I am finalizing a paper for an anthology Lisbeth is co-editing, and stuck with an excellent question Lisbeth (I think) wrote in the margin of the manuscript.
In the chapter, I write:
I will suggest five seemingly stable trends that, collectively or individually, have been the base of many predictions about future media for half a century.
(1) Convergence: the view that traditional media are melting together into new computerised media;
(2) Interactivity: everything will be deeply interactive, lending the power of influence and choice to the people;
(3) Visual interfaces: Deeper involvement, sexier design and intuitive interfaces will arise from better screens, 3D graphics and Virtual Reality;
(4) Complexity: More and more information is available to us, so complexity is dramatically increasing. We need tools to counter this complexity in order to achieve understanding and knowledge;
(5) Mobility: we want to carry our information (and our gadget-toys) with us wherever we are.
Lisbeth writes: "Interesting! Please expand on how and why you chose these five." As I would have written to anyone else claiming this.
And I have no idea! They seem obvious to me, from everything I have seen and read on modern and future media. But how I ended up with that impression, I haven't a clue.
What is worse is that I don't see how I can defend them either. It would indeed demand a sweeping overview over a very large literature, I think.
The very fact that they seem so self-evident is probably a sign of warning. In this view of the world, what are the blind spots?
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