Opening Remarks – Futures of Entertainment

Josh Green gave the introduction speach this morning – Viscerality and Convergence.   A very image driven presentation so no live notes taken.    The key message is about the reactions to technology; how we bash hit and play technology until it makes our rules.  Look at the reactions, in images, the doctoring of the advertising, that happened in the reaction to the Zune.   How people respond to being constrained or how technology relationship change your behaviour.   How by buying an iPod it changed his relationship to music.    That he can put lots of music on there.  The relationship he has with the iPod feels social, he uses it to facilitate the social.

People are starting to get it, and what they are starting to get is the changed relationship.   In a converged environment, the way that we relate to technology is changed.

Social networks let you be somewhere, let you rub up against people and get to know them, experience the social.  Social networks have moved towards trust networks. Where style leaders for an individual are people you know and trust.  moves away from the the wide network to the focused group.  We are move more towards a tactile relationship, not jsut putting things out there and expecting you to soak it up.

The audiences does not equal behaviour; it is not a series of reactions.   there is a transition of impressions to expressions.  The audience now offer expressions of what they think.  Fan fiction is consumer expression.  People take the commodities and turn them into culture.  The paradox is that media producers make commodidities..but in order for it to be successful it needs to be transformed from a commodity to a cultural artifact.  But once it becomes culture you have to cede control, it is no longer yours.

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