Digital Revolution

Convergence is merging. In this current technological culture companies are forced to merge and change to cross all media platforms. Those who fail to keep up with this participatory culture will face decline, the resulting struggles will define public culture in the future.

It is hard for company's to do this but some have already accomplished convergence but others never will. An example is Disney absorbing Lucas Arts, which means that Disney has acquired the rights to multiple other franchises such as Star Wars. This allows them to tap into more film, gaming and T.V. At the same time they cant control access and participation of the audiences to watch their products.

Marshal Mcluhan talked about this change in Technologies of Freedom (1983). It talked about force of change in the media and this was clearly true with cultural shift that is internet taking over in later years.

We as the consumers are depending on technological industry to evolve and to change our lives for the better. We can see this happening every year with cultural and social changes. Old media doesn't die or fade away, it merges. This helps us form and learn different relationships for alternative media technologies. Most of the time media is forced upon us, for example you can't buy a phone without that phone having a camera, mp3 player and internet access. Normal phones have become redundant due to the emergence of the smart phone. New phones consoles and computers are just black boxes, media convergence , and social networking which connect us, the audiences to the massive companies so they can feed us constant information and accelerate the flow of media content.

Watching the advert or consuming the product isn't enough anymore. Companies invite you inside the brand community. This expanding participation necessarily sparks further change this leads to more active consummation.

What they want is a universal media platform. This will allow hem to dominate and control the market. Connecting media companies is the first step. Once this has been achieved, technology will have progressed to a point where media and technology will be a fundamental component of people's everyday lives.