The reason of media convergence

Notwithstanding the different types of content available, media scholars and content experts have attempted to consolidate everything into single keywords. That was the push toward understanding convergence in today’s setting, the push to create a multisensory and realistic experience.

A quote from media guru Marshall McLuhan demonstrates this point: “All media are extensions of some human faculty.” The bicycle and automobile came out of a desire to commute faster than walking, and therein lies their value. Similarly, earphones, speakers, and microphones were invented to expand the sensation of hearing. To extend our sense of sight, we have glasses and telescopes. This is the meaning of extension. The notion of extending our senses and the desire to reproduce reality are outcomes from media convergences and transmedia. New ideas tend to emerge from this a consistent pattern of progression. This has been true historically. The early days of cinema gave us silent movies and black and white films.

So naturally, the next step was to examine technical constraints so as to progress to the next stage in film development. Because the real world exists in color, intuitively, the next stage of growth was toward color film. Because the real world has many sounds, we needed to incorporate real sound into movies. Because the real world is not an image with boundaries but an expansive canvas, screens need to keep getting bigger. Cinemas are becoming increasingly larger, not just due to the growing number of cinema-goers, but to provide an experience that more closely resembles our reality. TV screens, too, are becoming wider. Rims (or “bezels”) are disappearing. Why? To eliminate the boundary between reality and virtual reality.

Bezels are becoming increasingly thinner so users can experience the virtual world more realistically. Why was 3D developed? Because viewing things in 2D is not the way we view our world, so out of this discrepancy came three-dimensional virtual experiences. Even though current 3D technology doesn’t quite resemble reality, it’s just another step in the process. It is not unreasonable to claim that, with greater layers of background and foreground to create perspective, it is just a matter of time before we can experience a perfectly realistic virtual world. 3D technology is still developing, driven by the desire to recreate reality. Another content-related concept we’ll discuss is one that served as the background for the emergence of transmedia storytelling.

We all wish to express ourselves and our creativity. We can see photos, but we can’t see certain expressions, so one way to reveal such content is through storytelling. In order to explain where I went today, I need to start with what I was doing before that. I also need to describe my feelings during the moment to provide my story with substance. This probably sounds like a familiar process to you. This is essentially what storytelling is. Our current mode of storytelling has become more important than the forms of storytelling that existed in any other age. Why? Storytelling in the past lacked the options presented by a diversity of media available for expression, unlike what we have today.

The history of writing a novel and sending it off for typesetting and publication is only a couple of hundreds of years old. So, for most of human history, storytelling has been verbal. We wanted to share more stories, but lacked the media to do so. Mothers in a bygone era would sit by the bedside and tell stories to their children. Today, each and every individual can express his or her thoughts through a preferred language and media. The desire to express, one that has been shackled and repressed for thousands of years, has now been released. Once again, the concept of a story is rising in importance for the current generation.

Now, when we talk about storytelling, what is the sort of storytelling that the media wants? Or is storytelling a core element that can be applied to any media form? These are the issues that await our discussion. What is storytelling in our modern culture of media convergence and transmedia? Before we can find an answer, we first we have to explore the evolution of storytelling.