I’ve become interested in the manner in which private ownership of digital interfaces has altered our understanding of what constitutes a medium. Traditional media integrated hardware and interface and allowed a greater division between the roles of manufacturer, content programmer and user. But new technologies have challenged those conceptions. I’ve been thinking about these in terms of the “micromedium” and the “monomedium.”
Televisions, radios and telephones are distinct mediums that could be produced by a variety of manufacturers. The programming that came through these as either one way (radio and television) or two way (telephones) could be produced by a variety of communicators and bore no direct relation to the manufacturer. But digital interfaces privatize mediums. You may have hundreds of “friends” and “followers” but there is a unitary Twitter, Facebook etc. When the popularity of these micromediums fade, as fade they must (remember when everybody you knew was on Friendster?), then the micromedium itself will fade.
Micromediums are so unique in their capabilities as to often bear little resemblance to one another, even within categories like microblogging and social networking. Despite their clear lineage and similar function as “social networking sites” Friendster and Facebook are worlds apart. They have unique terminologies and tools that define not only how the user interacts with them, but how the user understands communication. This is why a company like Squidoo insists on calling its user generated webpages “lenses.” This is why Twitter “Tweets” and Facebook “Friends”. In naming a thing, we both mark it as our own and distinguish it from similar products. The highly competitive, global and growing nature of the web demands that these differentiations manifest through both unique language and function.
Micromediums are not so unique as to be truly distinct mediums (in the way that the telephone was). They are often variations, remixes and evolutions of preexisting mediums that come together in new and changing ways. The open source nature of applications that may run on these micromediums only increases this blurring and converging of technologies. This technological convergence, combined with corporate conglomeration leads to walled gardens of compatible technologies such as the Google owned Blogger, which integrates the Google owned Picasa/Gmail/YouTube/etc. into a single format that is both recognizable as a micromedium but still belongs to the larger medium of the blog.
While digital interfaces have fragmented and become highly specialized, the physical objects on which we access them have changed as well. Mobile computing tools like the iPhone are characterized by their flexibility rather than functionality. They cede control of their interface to the digital micromedia that they channel. A heavily mechanical device like the Blackberry, with its tiny keypad and other strong physical attributes is looking antiquated in comparison to the blank and fully plastic interface of the iPhone.
As microcomputing brings our screens and processors closer together and physical objects like mice and keyboards cede to touchscreen technology, we can look forward to a future in which our virtual interfaces are more real and recognizable to us than the physical interfaces through which we access them.
Anyway, these are a few thoughts I’ve been having. They aren’t fully matured to the point where they might constitute an article. I’d love to hear your feedback, thoughts and suggestions for evolving this subject.