Week 5 - Technology and the Impact on Consumption

In todays lecture the main consensus was technology, looking at how its evolved and the impact it has on us as the audience dependant on our consumption rate. In the lecture we started off by looking at a case study of the BBC and its IPlayer, following its timeline since its launch in 2014. We then heavily focused our attention on cinema, looking at the prices since the 1930s to early 2000s and the turnout of audiences.

The reading given to us this week, Anna Everett & John T. Caldwell – ‘New Media: Theorises and Practices of Digitextuality’ gave me an insight in the evolution of digital technology over the years. Focusing on the film and television sections John Caldwell mentions the Pierre Levy and Paul Virillo theory where they’ve coined the digital era as “a cyber-neural-spatial revolution” (Caldwell, 2003:135) in relation to digital television over the internet, talking how the internet was meant to be a “push media” however the digital networking and multitasking has almost increased the evolution resulting it to be a “pull media.”

Caldwell does a great job of putting the evolution of media (especially the film and television side) into perspective. Written in 2003 its ideology stays relevant even to date. When considering the NBC Digital Productions such as ‘Homicide: Second Shift’ and its website ‘Homocide.com’ this was the process of seamlessly merging or integrating old and new media in one motion, it directly connected with the TV series ‘Homicide: Life on the Street’ whilst allowing fans to become more involved with their favourite programme in this new digital age. (Caldwell, 2003: 128) Another example of that could be Roger Price’s ‘The Tomorrow People’ (1973-79) which was refurbished and brought back to our TV screens years later 2013-14. Even the BBC 3s online series drama ‘Thirteen’ allowed audiences to play a game after each show. (BBC Thirteen, 2016)

If I was researching I would likely look into the way, we observe films and television in the 21st century. This would work very easy as I would explore the timeline of development of technology in comparison to when TV and films first started to now. I would then create an audience survey looking at how people observe film and television. However, this a very early idea which is subject to change over time.

References:

Everett, A and Caldwell, J (Eds) (2003), New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextuality, Routledge, London and New York - pp 127-144.