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‘New Media’ and Your Uncle Keith
By Lerone D. Wilson | July 8, 2007
I feel like we all have that uncle, or distant relative who we know has a drinking problem, yet everyone completely accepts it. Don’t get me wrong, many people took the time in the beginning to say ‘Keith this stuff is ruining your life’, and ‘Keith, you really should cut back’, but at some point a collective decision was made to write off further demonstrations of the problem as ‘Well, you know Keith’, or ‘What can you say… thats our Keith’, and with a shrug and/or a laugh we all accept the reality that Keith’s life will end in a blaze of alcohol induced organ failure.
…I feel like thats where we are with ‘New Media’.
At some point someone saw the decreasing popularity of radio, and network television, and the increasing popularity of the internet and made the inevitable conclusion that at some point they would collide into this ‘New Media’ concept. I will admit that some progress has been made with regards to this. YouTube and AppleTV have in some ways changed the way we view crazy home videos of adorable animals acting like humans, and middle aged men getting hit in the balls by various objects (we used to have to rely solely on Bob Saget and America’s Funniest Home Videos… ah Bob Saget, that guy cracked me up), nevertheless on the whole we still view television and movies in fundamentally the same way.
I recall reading the hit Bill Gates book ‘The Road Ahead’ back in 1995, which was full of bright eyed promises of digital convergence, yet most of it just hasn’t happened. Of course the future of computing was a lot brighter in 1995. ‘The Internet’ was capable of solving all problems, including making money appear out of thin air from investors through the mere mention of a hot new website. Nevertheless even in retrospect if you asked me today which is more likely: a seamless Windows Media Center PC in the living rooms of millions of households, or a way to sell pet supplies online at Pets.com… I’d take Pets.com in an instant.
So where does that leave us? We have all in many ways accepted this ‘New Media’ reality, yet we don’t want to make promises and have things blow up in our faces like they did in the 90’s. So instead, everyone just assumes ‘New Media’ is this powerful new reality that must be exploited. Unfortunately this leads to just more confusion and misunderstanding, for the exact same reason that Woody Allen films are popular: people pretend that they understand.
So at the end of the day we don’t care, and simply nod at the mention of ‘New Media’. We throw money at countless ‘new media’ initiatives, and write off any suggestion that perhaps it’s not coming along as well or as fast as we thought. But that’s OK… even Uncle Keith has figured out a way to stay alive all these years.
…there may be hope for new media yet.
Topics: Internet/Computing, Media/Politics |
July 15th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
Hmm, well, here’s the scene at Uncle Keith’s funeral; all the family stands around telling stories about how great, strong and funny he used to be in his youth, and inevitably (somewhere after that 5th bottle of Southern Comfort Whiskey) the conversation turns to blame, who could have stopped the drinking? Why didn’t we force him back to rehab that time, and that other time?…
New Media is less like Uncle Keith in that the optimistic people don’t want to wait for that funeral to say, oh, yeah, coulda, shoulda, woulda…
But I will concede that a breath should be taken so that we at least all use the same terminology. However you neglect to point out that one of the main problems with New Media is the rush towards ownership, everybody wants to be the first to define it, so we’re pretty busy competing over new media instead of exploring it less superficially.