Convergence Culture

Write a reflection on this article for your blog. What struck you about it? What resonated with you? What has changed in media since this was written? What hasn’t?

From a bird's-eye view, it seems like we are coming out of the transition period that Jenkins says we were entering in 2006. All of media looks like it's converging to our phones and those systems that spring from them. There are many changes in media that indicate this. For example, I can now tell my Google Home to play news from CNN on my TV. We see multiple convergences here: print news became radio news, television news, online news, and news companies use the Internet to distribute their content in audio, textual, and video formats. Further, the medium itself, in this case Google Home, links my phone, through the Internet and various Google services, to a speaker in my living room and a device plugged into my TV. So, we see a convergence in how content is presented, and convergence in the devices that present it.

This is alluded to by Jenkins around pages 14 and 15, where he talks about some convergence he sees around him. However, today, that convergence has been taken much further, and it seems to me there cannot be much further convergence -- perhaps the next step converges our tech and our bodies...

To sum up, the striking part is that convergence seems to have happened fairly noiselessly -- it was almost natural. Many things in the media have changed, especially the degree of convergence, but we still retain all modes that Jenkins knew -- phones still make calls, watches still tell time, newspapers still run, and so on. However, these things simply work better together and adapt to each other (online newspaper, smart watches...).