Now, <em>That's</em> Entertainment Technology

What It Means

If all this change seems daunting, don't despair. Some things, like the way we see new movies nowadays – in the theater, with popcorn and a sweetheart – will be with us long after we've colonized the moon and Iraq becomes a democracy. But as B-Side founder Chris Hyams predicts, audience preference will come to dictate even that experience behind-the-scenes: “In the next few years we will see [audience] power extend beyond the web… [O]nline audience opinion will dictate what shows air on TV, what DVDs are stocked at the local video store, and what films play at the movie theater around the corner.”

In short, the future looks like a happy place for entertainment consumers: cheaper, easier, more profitable and more portable. But does all that convenience come at the cost of quality? "[The future will be] almost like the Warhol quote, but instead of 15 minutes of fame, it will be 15 megabytes," suggests Watson. If everyone's making entertainment, will our favorite things be drowned out by the masses? If we discover a good band or actor, will we be less likely to check out their whole body of work if we've parsed our media into individual songs or episodes?

When iTunes first began selling single songs, a curious thing happened: naysayers claimed Apple opened the door for the "death of the album," and by extension, the death of music as real art. Without having to buy the whole disc, a cohesive piece of work, fear grew that songs would become simple blips of auditory candy. Without the record companies separating the wheat from the chaff, that fear is somewhat founded; we are indeed faced with an unending variety of candy. As Watson puts it: "The end result is too much information. The big issue is quality.[But] the counter argument is that search and filtering will sort this out." This, perhaps, will be the role delegated to future media companies: aggregating suggestions that we might like, instead of bombarding us with the whole spectrum of choice that actually exists.

What we, the consumers, will get isn't any better or worse – just different. Though we can now easily buy single songs, there will always be bands like Radiohead whose albums are meant as cohesive works, and their fans will continue to buy them as such. And viewers will still watch some shows chronologically, enjoying the depth that comes with cohesion. Media technologies won't kill anything; instead, they will allow artists, and consumers to create and enjoy only what they want, only when they want it. No more scheduling your life around Wednesday night TV or listening to some bland corporate playlist on FM. What the future holds is at once a simpler, yet more vast, media landscape. Enjoy exploring.