Convergance Culture!

Henry Jenkins’s introduction chapter of his book “Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide delves into the development of telecommunication within society, but more importantly, how society is blending new technologies in an effort to make their lives easier. The blending of technologies is an interesting concept that gets covered briefly in the introduction paragraph. Two sentences jumped out at me while I was reading, an it is not because they were underlined but more interesting. “Consumers are learning how to use these different media technologies [like the internet, cell phones, etc.] to bring the flow of media more fully under their control and to interact with other consumers. The promises of this new media environment raise expectations of a freer flow of ideas and content.” I think the idea of consumers using technology to be more informed is pretty cool. After I read that section, I began to think about my grandparents as odd as that sounds. Every time I go to their house, I am helping them with little things on the Internet. Elderly people tend not to use a lot of technology mainly because they didn’t have it for the majority of their lives. Now, as media technology continues more elderly are using the Internet http://www.eurescom.de/message/messageJun2005/The_digital_divide_of_the_elderly.asp. I found a European study about this very subject. A lot of the statistics are very impressive and completely back my argument up. Only 21% of Europeans between the age of 55 and 74 are using the Internet opposed to the 75% of the 15 to 24 year olds. I can only imagine that our numbers are very similar to those of Europe but don’t anticipate that number to stay so low for very much longer.