Let’s Get Digital: Tech Convergence Through the Years
Digital convergence is the sharing and spreading of content across different media channels; Think about the New York Times, it used to be only in print and now it’s available online for anyone to see. Over the years, technological convergence has affected my lifestyle in numerous ways. From movie watching, to music listening and photography, the differences in technology between my childhood and adult life are pretty amazing. Now, looking back to the good old days, let’s see how far we’ve come.
When I was younger, films were one of my favorite pastimes. I used to go to the local blockbuster with my mom on a Friday and pick out the one movie I would binge watch all weekend. Today, I can stream a multitude of movies (or TV shows) on platforms like Hulu and Netflix anytime I want. I’d say that’s a life changing luxury to say the least. Kids these days won’t ever know the panic that sets in when you realize that it’s T-2 hours until you have to return the DVD rental or you’ll get charged another late fee! The current wide range of access to new movies has let me learn more about cinematography and aided the process of memory making on those at-home movie nights with friends.
While movies are my guilty pleasure, music is my kryptonite. Hopefully someone out there can relate when I say that I used to hoard CDs like it was my job. I would spend hours putting those beauties in an album and organizing them by color and category. Then when the time came for me to get an iPod Nano, I loaded those CD’s, one by one, on to my iTunes so I could then have them on my handheld device. Nowadays, listening to music is as easy as breathing. All I have to do to get a front row seat at my own personal concert is pick up my phone, search a song on Spotify and press play. 8-year-old me is beside herself right now.
The last technological convergence that changed the game for me is photography and photo display. While physical pictures are still high in demand for decor, digital photograph displays are provided to anyone that has Facebook or Instagram. The craving of immediacy in our impatient society has programmed us to point, shoot and post within seconds; while our parents were seen standing in line to develop this summer’s film rolls. Modern photography is now beyond the concept of a traditional camera; anyone that has a phone can choose to hone their inner photographer with the ease of a touch screen button. For the ultimate convergence, we can even take a picture of a physical print with our iPhones and post it on Instagram for the ultimate aesthetic.
Through the years, we’ve seen many changes within technological convergence and they’ve taught us about what we are capable of in the future while reflecting on what we rose from. Even though we keep exceeding expectations however, I hope we never forget the humble beginnings of how we used to do it back in the day.
