Peter Howard is Wintermute, mythologist

content+distribution

15March2005 [directLink] [film]

An interesting post over at The New Normal on the challenges faced by Old Media in regards content and distribution. He basically argues that the two should be separate - something the major Old Media companies have got radically wrong recently - mistaking the symptoms of our paradoxical media divergence and convergence and buying up all aspects of content creation and delivery (which is just old school capitalism at its best).

The convergence/divergence of media is a strange one. In short, I get the impression we’re getting a divergence of content creation with a convergence in delivery. By which I mean there is more and more access to the tools of creation, and more and more people of different backgrounds creating content (whether we’re talking film specifically or other new media aspects, from blogging to animation on a home pc). But at the same time the lines between delivery methods are blurring - the fact that content can be delivered at a cinema, at home on a computer, television, via cable, rentals, &c suggests divergence, which seems to be how the big companies are viewing it in their efforts to buy access to all those channels. HOWEVER, at the same time all those channels are converging dramatically - it won’t be long till a home entertainment system consists of a central computer with various output systems (whether it’s a projector or a handheld) — meaning delivery is converged, filtered through one pipe into the household… (and people will soon forget that they used to wash clothes and ppl in the river while tripping to the well to get drinking water)