Five Key Concepts of New Media Technologies

Technology
What technology allows audiences and institutions to do that they couldn't do before. How is it marketed? Cost? Hot/cold media? Is it an old media undergoing changes?

Convergence: describes the process of multiple technologies brought together to form a new product.
Linear/Non-Linear: linear experiences that move in a straight line from start to finish (eg. watching a film at the cinema.) Non-linear experiences are when the audience has flexibility to choose their experience (eg. DVD features allow the audience to choose specific endings of events.)
Digitisation: the most basic form of digital material, made up of a long series of 1s and 0s.

Institutions
Establish how media institutions are converging media interests to increase sales and therefore profit.

Interactivity: is a two-way communication and in the context of NMTs means content that is reactive to the audience's choice. Eg. the red button & interactive TV.

Audience
What are audiences doing with their new media technologies? How are their experiences changing? What are audiences not doing so they can spend more time interacting with new media? Consider the counter arguements; information rich/poor, cultural imperialism, piracy, surveillance, fragmented society. Audience research will be carried out asking opinions and investigating consumption patterns.

Personalisation: the ability to offer users a personalised experience. Eg. Sky+ customers get to manipulate a linear experience into a non linear experience if they choose.
Linear/Non-Linear: linear experiences that move in a straight line from start to finish (eg. watching a film at the cinema.) Non-linear experiences are when the audience has flexibility to choose their experience (eg. DVD features allow the audience to choose specific endings of events.)

Issues
Does the new media technology encourage illegal activity, or increased spending, or harm children? Could it cause shops to close and therefore, people lose their jobs?
Democratisation: the ability to communicate your opinions and ideas or share your creative output. The digital divide shouldn’t be forgotten, however; not everyone has Internet access never mind a blog.

The Future
How could media practices be different in the future based on current practices?
Democratisation: the ability to communicate your opinions and ideas or share your creative output. The digital divide shouldn’t be forgotten, however; not everyone has Internet access never mind a blog.

Blogging and News: The Future?

• This video shows a fictional future where Google and Amazon merge to create the company 'Googlezon.'
• Google brings all of its services together to create the Google Grid which has an unlimited amount of storage space and bandwidth to store and share anything you want.
• They join forces with Amazon.com to use its social recommendation engine; this creates Googlezon.
• Then EPIC (Evolving Personalized Information Construct) is released which is where everyone is involved and receive personalised information, selected and sometimes re-written for them.

The issues raised in this video are:

1. News Selection by Computers - how morally right is it that computers get to pick and choose what news items each individual reads? Will this eventually lead to an anti-democratisation of news because people receive the same news item and therefore do not get to form their own personal views or post them like they do nowadays? Computers do not have news agendas.
2. Copyright - are copyright laws void in a digital world and therefore, will they become a thing of the past? Who is responsible for copyright and enforcing it?
3. Right to Privacy - in a world where people post every detail about their life, do privacy rights still exist or do people give them up? Will there be any secrets in a technology obsessed society or will everything be published?
4. Use of Internet - the custom content package may be beneficial and provide an in-depth analysis of the world from various sources, in regards to news stories, however if a person only uses the Internet for trivial things, eg. celebrity gossip and chatting with friends, then they are going to receive rather 'sensational news' rather than 'in-depth news.' Will this lead to certain people being politically inadequate and therefore raise issues of class?

I feel this video, while a bit far-fetched, does raise some important issues and I find it quite scary how it may one day be the case that we are dictated what news items we are told, if technology keeps evolving at the same rate it is now.