Mediazation changazation the futurization

I just learned a handful of new words that are able attach “ization” to its caboose.  Oh, the joy of scholarly writing.  I feel I must dawn my red velvet robe, bite down on my corncob pipe and grab some heavy hard cover and pretend to read it nestled next to a warm fire.  Alas, I am not eighty nor can I afford a home with a fireplace (put I’ll keep my robe).  This scholarly business is why it’s hard to say I enjoy reading- You like reading?  How about this article in Science Magazine that’s fifty pages.  No, no.  I like to be in charge of what I read for pleasure, and that does not include non-fiction writing most of the time.

Anyways, this article was decently interesting, once the beating-around-the-bush was fin.  Thorburn and Jenkins made a fantastic argument about adaptation of media in favor of converging rather than making obsolete, except they threw in too many tangents.  New media convergence is an extremely popular theory amongst any communication study because it’s what we as a society face today.  It’s true birth was not that long ago (I still remember my AOL dial-up sounds of torture) eventually leading to Facebook starting a nice competition to see who can beat it to become the ruler of the World Wide Web.  Technology itself, however, is becoming obsolete in that a majority of the population is transformative.  The Web is not going to die, so more and more people are willing to test new upgrades initially.  Take Google+ for example.  It shut down new users almost immediately because of the first million new users instantly, and shunned millions more out (thanks a lot Google).   Nevertheless, older forms of media branched into society’s new favorite, and it would not be as successful without its ancestors.

I think it’s silly to ever argue that old medias become obsolete.  What once was will always be cherished into advancing our society; and will always popularize museums.  Granted, television kicked everything before its creation ass, and same goes for the web.  But, what do we go onto to the web to do?  Ever form of media before Web’s time. For instance, email- which stands for electronic mail, which includes the word mail, which is still a product we receive today, even though most of it is junk (hello spam!).  The pattern continues.  Simply put, we would not have this amazing phenomenon of technology without its past.  Plus I feel older people are just sour because they missed out on a lifetime of information at their fingertips.

“ ‘Grandma, where do babies come from?’ ‘Why, a stork dear.’ ‘False!  Google told me they come from intercourse.  What’s intercourse Grandma?’”

The argument of “panic” when mating technologies seemed nonsensical.  The only individuals who panic about new technologies are those who just invented the previous and see their stocks plummeting.  Sure, institutions are threatened, but a consistent amount of change is healthy for stabilizing anything to stay likable.  John Adams himself said the constitution should be changed periodically, but that’s a different time and place.  This same point juxtaposes with obsolete media.  The change occurs to better the media, one of its most distinguishable features.  The use, or should we sometimes say abuse, of this media is a self-reflective process.  Crap comes on the Internet, but let’s use our own cognitive capacity to avoid it.

In the end, an apocalypse will end the world, but not the media.  And, according to this article, it will not end print media, aka books (suck it Kindle!).  In fact, the more convergence media has in any type of technology, the more interesting and popular that media becomes.  Facebook would be buried if it didn’t allow YouTube posts and business/advertising collaborations, and it’s only the beginning.