Convergence con-schmergence
Matthew Baxter - 1/22/2007
Everybody even vaguely in our business has been talking about convergence in media for a long, long, long, long time. Arthur C Clarke was talking about it before it was even called convergence. Clever old Arthur. The latest news is that Bill Gates reckons that this is the year it finally happens big style.
Whoop-de-doo.
But looking at all the demos of fridges that can store your downloadable media and simultaneously show ‘Braveheart’ and order Special Brew from Tescos, and televisions that can teleconference between you, your plumber and your broken boiler, and computers that can be your special friend when you don’t have any, there is something missing.
Content
By which I mean is that all this stuff is a fabulous conduit for, well, nothing much in particular. I think this was even true in Steve Jobs amazing launch presentation for the i-phone (if you haven’t watched it, do. That’s the way to do a slide presentation!) when Steve used ‘three revolutionary communications devices rolled into one’ to arrange to go to the pictures with a pal, and go to Starbuck’s afterwards.
Alexander Graham Bell wondered what we would ever find to say to each other over the phone, and I’m sure all the other equivalent new-media brainboxes have had similar personal crises as each new development comes along.
The thing is there is nowhere to look for inspiration except where we are now. So Web TV looks like Web, and Interactive TV looks like TV. Media is integrating, but creative thought for content and interface design and direction isn’t.
This is by no means the only bee-in-my-bonnet, but just at the moment it’s the buzziest one. At DVA I think we are really well placed to work through this and come out the other side with something genuinely new and special. We have evolved into an organisation with so many different areas of expertise that we can approach any project in a balanced way, combining appropriate techniques to produce the kind of truly integrated, creative end product that actually does justice to all that new media cleverness and potential.