Convergence Culture

This week is the beginning of the complexities of technological convergence on culture. As Jenkins notes, technological convergence is about more than just the technology. There are serious cultural, economic, political, and social implications to convergence and we are standing at the brink of how these elements will play out. Will the public continue to value capitalistic consolidation of cultural production and control, or is this an opportunity for individuals and communities to use technology as a means for empowerment? In keeping with my theme this semester, I have to ask how convergence divides and connects community. The main area that is most fascinating to me is how the "prosumer" can gain voice by subverting dominant cultural norms. More important, is understanding how policy and education are working toward and against this kind of empowerment.

It would be a huge mistake to treat converging technologies as another cycle of new media innovation. The advent of web 2.0 has enabled easier access to displaying identity, creating user generated content, and as Levy would note harnessing the "collective intelligence". Where before media innovation has served to distribute cultural content to the public - we are now in an era where we can seek out and find information that serves our individual interests, interact with, create and distribute our own opinions, thoughts and knowledge to the public. Where those in power were representing to us what "others" experiences were - now those "others" have the opportunity to represent themselves. Of course, the voices are not as loud or big as the massive media conglomerates - but is the sheer act of producing our own content empowering in and of itself - or does it need to be percieved by others to truly be empowering. Furthermore, what are some of the costs of this process of mediated individual expression?

Jenkins asks some of the most important questions about this time - by pointing to major tensions that exist in the way we have constructed our cultural producing economy and how convergence can rock those assumptions. Some of the more relevant questions he has asked for me include:

Re-negotiating relations between consumers and producers
*it is amazing how hard corporations will fight to allow people to buy their products/yet will equally discourage the appropriation of those products. We are now in a read-write culture, how will this be embraced or resisted and what is the most democratizing system?

Re-engaging citizens
Can consumption actually spur political activism? Interesting idea.....how are the lines between consumption and citizenship crossed and does consumption distract or focus our attention on relations of political power that can and do govern our lives.

and redefining intellectual property rights
What is the RIGHT kind of copyright. Should knowledge be made freely available for people to build upon, or should we be able to safeguard and prosper from our innovations? What motivates innovation?

These three questions raise issue with how we as a national and international entity will continue to understand and perpetuate the relationships between media, consumption, ownership and political power. I am underwhelmed by the apathetic responses to media and representation, but even more so as to how media confer political power. My hope is that as the process of convergence flattens the process of participation and allows entry into the political arena, that political power and marginalized voices are empowered, transformed and mobilized. Is this idealistic? Maybe. Could it be a reality? I have no idea. The promise of new technology has a way of blinding some of the realities. The democratizing rhetoric tends to override the inequities that web 2.0 can reproduce - and the removal of physical, visible labor has a way of rationalizing what some may call unequal labor distribution and exploitation.

Why are we so willing to trade ethics for profit?