| ALWAYS ON A constant panorama of media broadens our peripheral vision and fractures our attention span •• Television in the days of old was either on or off. There is now a growing, important continuum between active and passive, changing how we watch and interact with video. This is also ripe for exploration. In some cases content may resemble a revival of Push, or ambient wallpaper. In other cases, an extension of new media, like massive multi-player games, simulations would include the option for players to sometimes experience it passively and cinematically. |
UNLIMITED INTERFACE New Code = New Experience •• By envisioning new ways to take advantage of the underlying Internet, the experience of TV is limited only by our ability to code a convincing and powerful environment. The medium behaves how we choose to interact with it; and we interact with it depending on how we choose to build it. Internet-delivered television carries many of the attributes and expectations of the Net. It demands our attention and offers more interactive options — it lets us watch (or create) when and how we want, limited only by an understandable interface. |
SCALABLE Internet television defies confined boundaries •• As tiny as a postage stamp on your cell phone or as broad as your monitor screen can stretch it, IPTV is a unique, elastic medium. Fluid and compatible, video should format to adapt to your lifestyle, shrinking down or expanding depending on how and when you need it. |
MOBILE Content is available anywhere, anytime and can be both personally and locally relevant •• Watch it, find it, carry it, select it, start it, stop it, store it, send it, broadcast it. TV is more than just a fixture in the living room — content now has to compete with a moving backdrop. It may also be focused for personal needs, interests, and tied to specific locations. Content creators will have the ability to cater to niche markets on specific topics in specific, localized areas. |
UNIVERSAL Content is physically pervasive and propagates throughout the mediasphere •• Online video has the potential to disseminate throughout the mediasphere, resembling an information dust storm — where it lands is almost impossible to determine. It takes on a life of its own, as we ponder where it began and where it is going. Such viral characteristics literally explode our notion of TV as we used to know it. |
| VIRAL VIEWERSHIP Viewers find and label content, and then it finds its audience •• Viewers define what they're looking at, and promote it with context that makes sense to them. Was it a speech by the President? Now it's a parody of self importance. The most interesting stuff might not have a category mapped out and a slot in which to market it —or it might be much more interesting outside of its usual slot. Useful, user-defined tagging, as well as taxonomy, is crucial, fundamental functionality in this new environment. |
COMMUNITY The audience is as important as the show, sometimes it is the show •• A symbiosis of people and what they see will arise. Watching, while a personal experience, is usually given context by a social setting. As interfaces become more sophisticated, online experiences of watching are more frequently defined by the quality of the social network — the self-organizing group that shares interests and commentary with each other. In the case of many new properties, the social network is the greater value to the participants than the content itself. Some networks will reinforce current social groups, some will create new ones; there will be a community lifecycle to affect the whole process. |
MULTIPLE PROGRAM FORMATS The medium is shape-shifting to accommodate new tastes and delivery mechanisms •• Video content, and how we want to digest it, is shape-shifting as it settles into a new environment enjoyed by people with a new and faster media metabolism. The television show in the peak of the three-network hegemony was defined by ten minutes of rising plot fever punctuated by an afterglow of a couple commercials. Just as new devices and delivery mechanisms have broken this media mold, they are also giving rise to entertainment and news that isn't straight-jacketed by the old format. |
NETWORKED TECHNOLOGY Parts working in tandem make up a greater medium •• In the new network all devices are a linked part of a greater system. A person may own all screens, so paying attention to, and designing for both the overlap and differences is an interesting issue for designers and content creators. While no one wants recycled remakes delivered unceasingly to their home and phone, an orchestration of many devices to deliver related programs could be provocative. |
OPEN STREAM Harnessing the value of content must allow for free, paid, and in-between •• Though online content companies may want to rope off their playground to charge entry, an open field attracts more people and more value. A great many interesting things are being created online by people who don't intend to charge for it. Consumers and producers both carry new, often opposing expectations of ownership. The interface must help resolve this — at least as much as it can, because as big media groups try to change the terms every few years, viewers are quite likely to be skeptical of a lack of clarity. |
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by ErikAdigard, M-A-D & JohnAlderman/SarahBorruso, Avenue A | Razorfish
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