convergence #1: technological access

Technological convergence is a concept relating to access: according to this there are 4 channels for new digital services to access a home: TV-line, wired telephony, wired internet, wireless cell phones (quadruple play). (These are not all access-possibilities, but the ones that include up-channels. Satellite TV and wireless analog/digital TV/radio broadcasting don't have up-channels yet.)

To be more precise, this is always understood as access to a home, where one or many individuals may live and use the facilities.

But there are other types of access if you define it as "access to an individual media user": the "individual-at-home" (via personalized mobile phone, via personalized internet access), the "individual-in-car" (via radio, mobile phone, wireless data services), the "individual-in-action" (only via mobile), and finally also the "seated individual" (the classsic example being the laptop or blackberry user, sitting in some waiting room or at a public HotSpot).

So convergence in the second perspective is different from classic Technological Convergence, because the primary thing is not the infrastructure (channel, line), but the situated mind where media streams converge.

the only means to access all 4 scenarios is mobile access. so mobile access at home is ambivalent - it may feel like a wireless device connected to a fixed line, but it may also feel like nomad connevtivity, the fact that it is happening in a house being only peripheric.

Posted by martin at April 25, 2007 2:09 PM