We have been hearing it since the days of dial-up: The Internet is the future of… everything. I am hard-pressed to find anything still unaffected by the connectivity of the Internet. As active members of the media creation industry, it is important to keep up on exactly what is happening today in our world.

This can be difficult because we are “in the now” and it may be hard to see when we are engulfed in it. But if we take a look back over the last decade, we can easily see how convergence has already happened, and begin to wonder what the next big step will be.

It’s affecting the music industry first (Napster first, now the BitTorrent war), the television/film industry (YouTube, and more BitTorrent) and now the Writer’s Guild of America Strike where they are demanding higher pay for Internet-delivered content. But I’m sure you’ve heard enough about all of that already.

Even video games are bridging the gap between console gaming and Internet usage. Bungie, developers of the Halo series, have possibly made THE best gaming platform integration using Halo 3.

With statistics and Internet presence being a living, breathing part of the gaming world, users not only play with each other, but can compare just about any statistic online, watch replay videos and screenshots all through Bungie’s site. The ability to record content from IN-GAME and have it posted to an online website, all while adding a social network spin to it, makes the online site for the game just as fun as actually playing it. I personally don’t even own the game, but I’m still really excited to see such tight integration with the online world. Hopefully this encourages other content creators to take Halo 3 as an example and build similar concepts into future media.

As media scholars have professed, media and the Internet are affecting each other like gravity on an orbiting comet. The days of an end-user are dwindling. Instead, of the TV being the dead-end it was in the 1950s, users are now active participants in what they watch (American Idol.)

But integration doesn’t stop there. Take Facebook, and its open application framework, allowing anyone to write a program that all users can interact with others regarding niche subject matters. Facebook applications have brought interactivity to any topic its users want to build a community around. But what are the most popular topics? Media!

I’m not even going to go into Planet Earth and the type of genuinely reflexivity it presents to us about our own world. The realities of nature, that which live in solitude from our digital world–presented in HD, in its purist form, yet still experienced vicariously. And are you kidding? I can hardly contain myself–I love exploring media from this angle! I think this type of genuine interest is what keeps our of work FUN.

Creating media is more than just pointing a camera and hitting record. It is an extension of the human desire to tell stories. Whether it be carved on cave walls, or in the latest TV episode you downloaded from the iTunes store. I take pride in that our crew at Titus Films appreciates media as more than just content–that this medium was meant to communicate something, and that we love working with people that have something to share with the world.

Categories: New Media, Old Media