CONVERGENCE.
Convergence, whenever I encounter this word, I always think of change. Changes must be made in order for us to move on and catch up to this fast paced world. Whenever there is convergence, trends and opportunities follow. According to whatis.techtarget.com, they defined Convergence as: “In general, convergence is a coming together of two or more distinct entities or phenomena. Convergence is increasingly prevalent in the IT world; in this context the term refers to the combination of two or more different technologies in a single device. Taking pictures with a cell phone and surfing the Web on a television are two of the most common examples of this trend.” Moreover, Mr. Garry Foster noted that: “Convergence is a concept of bringing together technology products and services in a unique and meaningful way. A perfect example is a cell phone with a digital camera. The challenge for tech companies — from a device perspective — is to find the right combinations that are appropriate to their purchasing public. Some companies will try to load up anything on their products as though it were a Swiss Army Knife. “
Everywhere we see examples of convergence in products and business: today car manufacturers produce automobiles that all look the same on the body chassis, for they were designed in wind tunnels, further researching to attain perfection and market dominance. As a result, they all have similar features, and they targeted for the same markets. Personal Computers have become mobile phones and mobile phones become entertainment centers. Mobile Phones have become cameras and cameras have become personal organizers. Also, telecom companies have become media houses. As a result, convergence will transform every aspect of the IT industry, together with all communications, media, music, film, TV and other entertainment. But convergence can be boring, destroys variety, breeds monopoly, kills invention, adds unwanted options, makes life more complicated - and robs consumers of choice. When every product offers the same features, and is a similar price, where is the competitive advantage except by making your own products even cheaper? – The product with the lowest price wins in this regard. There is a lot of convergence that took place since the beginning of the 21th century. But before anything else, let me discuss first about the technological convergence.
Technological convergence.
Technological convergence is the trend wherein innovative technologies merge into new and updated technologies that bring together a wide array of options. For example, the merging of Sony – a Japanese consumer electronics company, Sony Corporation, and Ericsson – a Swedish telecommunications company to form Sony Ericsson and produce high quality and innovative mobile phones. Utilizing the capacity of Sony’s electronic prowess and Ericsson’s expertise in telecommunications, they have set the trend for the new and innovative era – Walkman’s and Cyber shot’s line up of mobile phones stole the lime light of portable radios, mp3 players and digital cameras. This paved the way of portable and all in one music player and digital camera. Walkman series focused and targeted audiophiles and the like, making this a big hit when Sony Ericsson released the very first model of the Walkman Series – the Sony Ericsson W800i. Cyber shot Series focused on the camera side, entering the boundaries of digital cameras, making your point and shoot camera outdated. By converging technologies, there will always be a trend as well as opportunity, take for example of Sony Ericsson, Sony and Ericsson saw the opportunity to merged their companies to form their new brand to serve and kick start the new era of mobile phones. And turns out to be a good decision for them because when they released their Walkman Series, they have set the trend of music portability, they delivered a successful and innovative musically gifted handset and make people screaming for more. In the past, each entertainment medium was device specific, meaning video was to be played on a television by using a video player of some sort, music was to be played on a cassette tape or compact disc player, radio was to be played on an AM/FM tuner, and video games were played through a console of some sort. Similarly, different communication media used their own proprietary technologies. Voice conversation was carried on using a telephone, video communication briefly used high-end video phones, facsimile copies used fax machines, and e-mail used a computer. Those were the times before the technological convergence took place, historically, technology handled one medium or accomplished one or two tasks, through technological convergence, devices are now able to unify and made it as one portable device. Technological convergence in the last few years has resulted in devices that not only interact with the media they are primarily designed to handle, but also with a number of other formats. For example, the PS2 video game console’s primary purpose was to play console games, but, also it was capable of playing back video discs and music cds, also able to connect to the Internet for online playing. Similarly, modern DVD players are capable of playing DVDs, and also of playing music CDs, displaying photos from photo CDs, playing encoded video in formats such as DIVX or VCD, and playing DVD music. Technological convergence also leads to devices that are designed specifically to replace a number of different devices. Such as the iPod, originally conceived of as a portable music player, but is now touted equally as a portable video player, photo album, and radio tuner. Pushing the traditional portable music players, dedicated photo album et al down to the brink of extinction. In addition, mobile phones, as well, have evolved far beyond their humble beginnings as a simple voice and text communication devices that make people connected, eat their way through the territory and functionality of portable digital music players and digital cameras. With the creation of the internet way back 1969 up to now, the internet is perhaps the most widespread example of technological convergence, for all entertainment technologies – from radio to television, from video to books and to games – can be viewed, listened and played online, mostly with greater functionality than they have in their native technology, also Communications technologies with the aid of the Internet can push through replacing fax machines, telephones, video phones, and the postal service to the edge.
TRENDS in Technological Convergence.
What is Trends? Trends as defined by google: showing how new technology is altering the way we live our lives, and stable and consistent patterns over time. To illustrate further, in mobile phones, the trend nowadays was the proliferation of mobile phones with a touch operated display, or widely known as “touch – screen mobile phones”. Historically, way back then, mobile phones were just a simple candy bar shaped and only have basic functionality – call and text, and also have some basic sort of entertainment for killing time. From candy bar shaped mobile phones down to QWERTY phones and now came the touch screen generation. At first, people were skeptical on jumping on the latest trend on mobile phones. But as time pass by and technology allowed more and more features to fit on a mobile phone, people gradually accepted this trend and touch screen phones were selling like hotcakes.
OPPORTUNITIES in Technological Convergence.
Whenever there is a trend in technology, there will always be an opportunity. As we face the advent of touch – screen mobile phones, the screen manufacturer’s sees this as a lucrative opportunity. Not all mobile phone makers makes their own screen display, they have other manufacturer that manufactures the screen display for them. As the demand for touch screen mobile phones rises, their manufacturing output also rises. This creates more jobs to meet the demands of the consuming public. The technology present now at hand poses a great help in the convergence. Utilizing the latest technology to create the newest and coolest trends known to man was of great profits to every technopreneurs out there the wild.
Convergence in Media.
Convergence in the context of media refers to the technology driven unification of different media channels. For many years different media were clearly separated: broadcast TV, broadcast radio, newspapers, books, video and film, recorded music etc. with the introduction of internet and other digital methods of distribution have paved the way for the changing of the traditional way of media. Nowadays, a digital connection or physical medium can carry any type of media content. For example videos can be distributed on a mobile phone such as short movie clip or a music video; also music can be shared over the internet. This not only means that different types of media are converging, but also that media and platform are converging. In addition to convergence at the distribution level there are areas in which the same content can be re-packaged across media: for example, computer games and films use the same content in different ways and get distributed across many platforms.
TRENDS in Media Convergence.
Digital, and platform convergence go hand in hand with media convergence. Media can be distributed across different platforms ( ps3, xbox, news forecast ) digitally with respect to the currently available technology at its disposal. News nowadays can not only be seen on the comforts of our home but also over the internet, such as BBC, CNN and Yahoo! News. Those news companies have crossed the boundaries of traditional news forecasting and lead the way to the new age of news forecasting straight from the source via the internet. Virtually, most of the publishing companies have their digital version of their publications online. Also, in the music industries, they have morphed into something new and embraced the ever changing technologies and convergences. Traditionally, music makers distributed their music products via the “physical” platform or should I say, through CD’s and DVD’s, but now, they have also eat through online via iTunes and other related music centers online. Same goes through to the games industries, at first, the games were only available through game cd’s, dvd’s and blue – ray. But now, it is digital. You can play online and download legitimate and legal games online. With the advent of media convergence, there came the social networks – wherein people from across the world have connected with each other online. Exchanging information and contacts, this further makes the world virtually smaller.
OPPORTUNITIES in Media Convergence.
Trends = opportunities. Due to the convergence of media, I have the opportunity to communicate with my mother form abroad without paying too much money. Way back then, I used to text my mother abroad occasionally due to the high rates of the short messaging service ( SMS ) abroad. But now, I can use the web and chat to her instantly – and also it is very economical. In every convergence, the underlying technology was always the core of it. Media convergence took place with the aid of the latest technology ready at hand.
CONVERGENCE in Society.
As technology continues to complicate and uplift the lives in every human being around the globe, the society also acquires the ability to improve across the curve. Historically, the society we currently live on doesn’t look the same say, 50 years ago. The society back then was diverged. They look at it differently. There were a lot of chaos and anarchy in the society during those times. Wars and protests were significant. A lot of killings and desaparecidos that took place in the community and pose a vast amount of fear in the minds of the people living within it. In a nutshell, those were the times were you wouldn’t dare to live with. But not, things have greatly changed. Combining the latest trends in technology and security paved the way of the transformation of the new society. People now converge with the society, with the technology, and with the media to come up as a complete and productive individual.
TRENDS in Society Convergence.
The advent of networking sites such as facebook, friendster, myspace and the likes proved to be the source of the trends in the society. People now use a great amount of time on these social networking sites to connect with their friend and / or colleagues.
OPPORTUNITIES in Society Convergence.
As social networking sites continues to lure people into it, the advertisers as well as web and game developers continue to make profit out of this.
Sources:
http://graphics.stanford.edu/~bjohanso/cs448/
http://www.globalchange.com/technology-innovation-future-trends.htm
http://moneyterms.co.uk/media-convergence/
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