Blog #6: Henry Jenkins' Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide

I have read the book entitled Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, by Henry Jenkins, multiple times throughout my college career. The interesting thing about his book overall, is how the patterns, insights, and predictions seem to arrise in almost every subject. Reading the introduction this time and considering what David Weinberger had said in his book, I decided to draw on some important "key points". 


To begin Jenkin's stated:


"Welcome to convergence culture, where old and new media collide, where grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways."


While Jenkins is simply trying to explain the key concept of his book overall, it is interesting that he brings up the fact that the media producer and consumer the interaction is unpredictable ways. This was also a key point that Weinberger brought up in his book. User content, (or user input, such as tagging or blogging) provides the web with the information and creates knowledge that is accessible for anyone, and can result in a plethora of outcomes. 




"Instead, convergence represents a cultural shift as consumers are encourages to seek out new information and make connections amount dispersed media content."


I thought this was another key idea, as it connects to Weinberger's point focusing around 'social knowing' and tagging. Since each person 'lumps and splits' differently, we draw connections in different ways. This quote shows how Jenkins' see both finding new information and how each person connects the information in new ways. 


"None of us know everything; each of us knows something; and we can put the pieces together if we pool our resources and combine our skills."


Again this ties in to Weinberger's book, especially when looking at how he describes metadata and data. Jenkins and Weinberger both see and mention the key shift in what is 'useful knowledge' and how all other knowledge, especially in the case of specialty topics, should be left the the consumer's interests. 


"You are now entering convergence culture. It is not a surprise that we are not yet ready to cope with its complexities and contradictions. We need to find ways to negotiate the changes taking place. No one group can set the terms. No one group can control access and participation."


This is closely tied into what Weinberger said about how the control of the information/ knowledge is no longer in the hands of a single authority, but rather the collective society that participates via the internet. No one can 'tag' something, that everyone else has to live with, since we can each add our own input. 




Below are some other key points that I drew from the chapter, and my reasoning for why I felt they are important, though they do not directly relate to Weinberger. 


"It also occurs when people take media in their own hands... When people take media into their own hands, the results can be wonderfully creative; they can also be bad news for all involved."


I think Jenkins has an extremely important point, that Weinberger did not really talk about, (or at least not in such detail). When considering that users add content and interact with content in this new era of Internet technology, there is a massive potential for a negative outcome by irresponsible people. I believe a key point is that user's generate content, but are also responsible for that content, and on the Internet, this responsibility seems to be lessened, then through other mediums. 




Quoted Ithiel de Sola Pool, MIT political scientist, "... It operates as a constant force for unification but always in dynamic tension with change. . . . There is no immutable law of growing convergence; the process of change is more complicated than that."

What we are now seeing is the hardware diverging while the content converges.

This quote was especially intriguing because it draws on the point that the physical technology is irrelevant; what matters is that content that imerges from the use of the technology. Basically, wether I use my iPhone or a computer, or even a magazine, what is crucial is the way I interact with that content, not how I interact with the technological item.