Il Nuovo Medium: many-to-many
July 18, 2006Un post molto interessante, questo di Vin Crosbie.
Prima effettua una distinzione tra medium e veicoli di contenuti, con una netta distinzione di soli 3 media, poi paragona l’importanza di internet a quella che ha avuto l’invenzione del trasporto aereo.
The hallmark characteristics of the New Medium are:
Uniquely individualized information can simultaneously be delivered or displayed to a potentially infinite number of people.
Each of the people involved — whether publisher, broadcasters, or consumer — shares equal and reciprocal control over that content.
In other words, the New Medium has the advantages of both the Interpersonal and the Mass media, but without their complementary disadvantages.
No longer must anyone who wants to individually communicate a unique message to each recipient be restricted to communicating with only one person at a time.
No longer must anyone who wants to communicate simultaneous messages to a mass of recipients be unable to individualize the content of the message for each recipient.
Again, please note that the New Medium for communications, as with use of the transportation medium of the sky, is entirely dependent upon technology unlike its two preceding media. It is not a natural communications medium for humans; it does something that a human cannot naturally do without technology.
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Simply because the New Medium encompasses the characteristics and the reach of both of its predecessors and therefore can easily perform each of those media’s capabilities, many people mistake the New Medium as merely an electronic extension previous media.
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Moreover, because each recipient in the New Medium shares with all publishers and broadcasters equal and reciprocal control over what that recipient gets — either by each recipient’s choices of which publishers’ or broadcasters’ websites to visit or else increasingly by mechanisms that allow the recipient to aggregate that content without visiting each of those publishers’ or broadcasters’ sites — these New Medium consumers are leaving behind the traditional Mass Medium’s packaging of information.
Each is migrating towards whatever mix of content most precisely matches her own uniquely individual needs and interests. This is why more than one billion consumers have migrated into the New Medium; it allows them more precise satisfaction of their needs and interests. They didn’t migrate into the New Medium to read, see, or hear a Mass Medium package of information online — information they were receiving from traditional Mass Medium vehicles in more readily usable forms.
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Within the next ten years, most New Medium consumers will be receiving information from each’s choice of myriad broadcasters and publishers, perhaps too many for any individual consumer to name or even realize. (Early adopters of tag-driven XML, advanced RSS, and ‘peer-to-peer’ technologies have already begun making such use). Because these many consumers will be sharing content choices and control with all publisher and broadcasters, the New Medium serves not just a ‘one-to-one’ or ‘one-to-many’ medium but a ‘many-to-many’ one.
