Multisensory Web
Filed under: 
Video is quickly overtaking the web and will diminish the primacy of long-form, text-based journalism. Although people are consuming more information than ever before, they are reading less.
The impact of text will decline further because of an emerging multisensory web. Shapes and gestures are already augmenting or replacing text input on touch screens, game consoles (e.g. Wii) and other devices, and 3-D televisions and computer displays are expected to hit the market in 2010.4 We will eventually have the ability to transmit smells and other data about the physical world, such as air samples to test for pollution. For instance, the Defense Sciences Office in the U.S. Department of Defense, which focuses on “mining ‘far side’ science,” is working on a way to make multi-sensory data converge in real time, just like it does in humans.
“There will be things we can’t even image when the web is more multisensory and we can smell and touch,” notes John Bracken of the MacArthur Foundation. New devices of all kinds will feed this transformation.
Journalism has treated online media as a “horseless carriage” rather than reimagining a new form of journalism suitable for a multifaceted, converging web. If platform convergence is challenging today, a multisensory web, combined with mass mobile-media will make the media landscape even more complicated. The time it takes independent media organizations to participate in such innovations may not be worth the short-term benefits. However, if they do not take radical steps to keep up with early innovations, the gap between their internal competencies and how people relate to information will become even greater.
This blog is an excerpt from The Big Thaw, a guide to the evolution of independent media, written by Tony Deifell of Q Media Labs and produced by The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets. Learn how your organization can use this report. For more information and recommendations from the study, click here.
Leave a comment