opinion
Advances in technology allow content to spread out and change shape at the edges. This requires a corresponding shift in mindset.
Future media technologies will change the future of content.
We are moving from traditionally tangible forms of cultural output, such as songs, books, and films, with no clear boundaries, to nebulous clouds of content that diffuse at the edges and are constantly changing shape. will continue to be seen.
This ambiguity of content formats, accelerated by new technologies, may require an accompanying shift in mindset. We must think not only about the changing nature of content housed within these formats, but also how marketing messages are tailored to those formats. Perhaps we'll move beyond 30-second TV spots and matching banners to more hybrid output.
To explain how this happened, we need to trace the history of content.
From oral to reading and writing
Language historian Walter Ong's life's work was to analyze humanity's transition from oral to literate, or from spoken to written language, and its impact on society.
He discovered that civilizations based on oral stories for transmitting information made their cultural narratives fluid and evolved through omissions and embellishments of communication. In other words, the teller of the tall tale makes it up along the way, and over time it becomes a legend.
In contrast, cultures that introduced writing early and later the printing press quickly achieved media “fixity.” The content was pasted in place, unchanged between duplicates, and the copy was accurate. Literary societies could easily trace debits and credits, issue statutes and laws, and pass on religious learning without fear of corrupting the original message. The media has become rigid.
For centuries, media fixity has been the norm. Your newspaper was my newspaper. Your TV show was my TV show. Your song was my song. Mass media can promote moments of shared cultural experience thanks to a common frame of reference.
But the digital revolution, and more recently the AI revolution, means we may be returning to an era of perpetual flux, where media never reaches its final form and increasingly tends to move on.
From remix to restoration
in his book the inevitable, Kevin Kelly describes 12 forces that will shape the shape of future society. One of his forces, which he termed “remixing”, is the cross-pollination of old and new media, or rather the re-quoting of elements of old cultures in new contexts.
For Kelly, technology means the medium is never finished. We're always open to updates and new combinations, like spaghetti bolognese with vegan sriracha sauce.
Granted, this is not a 21st century idea. Remixes and sampling existed from the 1950s into the 1960s. So are the ideas of expansion and expansion.
play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead — retelling of hamlet From the point of view of the two incidental characters, this was considered revolutionary in 1966. Today, we might call this a “sidequel.” This is a combination of the words “sequel” and “prequel” to indicate a parallel story to the main action.
We are particular about remixing, and recent advances in technology have taken remixing to a new dimension. Today, remixes are moving beyond the boundaries of media formats. Not content with simply quoting refrains from music within other music, amateur musicians soundtrack speeches, rants, and everyday noises with heavy metal riffs and dance loops, creating video-based memes. You can see it transformed into a music meme.
Audio-only performances gain an extra dimension through retrospective animation or are even used as the basis for TikTok's “comedy karaoke” format, where influencers “reimagine” classic comedy routines.
Furthermore, advances in technology allow us to rethink our own work and become increasingly intrusive and interventionist. Actions can now be rewritten rather than recited or refocused. Overwrite — Original work.
From repair to rewriting
I remember watching George Lucas try to redo scenes from the original Star Wars Trilogy with new special effects. Lucas always felt that he did not understand the vast and chaotic nature of the spaceport Mos Eisley in 1977, and in 1997 he restored his original vision by dropping his new CGI characters into the background. . For me, the results were shocking.
Meanwhile, Sir Ridley Scott had two more rifts. blade runner. The 1992 director's cut includes subtle edits to the 1982 original. The final cut in 2007 included more technology-based updates. For example, they scanned the face of Harrison Ford's son's mouth to address errors in lip syncing not matching speech.
However, recently we have entered an era of dimensional entertainment, including augmented reality, virtual reality (VR), gaming, and the Metaverse. In these cloud-based worlds, everything is dynamic, everything is in flux, and nothing is sacred. We have moved from a “read-only world” to an “overwrite world.”
In the early days, VR platforms like Art Plunge were “repainting” the world. mona lisa, building a world beyond existing frames where visitors can try out Da Vinci's ingenious inventions. The world's most famous image has been transformed into a virtual, interactive artifact.
Just recently, three years after its original release date, cyberpunk 2077 It finally received praise from critics.
When it first released in 2020, the game's deep flaws and bugs didn't sit well with players due to excessive hype from E3 and CES, as well as endless development overruns.
However, developer CD Projekt has been able to retroactively reconfigure its Tentpole title, saying that this title was always intended to be a very, very expanded beta awaiting its progress. I insisted. It happened three years later.
eventually, cyber punk's creators knew that a digitally savvy audience would understand that modern media is never perfected. The world will continue to grow and its characters will continue to live virtual lives.
Now that we have entered the age of AI, this phenomenon will only become stronger.we have already seen family guy Reimagined as a 1980s live-action sitcom, Lord of the Ring Directed by Wes Anderson. For now, this type of escapism remains novel or curios, but what if we refined our use of this technique and put it to better use?
Can old movies be recast and updated to suit today's stars? Reimagine movies that were shot in 2D, transform the “sets” into fully navigable 3D worlds, and turn the camera into Could it be placed somewhere else? Can we create a modern equivalent? Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead Ask AI to help Lucasfilm director rethink the empire strikes back From Boba Fett's perspective?
Or could Brad Pitt's ability to speak fluent Mandarin spell the end of dubbed and subtitled films, as evidenced by the acceleration of AI voice cloning and lip-syncing solutions? ?
The future is multimedia
All of this means that brands of the future need to be truly multimedia. In fact, like many brands, that doesn't just mean multichannel. Rather, the modern media environment means that the lines between content formats are blurring (podcasts to videos, videos to games, games to movies, etc.), resulting in opportunities for creative concepts and messaging. This means you need to be flexible. Morph.
It is as if the future contents have perfected the ability to change from solid to liquid to gas at will, and in some cases all three at once. Brands may therefore come to realize that their assets and collateral can be 'reclaimed', restructured and redeployed. Classic ads with great cultural resonance can be modernized or futurized and given new life for the next generation. All of this is driven by advances in technology.
Nothing is fixed anymore, everything has an infinite life.
In that case, I'd probably go back to 2050 and rewrite this article.
