Jadimauro’s Weblog

After absorbing all three articles I feel as though although we may think we have reached the full level of convergence we are not there yet. In the article “Introduction: Worship at the Alter of Convergence” this quote stood out for me “…that convergence culture represents a shift in the ways we think about our relations to media…..but that the skills that we acquire through play may have implications for how we learn, work, participate, in the political process, and connect with other people around the world.” This speaks to that fact that we may not realize our media is in a state of convergence but slowly everything is coming together. The article later discusses that we are in a position of transition and “convergence describes the process by which we will sort through those options.” I had never previously thought of convergence in this way but this article helped to put a new light on it for me and helped me to see that in the future convergence will be much greater. I’m excited to see convergence expand in the coming years. I don’t think that convergence will ever really stop I mean there is something that will always be converged into something else I think that is what we do as a society. I mean I think that if we stop converging then we have discovered everything that we can and we no longer need to do anything for ourselves. I think that we are only at the tip of the iceberg with technology.

I think that convergence comes with usability and under the influence of the consumers, which is what the other two articles discuss. “From Computer Lib/Dream Machines” discusses many things but I think what I took from this article is that even back in the seventies they realized that things must be visually appealing but at the same time being usable and present the information. I think that this is the dilemma that every website and designer faces today. How do you make the site visually appealing to draw the user in but at the same time how do you easily present the necessary information. One thing that I noticed in this article was that when he was talking about schools and how they are not working and designed properly. It was basically saying that by creating little boxes for subjects it inhibits students. I wonder if this author would have been able to see that in some ways websites have become so formulaic that they might have lost something. I mean when you look at websites they all have very similar designs and they all usually follow the same setup. I wonder if by doing that we in the same way might have lost a little bit of our creativity on the web, just as in schools our creativity is stunted by putting things in boxes. I don’t know just a thought let me know if that makes sense to anyone but myself.

The article “From Soft Architecture Machines” refers to that fact that design, will be dictated by the user. I think that in many ways the web has become a sort of home away from home for many people and I think that we are spending so much time on the internet that we want things the way we like them. I mean if you look at things like Myspace.com and facebook.com you can design your page. You can put pictures up, wall-paper, videos, music, and it all represents you. In this article it says that everyone can design their own home but not necessarily a building. I think that same is for the web everyone can design their own page, myspace, etc. but not everyone can design something that is completely functional for a company. So I am taking that metaphor a bit more literally in this sense and I think it works.