Last week we reviewed the four functions of media (i.e., informative, correlational, transmittal, and entertaining) and as technology continues to accelerate, these four goals will keep emerging as questions to be answered. How has the transition from “old media” to “new media” affected the theory of the niche and the way we interact with our technology?
The theory of the media niche describes the media environment as an ecology of media organizations in indirect competition for finite resources, and explains how these organizations exist within a niche (i.e., using specific resources that others therefore cannot). The theory predicts that media organizations will survive if they can successfully occupy a niche and specifies the conditions by which this is possible.
Old media (i.e., newspapers, radio, cable, books, photography, or the telegram) are differentiated from new media by more than the age of the technology. Some critical aspects of old media are that it is analogue (i.e., physical and not digital), degrades over time, and requires physical space. Beyond its physical nature, old media were expensive to produce and were created to fulfill only one of the four functions of media (e.g., newspapers are informational). A lack of convergence is not the only thing that separates old and new media; Old media is not experiential or interactive.
New media is becoming increasingly convergent as it fulfills all four functions of media. As new media continues to become more convergent, it seems to be outdated to define its niche by a particular channel. This has led to overpopulation of media organizations in any given niche. Organizations that previously existed in different realms are now competing for the same resources (i.e., audience, content, advertising dollars, and gratification sets). To combat this potential problem, organizations that cannot stand ground in a traditional niche will attempt to identify with a smaller niche (e.g., Myspace now focusing on music-networking). New media continues to expand through a digital society as it becomes increasingly ephemeral; departing from previous forms of space consuming outlets. The increasing amount of channels in the digital age makes it possible to prosper in smaller niches (albeit with fewer resources). As participants in the digital society ourselves, humans are often becoming unaware of how extensively they use and consume new media. This development suggests new media is becoming more transparent; or arguably more translucent, than ever before.
Transparent technology is a tool that requires no skill or knowledge to operate. On the opposite end, opaque technologies require skill and capacities, and there is a sharp distinction between the user and the tool. These tools were designed to serve a function and nothing else. While these two categories cover a wide range of tools, it should be argued that another category has emerged: translucent technology. These “translucent technologies” are not actually mapped to the human perceptual system, and therefore cannot be called true transparent technologies. However, humans have gotten so used to using these technologies that they have moved beyond the opaque category. One example of this translucent technology is the computer keyboard. Most humans can operate the keyboard without any thought; however, practice is required to get to this level. Thus they keyboard fits in neither the opaque nor the transparent categories, and a new category must be created, the translucent technology. As reported in the December 2011 issue of Wired Magazine, Masahiro Mori published an article describing the concept of the “uncanny valley” in 1970. Mori, a robotics researcher, forwarded that even though humans would eventually be capable of producing robots with nearly human-like appearance, humans would experience significant aversion to human-like robots. Mori described that as an object looks increasingly human-like, we experience increased levels of empathy and identification with that object; however, at a certain level, our fondness dramatically declines. Mori coined this feeling the “uncanny valley” and it is characterized by “the chilly sensation we feel when we see a robot that looks almost – but not quite – human” (Wired Magazine, 2011).
Clark describes an opaque technology as one that “keeps tripping the user up” and a transparent technology as one that is integrated our “own biological capacities”. The concept of the uncanny valley would suggest that humans will view robots with near human-like appearance as onstrous, which could constitute a technology which trips the user up. Yet, a robot with a near human-like appearance indicative of some of our biological capacities. Given the current direction of our robotic technology and the ever developing skills of humans in relation to technology, new categories between opaque and transparent should be considered. As we have discussed, technology is changing faster than we even realize and it is the job of leaders in these media organizations to keep up. These concepts (i.e. Theory of the Niche, transparency, opaque, and translucence) are important factors to consider while working with media. What else has changed and what other variables may impact these concepts we have outlined?
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