As I make my way through the interviews in Designing Media, I find myself leaning further and further towards Chris Anderson’s opinion of the term “media”:
I think media is an expired word. I don’t know what it means. It’s a word that maybe once had meaning but that meaning has been fuzzied to the point that it means everything and as a result nothing today. I think in the twentienth century media meant something pretty crisp until Marshall McLuhan came and screwed it all up. Today I have no idea what media means.
I notice that as I read, the word “media” practically disappears—I ignore it in the same way that I ignore words like “a” and “the”. Like it has for Chris, the word to me has become stretched so thin that it no longer means anything.
Even so, one interview in particular stood out to me for the purposes of this blog assignment. In his interview, Roger McNamee discusses media in the context of musicians and promotion, particularly those of his band Moonalice. The implicit definition of media in McNamee’s interview seems to be any means of connection—connection between a band and their fans, connection among communities centered around certain passions and interests, and so on. This type of connection requires participation from all sides, and participation is highly valuable in today’s culture. He contrasts this to the old media models of forty or fifty years ago, where the aim was to get a very one-sided message out to large segments of consumers. As McNamee points out, “a behavioral change has taken place, and people are returning to the notion that it’s more fun and entertaining to create media than it is just to consume it.” The barriers for entry to the world of media creation have all but dissolved.
McNamee implies that the type of communication is not important; whether it be posters, t-shirts, DVDs, or Twitter, the medium is very much secondary to the connection that people seek by communicating across it. What’s valuable to him is what’s actually happening between the band and their fan base.
One comment
Well said, as usual. I find myself thinking a lot about how our interaction has changed: from listening to FDR at a Fireside Chat (truly efferent listening) to a more aesthetic rendering of interaction now.
To clarify, I never actually listened to FDR at a Fireside Chat.
by EHadlock on February 14, 2011 at 10:39 AM. #