Tomorrow in VR - Virtual Reality
The future of the media is a blank page
Speculative, debatable and controversial. But what we all know is that the evolution of the media is deeply connected to the evolution of technology. And if we know where technology is heading, then we can imagine how far the media will go.
This is our vision of tomorrow. We welcome you.
If the thirst for information and knowledge has been constant throughout History, technological innovations were the ones which made the evolution of the media possible. The invention of the movable type made the creation of newspaper printing possible. The control of hertz waves made the creation of radio, first, and then of television, possible, the binary code made the creation of online media possible and optical fiber has changed the way we read, listen to and watch the news.
Each technology has created its own media format. And each media format has created its discipline: radio, television or print media. And each discipline adapted the way of presenting its content. On one side, the written word and the still picture, on the other side, the sound, on the other the moving picture.
And it has been this way up until the very moment when technology made it possible for us to see the world from a new perspective. From above. What we define today as… global.
While growing up, we were used to wait for the news. And we were used for the news to wait for us. The news at a scheduled time and place. Eight in the evening. Sitting on the sofa in front of the television. In the morning, on the radio while going to work. Or in the pages of today’s newspaper with yesterday’s news.
Technology gave us that. And technology is the one to take it away. Today, the news doesn’t have a scheduled time and place. It exists. 24 hours a day. Anywhere in the world. And at any time
We no longer go to the news. Today, we pass by the news. Yesterday we looked for information. Today we need to know how to choose information. What we want to know and how we want to know it. And when we don’t choose, an algorithm does it for us. We debate the what and the how, but the when and where are no longer relevant. When is always. And where is everywhere. In any format. Or in no format. The media is dematerializing.
The media are travelling the road of technology integrating, different formats, different disciplines, in something new. Tendentiously bionic. Where the body, more than a medium or an interaction tool with different hardware, is hardware itself. Receiver and transmitter. Consumer of content, producer of content and a media on itself.
And this changes everything. It has already. It changed the kind of words we use. And the amount of words we use. It changed the way we look at us and the way we look at the world.
It changed the way we communicate with those around us and the way we socialize. Communicating does not imply distance and socializing no longer implies proximity.
And time. It changed time. We don’t have time for everything. We want more. More information and in less time. The dematerialization of the media means that, 40 years from now, someone will be able to identify a moment in which television, radio, newspapers and online media have ended. When formats no longer make sense, when we are no longer tied to a certain one. When the man himself destroyed the form to keep the content.