Mediamorphosis and Media convergence

Today, we are surrounded by a multi-level convergent media world where all modes of communication and information are continually reforming to adapt to the enduring demands of technologies, "changing the way we create, consume, learn and interact with each other". A phenomenon involving the interlocking of computing and information technology companies, telecommunications networks, and content providers from the publishing worlds of newspapers, magazines, music, radio, television, films, and entertainment software. Media convergence brings together the "three Cs"-computing, communications, and content.
The rise of digital communication in the late 20th century has made it possible for media organizations to deliver text, audio, and video material over the same wired, wireless, or fiber-optic connections. It also inspired some media organizations to explore multimedia delivery of information. This digital convergence of news media, in particular, was called "Mediamorphosis" by researcher Roger Fidler, in his 1997 book by that name.

Convergence in this instance is defined as the interlinking of computing and other information technologies, media content, and communication networks that has arisen as the result of the evolution and popularization of the Internet as well as the activities, products and services that have emerged in the digital media space. Many experts view this as simply being the tip of the iceberg, as all facets of institutional activity and social life such as business, government, art, journalism, health, and education are increasingly being carried out in these digital media spaces across a growing network of information and communication technology devices.
Jenkins (2006:3), defines convergence as ‘flow of content across multiple media platforms’, suggesting that media audiences nowadays play a crucial role in creating and distributing content, and convergence therefore has to be examined in terms of social, as well as technological changes within the society. According to Jenkins, media convergence is an ongoing process that should not be viewed as a displacement of the old media, but rather as interaction between different media forms and platforms (Jenkins, 2006). Supporting this argument, Deuze cited in Erdal (2011) suggests that media convergence should be viewed as ‘cooperation and collaboration’ between previously unconnected media forms and platforms.  Burnett and Marshall cited in Grant and Wilkinson (2008:5) explain convergence as ‘blending of the media, telecommunications and computer industries’ or, in other words, as the process of blurring the boundaries between different media platforms and uniting them into one digital form.

 In their book Media Convergence: Networked Digital Media in Everyday Life, Graham Meikle and Sherman Young observe that convergence can be understood in four dimensions:

technological—the combination of computing, communications and content around networked digital media platforms;

industrial—the engagement of established media institutions in the digital media space, and the rise of digitally-based companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and others as significant media content providers;

• social—the rise of social network media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and the growth of user-created content; and
• textual—the re-use and remixing of media into what has been termed a ‘transmedia’ model, where stories and media content (for example, sounds, images, written text) are dispersed across multiple media platforms

Referrence

1. Fidler, Roger F. Mediamorphosis: Understanding New Media. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge, 1997.
2. Jenkins, Henry (2006) Convergence Culture, New York University Press, New York.
3. Meikle, G., & Young, S. (2012). Media convergence. Basingstoke, Hampshire [England]: Palgrave Macmillan.
4. Technological convergence (Wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_convergence

The medium is the message

After giving an oral report that may have included a PowerPoint presentation and possibly a handout one may be required to write a paper for the report. You would not present information in the same way in a PowerPoint as you would on a handout or when you delivered the content verbally. Because of the changes you make from one medium to the next, your audience perceives the information differently based on how it is delivered. Each of those elements, the report, the PowerPoint and the presentation, is a remediation of your original paper. 

Marshall McLuhan

Portrait by Yousuf Karsh. Copyright the Estate of Yousuf Karsh, California.

McLuhan is known for coining the expressions the medium is the message and the global village, and for predicting the World Wide Web almost thirty years before it was invented




Remediation is the process of taking a text, whether it is a newspaper article, a story, a film or even something like a business proposal or a report, and translating it into a new medium. Remediation is based on the idea of the famous media theorist Marshall McLuhan, who once said that "the medium is the message."  This meant that how we perceive information changes based the way in which that information is presented.

Regardless of what kind of remediation you are taking on, it is vital to understand how the remediation process works. Audience is one of the most important elements of the remediation process, because the creator of the medium must take into consideration how the work will be understood and interpreted. By knowing how to interpret the most important ideas from the original text and by transferring them in such a way as to give new meaning to the interpretation without misrepresenting the original, you will be far more successful in conveying important ideas to your audience and in understanding how important the way you present your information is.

In libraries and information centers, remediation is a concept and idea whose time has come, cannot be wished away or be defeated. As volumes and volumes of materials are created for a subject topic, coalescing this information and putting it in a summarized form becomes necessary and more so for academic libraries where readers want to get the concept without being bombarded with pages of so many analogies just to achieve the same concept. We can call this type Text-to-Text Remediation

Another type is Text-to-Visual Remediation where you translate text into either a single image or a series of images (a video or slideshow). These two types of remediation fundamentally involve the same process—translating text into visuals. The purpose of a text-to-visual remediation is to convey the main ideas of the text with the use of visual images. Obviously you must pay attention to purpose and audience. Remediation should be an expression of your feelings about a particular text, but it should be rooted in an understanding of the original text, including the historical context out of which it came, and an application of rhetorical strategies—knowledge that that you should be able to eloquently defend in a reflection piece on the remediation.

Web 2.0 Technology

In this serial of blog I have been discussing the changes in technology that is forcing Libraries to change their service offering together with how they offer their current services. In the previous post, I proposed web 2.0 but what is web 2.0 and how does it really fit into the context of library services?

To answer this I now take a dive into web 2.0 and try to dissect it.

Webs 2.0, contrary to what most people perceive is not a standard. As O’Reilly himself projected it is just a collection of ideas on the perceived services. Minsk observes that “in recent years, new software design patterns and business models are observed on the Web which is commonly referred to as Web 2.0 (Minsk, 2007: 315)” Most people call it as an experience. Some people describe it as “warm” web or “hot” web. It is “warm” because it provides a kind of warmth to the users—a kind of ‘interactivity’ to the users. It is “warm” because it provides dialogue and life. Stephen Abraham describes Web 2.0 as a “conversation”. Modern users look for this kind of warm experience with the web, something like an interactive dialogue. The outcome of this interactivity is the emergence of services like Instant Messaging, Steaming media, Blogs, news feeds, tagging etc. which are grouped together called as Web 2.0 services.

The modern library concepts have also embraced these services and call them as Library 2.0 services. The concepts of Library 2.0, OPAC 2.0, and Librarian 2.0 are the offspring of Web 2.0 ideas. The idea of Web 2.0 can be summarized as the reciprocal link between the user and provider. The essence of Web 2.0 lies in the genuine interactivity between the user and the content. Thus many services which underline the participation platform were derived and underline the concept of Web 2.0.

From time immemorial librarians strives hard to deliver new and upcoming services to their users. The second generation of libraries is broadly classified as those which make use of the Web 2.0 tools and techniques to usher its users to the next level of usage. The first generation of Library services used the technology as only extensions of their existing manual operations. The card catalogs were converted into electronic catalogs. The manual circulation and Readers’ services were made automated services. But the advents of Web 2.0 concepts and tools have brought in a sea change in the process of library services. The exciting Web 2.0 tools such as Synchronous Communication (Instant Messaging), Content Delivery (RSS Feeds, News Feeds), Streaming Media, Collaborative Publishing Tools (Blogs, Wikis, Tagging etc.,), and Social Networks are slowly becoming part of the library services. Many librarians and integrated library systems use these exciting tools to bridge the gap between the user and the information.

Most of the services and tools of the second generation of libraries are not new to libraries.

Libraries in the information age

Historically, libraries have served as places where books used for the documentation of knowledge were kept, but they are now portals to global information relevant in education, research, individual and national development (Omekwu & Ugwuanyi, 2009 in Okore, Ekere, and Eke,2009).

In this era of knowledge economy which has change the flow from people flows to knowledge flows, this concept has to change. According to Bill Gates and Collins Hemingway in 1999 in their book Business and the Speed of Thought, business and technology are integrated, and digital infrastructures and information networks can help someone get an edge on the competition. Gates asserts cyberspace and industry can no longer be separate entities, and that businesses must change to succeed in the Information Age.   

The library, as a conduit for information, serving a wide spectrum of information seekers, has a critical role to play in the facilitation of knowledge generation; hence, an unhindered access to knowledge is essential in a development process. It serves as a liberator from poverty and deprivation and as a springboard in the quest for innovation and change. Drake (1984) in Tise, Raju and Masango, (2008) says that access to information is a complex concept. Libraries have the mandate to drive access to information to alleviate poverty and deprivation due to paradoxical situation of a scarcity of information in an era of information explosion.

Libraries are not immune to the societal forces re-shaping other institutions brought about by technology and economics. A variety of forces, most especially economic changes and technological developments, have reshaped and redefined our notions of what constitute a library (Besser, 1998).  The electronic era of the 21st century has brought changes to the libraries’ working environment and acquisition of information resources that in turn presupposes the implementation of new strategies, change of structures and devising new acquisition principles. In the modern information society, where the use of electronic services and Web-based information sources constantly increases, libraries should be managed in a more democratic way, have more flexible communication system and work organisation, and their service development should be based on the quality and user-orientation of services. Besser, 1998 submits that technology has made libraries to become less important for the materials they collect or house, and more important for the kind of materials they can obtain in response to user requests. This movement from collecting material just in case someone will need it, to delivering material from elsewhere just in time to answer a user's needs, is a profound shift for the library as an institution.

Technology application to library services has brought a lot of changes to library operations there by making access to knowledge more convenient to user. Some of the fastest growing trends are noticed in the area of networking; file storage, graphic user interface. They have also been enabled by agreements on standards and protocols which permit the linking together of resources from disparate sources. From multiple locations: From anywhere, users can consult all library holdings from workstation throughout the systematic catalog, indexing, and abstracting services. Divorcing library services from a physical location provokes a profound difference in what a library service is. This can further be accelerated by the trend of ubiquitous computing which is taking even a faster pace than ever

Go web 2.0.or become archival centers

In the 80’s our streets were characterized by booths for telephone where people would queue to make that needed call. The end of 90’s and the beginning of 200’s saw a change where green shops in the name of simu ya jamii from Safaricom the new entrant to the telecommunication sector in Kenya lined up the Kenyan street and villages shopping centers. This was to be seen till the mid of 200’s when they died a natural death as they were rendered absolute with almost two in every three adults owning a mobile devise. This signified a revolution in communication and opportunities in the sector. The revolution created a generation that matured from what used to be known as the dot com to the digital generation and a more recently termed the google generation.

In this generation from a simple translation of a word to the explanation of a phenomena or the description of an item or anything that can be said, the tendency is to “Google” for answers by surfing the internet.

Alvin Toffler an American writer and the "world’s most famous futurologist” according to the UK Financial Times , known for his works discussing the digital revolution, communication revolution and technological singularity as well as his books like the Future Shock, The Third Wave and Powershift hence being dubbed the third most influential voice among business leaders, after Bill Gates and Peter Drucker by Accenture, the management consultancy firm says that in an overstated stress on the power of knowledge in the future society,

 “ today in the fast changing, affluent nations, despite all inequalities of income and wealth, the coming struggle for power will increasingly turn into a struggle over the distribution of and access to knowledge. This is why we understand how and to whom knowledge flows, we can neither protect ourselves against the abuse of power nor create the better, more democratic society that tomorrow’s technologies promise. The control of knowledge is the crux of tomorrow’s worldwide struggle for power in every human institution”  (Toffler 1991)

Herbert Marshall McLuhan a Canadian philosopher of communication theory and a public intellectual known for coining the expressions the “medium is the message” and the “global village”, and for predicting the “World Wide Web” almost thirty years before it was invented noted and wrote that  

“the visual, individualistic print culture would soon be brought to an end by what he called "electronic interdependence": when electronic media replace visual culture with aural/oral culture.”

In explaining his idea McLuhan say “Instead of tending towards a vast Alexandrian library the world has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence.”

In his book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), McLuhan famously argued that in the modern world "we live mythically and integrally ... but continue to think in the old, fragmented space and time patterns of the pre-electric age

McLuhan's insight was that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself. McLuhan pointed to the light bulb as a clear demonstration of this concept. A light bulb does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs, yet it is a medium that has a social effect; that is, a light bulb enables people to create spaces during nighttime that would otherwise be enveloped by darkness. He describes the light bulb as a medium without any content. McLuhan states that "a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence." More controversially, he postulated that content had little effect on society.

With this kind of world known and respected people on the front it would be easy to see the future of our societies and the trend that would be worth to think about having in mind the notion of “nothing last like change”. The factors that will affect our success is determined by how proactive we act to the changes in cognizance of the future technologies and probabilities as well as opportunities. Learning from the old story of the race of the hare and the tortoise, it would be good to note that steady and persistence is as good as virtue but what is more worth is rethinking of strategy.

As society has begun to value information more highly, the so-called information industry has developed. This industry encompasses publishers, software developers, on-line information services, and other businesses that package and sell information products for a profit. It provides both an opportunity and a challenge to libraries.

Library, traditionally, collection of books used for reading or study, or the building or room in which such a collection is kept. Library institutions are part of our social life and have a big role to play in achieving what Alvin was talking about in his post-industrial era “the information age”. From their historical beginnings as places to keep the business, legal, historical, and religious records of a civilization, libraries have emerged since the middle of the 20th century as a far-reaching body of information resources and services that do not even require a building. Rapid developments in computers, telecommunications, and other technologies have made it possible to store and retrieve information in many different forms and from any place with a computer and a telephone connection. The terms digital library and virtual library have begun to be used to refer to the vast collections of information to which people gain access over the Internet, cable television, or some other type of remote electronic connection.

With the advent of internet in the 1960’s and later the World Wide Web, the mode through which information can be accessed has taken unprecedented stride to the level of creating information overload also known as” infobesity” or “infoxication” as predicted by Alvin Toffler in his book Future Shock, and later noted by Bertram Gross, in his book The Managing of Organizations. Speier et al. (1999) as a situation where “Information overload occurs when the amount of input to a system exceeds its processing capacity.” This can lead to “information anxiety,” which is the gap between the information we understand and the information that we think that we must understand. To solve this problem, a number of solutions have been proposed and key among them are:

ü  Focusing on quality of information rather that quantity.

ü  Spend less time on information that is nice to know and more on what we need to know.

ü  Learning how to create better information ”infogineering” which is be direct in what you ask people to get short precise answer.

 This mix brings on the notion of the expanding role of libraries to the society by integrating web 2.0 in their infrastructure if they have to remain relevant and of help to society they serve.

In her article in January 1999, "Fragmented Future", Darcy DiNucci, a consultant on electronic information design wrote “The first glimmerings of Web 2.0 are beginning to appear, and we are just starting to see how that embryo might develop. The Web will be understood not as screenfuls of text and graphics but as a transport mechanism, the ether through which interactivity happens. It will [...] appear on your computer screen, [...] on your TV set [...] your car dashboard [...] your cell phone [...] hand-held game machines [...] maybe even your microwave oven.”

Since then, Web 2.0 have developed a lot and many functionalities that may help in making libraries more useful and help the society in accessing the information in a more healthy way. This includes features like:

Folksonomy which is free classification of information that allows users to collectively classify and find information through functions like Tagging. This will help in reducing the information overload as groups can qualitatively review materials with regard to their objectives and information need and consume them correctively.

Rich User Experience through dynamic content generation that is responsive to user input would help in filtering out the amount of search results for specified information.

User Participation where information flows two ways between site owner and site user by means of evaluation, review, and commenting. Site users add content for others to see and hence adding value to the information for future users.

Software as a service where Web 2.0 sites developed API to allow automated usage, such as by an app or mashup hence increasing integration with other applications for data sharing. It will also help in ensuring in managing the information for easier retrieval in the future.

Long tail- services offered on demand basis; profit is realized through monthly service subscriptions more than one-time purchases of goods over the network.

With web 2.0, libraries can benefit by Wikis, blogs, prodcasts and file sharing as a way of offering value added services to their clientele and by so doing making themselves appealing and remaining relevant while on the same time tackling the problem of information overload within the society. Failure to assimilate technology will leave the would be user shun them in times of need and in the long run will be archival centers for published materials as the users get more attached to the internet source for their information.