2012) Ryan Giggs: Timeline of Injunction Debate [Online]. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9095887/Ryan-Giggs-timeline-of-injunction-debate.html (Accessed: 7 June 2013)