“‘Chinese netizen visions an iWorld taken over by Apple’ – According to the video maker, Mingjai, the video is an idea for an Apple commercial that he came up with and executed.”
As I type this on my iPad on the train, I am pretty astounded by the way in which I am able to engage with media as an interactive consumer in an environment in which I would once simply be passively reading a book. In fact, I think it is quite hard to define my position – I am consuming information but at the same time reprocessing it and utilising it as perhaps it was not intended by the producers.
Thus, I can determine that my iPad has become an extension of myself, adhering to McLuhan’s claims (Understanding Media, 1964) that ‘the medium is the message’. No matter what I am producing, the fact that I can engage with the online world while in transit, without needing a computer and a whole heap of wires connecting me to this virtual environment, makes my medium the message.
Through my interaction in this way, I will be able to (hopefully) to create a response from readers who also are affected by the medium being the message – there may be someone in Germany sitting in a bus stop reading this blog, again a situation which would not have been considered ten years ago.
This video, ‘The world in thirty years’, is one artists interpretation of the way in which the convergence of media formats will see Apple’s iProducts incorporated into almost all variations of our daily routine.
As supported by Dr Teodor Mitew in his lecture on the trajectories of convergence at University of Wollongong on March 11th, 2013, ‘anyone can create new content and share it’. This, all at little cost to both the producer and consumer. The traditional structure of media as produced by a minority for the masses is changing, giving the masses a bigger voice, and no longer governed by the views of the few.
Interactive tools and platforms such as Apple’s iPhone – which has become synonymous with multi-platform communication – allow us to create and collect a range of applications, themselves mediums, which gives the consumer the opportunity to filter content for themselves and participate in a broad range of activities online, from anywhere, at anytime.
This video is an Apple advertisement for the iPhone 5 – the newest model in the iPhone product line – which exemplifies the varied uses of the iPhone, now not purely as a tool for direct communication (via voice call, video call or text), but through processes such as image sharing, the phone itself supporting a further variety of platforms.
This is an example of Henry Jenkin’s (Henry Jenkins on the changing media landscape) argument that ‘spectatorial culture is giving way to participatory culture’. Through our consumption, we are becoming participants in the media culture.
P.s. Image courtesy of Ministry of Tofu
P.p.s. Video 1 via Mingjai – The Freestyle Show on YouTube.
P.p.p.s. Video 2 via Apple on YouTube
