Convergence Culture - Should we Welcome or Fear It?

Think of the discovery of the properties of the wheel, the invention of the printing press, the coming of the Industrial Revolution.  Human history is marked by world altering events – all of them bringing enormous opportunities but also carrying with them distinct threats to the established order.

Media “convergence” belongs to this group of world altering events.  Just as the coming of the digital age not so very long ago threatened the old domination of newspapers, radio and television in the media world, so the “convergence” of a multitude of new media forms and platforms is  moving us, inexorably, to a world community which may well be almost unrecognizable to those of us grappling with the adjustments of the present.

The term “convergence” in other contexts conveys a seamless flowing together of different streams but the same word, when used in the media context, carries with it a quality of “clash” between old and new technologies and between old and new user environments. This is a reflection of the speed with which technological change (particularly in the world of communication) is happening and the difficulties it poses for those users of modern technology who are struggling to keep up.

While the new "convergence" world is doing much to open up communications within our world, not all about this new world is rosey. Perhaps most importantly, the economic and other advantages of the new “convergence” age are completely unknown to the very large proportion of the world’s population who live and die in abject poverty.  Secondly, a significant proportion of the privileged group who are actually exposed to this new multi-platform digital world are effectively dis-enfranchised by their inability to access it effectively. Thirdly, the quality of journalism per se may well be reduced by the profit motive increasingly driving the convergent media. 

Given that the media in all their forms make a very substantial contribution to the world in which we live, what will be the social effects of the phenomenon of convergence in the world of tomorrow?   Humanity in the past has come to grips with amazing new discoveries but the early twenty first century places us in a different situation because our times are presenting us with change at a rate that is both dizzyingly fast and extremely complex.  Whether humanity as a whole will rise to its new circumstances and survive its own creations with its social institutions intact remains a worrying but tantalizing question for the future.