1. Theories and interpretation of
interactive media 6 /
Vuorovaikutteisen median
teoriat ja tulkinta 6
Frans Mäyrä
Professor of hypermedia,
esp. digital culture and game studies
University of Tampere, Hypermedia Laboratory
frans.mayra@uta.fi
2. Lecture 6:
iPhone / convergence:
Interpreting the ongoing fusion
3. Outline
• Many forms of convergence
• Production / media ownership based convergence
• Stylistic media convergence
• Technical: convergence devices
• Meaning in design
• Convergence culture
• Media and information ecologies
• Meaning in technology
• Conclusions
4. Convergence and (new) media
• Media convergence is often taken as one of the main
characteristics or consequences of new media
• Related to digital/numeric technology at the technical
infrastructure level, but perhaps even more importantly to the
uses and cultures surrounding media
• In technical terms, convergence means increasing fusion of
multiple, previously separate media
• Media convergence can also be perceived in economic
processes leading into mergers between music, film, print,
games and online media industries
• The contemporary multi-channel production processes of news
is an example of “production convergence” in action
5. Transitions in convergence
• As multimediality and multimodality increase, previously
separate media elements gain different significances and uses
• E.g. textuality, audiovisuality and interactivity are shifted
when combined in different ways
• Text or image that dynamically responds to user actions
requires new strategies of reception, analysis and critique
• Genre boundaries become blurred: interactive novels, dynamic
images, web texts, online services and games are rich sources
of reflection into our chancing relations with our media
• Can lead also into aesthetic or stylistic convergence of
otherwise distinctly different media
6. Stylistic convergence
• Cooke (2005*) has studied the visual convergence from 1960 to
2002 in print, television and the Internet news
• Points out how the general trend in all three has been towards
“scannable design”:
– “phrase is derived from audience-centered research
conducted within technical communication to describe
page/screen designs where information is visually
structured to improve reader accessibility […]. Spatial cues
that group related items together, for instance, are
characteristic of scannable design because they enable the
eye to quickly grasp the relationship between items.” (p.
29)
• All news media look alike, all have “condensed” information
visualisation style, facilitating urgent, scan-and-go lifestyles
Source: *)Lynne Cooke, quot;A visual convergence of print, television, and the internet: charting
40 years of design change in news presentation.quot; New Media & Society, 7(1): 22-46.
7. Technical convergence
• From technical viewpoint, digital media is having particular
effect on media transitions through ‘convergence devices’
• E.g. television may be able to access the Web (iTV browser),
gaming console may play HD video/movies (PS3, Xbox 360), a
phone may play music etc.
• Convergence devices embody ‘digital convergence’, but usually
fail in usability in comparison to single-purpose technical
mediums
• On the other hand, standards in data transmission, structuring
and sharing (e.g. XML) made it possible to access same data
through different devices
8. Example: iPhone as a phone
“iPhone is a revolutionary
new mobile phone that
allows you to make a call
by simply tapping a name
or number in your address
book, a favorites list, or a
call log.” - “Visual
Voicemail allows you to go
directly to any of your
messages” - “2-megapixel
camera and an advanced
photo management
application”
Source: http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/index.html#phone
9. Example: iPhone as a iPod
“iPhone is a widescreen
iPod with touch controls
that lets you enjoy your
content — including
music, audiobooks,
videos, TV shows, and
movies — on a beautiful
3.5-inch display” - “The
iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store
on iPhone puts a music
superstore in your
pocket.”
Source: http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/index.html#ipod
10. “iPhone features a rich
Example: iPhone as HTML email client and
Safari — the most
a Web terminal advanced web browser
ever on a portable device
— which automatically
syncs bookmarks from your
PC or Mac. Safari also
includes built-in Google
and Yahoo! search. iPhone
is fully multi-tasking, so
you can read a web page
while downloading your
email in the background
over Wi-Fi or EDGE.”
Source: http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/index.html#internet
11. Another example: PS3
“PS3 delivers the next
generation of interactive
entertainment. Enjoy Blu-ray
Disc movies, cutting edge High
Definition games, easy music,
video and photo storage, free
access to PLAYSTATION®Network
and much more.”
Source: http://uk.playstation.com/ps3/
12. Meaning in Design
• Affective relationships coded into e.g. iPhone design are only
partially related to its value as (multi-)
medium
• The haptic and other sensory characteristics of its physical
design embody the principles of “pleasurable products”
• Studies like Funology (Blythe & co. 2004), Pleasure with
Products (Jordan 2002) and Emotional Design (Norman 2003)
conceptualise this in design research terms
• Norman talks about good design that is 1) viscerally attractive,
2) behaviourally elegant, 3) at reflective level associated with
attractive value propositions
13. Cultural
convergence
• Jenkins claims that technology is not the essential part in
media convergence developments
– “By convergence, I mean the flow of content across multiple media
platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the
migratory behaviour of media audiences who will go almost anywhere in
search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they want. Convergence
is a word that manages to describe technological, industrial, cultural,
and social changes depending on who’s speaking and what they think they
are talking about.” (Jenkins 2006, 2-3.)
• Primarily work and play that users/consumers perform in the
(new) media system
• Active search of information, interaction between producers
and consumers within a participatory culture
14. Convergence culture
examples
• Fans of Survivors reality tv show have perfected the art of
“Survivor spoiling” (revealing series secrets)
• American Idol as shaped by “affective economics” (the ideal
consumer is active, emotionally engaged, and socially
networked)
• The Matrix franchise as “transmedia storytelling”: the art of
world making, expecting consumers to construct their
experiences actively across media boundaries
• Star Wars fan filmmakers and gamers using the digital tools to
reshape George Lucas’s mythology, Harry Potter fan fiction
• Popular culture engaging people with presidential elections
15. Pikachu’s global
adventure
• Pokémon franchise is another example, this time a video game
gaining transmedial expansions
• While interpreting a franchise targeted and successful among
children, often the binary opposition of structure/agency is
evoked
• Authors of Pikachu’s Global Adventure (2004) use interviews
and observations of Pokémon playing children, detailed
analyses into history of games, Japanese cult of cuteness,
animations, character merchandising to help explaining the
complex ways in which power and agency is produced and
negotiated in such transmedial phenomena
16. Converging
media ecologies
• ‘Media ecology’ was introduced by Marshall McLuhan, who
inspired further study of complex media environments
• Cf. ‘information ecology’ which uses concepts like ecosystem,
habitat, evolution, niche, growth, and equilibrium to consider
information systems
• The material and immaterial characteristics of media mix and
interrelate, contributing to the “patterns, dangers and
potentials” that effect our lives
• Media and information ecology remain as useful metaphors to
capture the dynamic, complex character of life in ICT-
permeated societies
• Theoretically fuzzy: what are the phenomena, domains, forces
and processes that ‘media ecology’ currently applies to?
17. Meaning
in Technology
• Arnold Pacey has written about “the culture of technology”
and “meaning in technology” (1983; 1999)
• His key arguments include that technology is not value-free,
since we always experience it as ‘technology-practice’
(artefacts enmeshed with ideas, ways of behaving, and social
structures)
• Against reductionism: there are multiple sources of meaning in
technology, none necessarily lesser significant than the other
• Technology-practice is surrounded by: 1) political meanings
and organisation, 2) social and cultural meanings, 3) technical
knowledge, equipment and tools, 4) personal experience: what
it feels like
18. Pacey: technology & music
• “My view is that we sometimes - perhaps
increasingly - use machines and other technology in
the same way as we use music and musical
instruments, to interpret the world and give it
meaning. […] So it is not only singing that brings
our world into existence and gives it meaning, but
the music of technology also, together with such
visual pattern-making activities as painting and
sculpture, building and engineering.” (Pacey 1999,
17-18.)
19. Power of myths
• Myth is a dual concept: a ‘lie’ to others, a ‘deeper truth’ for
some
• IT and new media are also mythical in the sense that they are
embedded in discourses that organise their place in our
collective semiotic maps
• The digital sublime and mundane are two contrasting
discursive domains for interactive media
• ‘Cyberspace’ is an example of digital sublime - chosen by SF
author William Gibson for it being evocative term, yet without
“real semantic meaning”*
• Myths have the power to evoke the possibility of sublime
within/in contrast to the mundane reality (cf. Mosco 2004)
• E.g. in what sense can ‘mobile Internet’ be sublime?
Gibson 1996; cit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberspace
20. Conclusions:
New media as technologies for
meaning-making
• Sherry Turkle (2007) has written how we “think with
the objects we love; we love the objects we think
with”
• Currently, new media is being embodied in various
ways into our lives: as devices, as practices, as
ideas, as (virtual/hybrid) spaces
• No theory can fully capture its constantly
transitional character, but instead it is useful to
interpret new media as “an object to think about
change”
• As “digital touch” is permeating micro and macro
levels of life and social structure, understanding
interactive media becomes synonymous with
understanding the self and the society