The Development of Unfathomable Choice

Venturing back pre 2006, Chris Anderson revels in the new wave of media consumerism that has risen out of the ease of access and choice that the development of the internet has enabled. Declaring that ‘with online distribution and retail, we are entering a world of abundance’, we are now presented with profound differences to our traditional methods of media consumption. From the mid 2000’s onwards, the internet began its permeation into our everyday lives and with it, slowly erased the restrictions that went hand in hand with DVD shops, book stores and even analogue broadcast television. Online however, with sites such as Netflix as Apple’s iTunes, not only has the access to media transformed but so as the economics of it. Now, with an abundance of films, music and books available at the touch of a button, it no longer matters what kinds of books are more likely to sell in one region of a state than in another, or more problematically, how many people want to watch your favourite horror film on a rainy saturday night. The internet ‘has, in short, broken the tyranny of physical space. What matters is not where customers are, or even how many of them are seeking a particular title, but only that some number of them exist, anywhere. Also, now with the extensiveness of options, alternate links, related alternative viewings and ability to bookmark pages as ‘favourites’, access to everything that still existed before the internet is now accessible in a networked and interlinked medium. Reading throughout this article however it amazes me how the content in which was deemed as so innovative not only 1o years ago now seems so primeval. Even more so because we have been born into the generation that has grown up parallel to the revolutionary developments of the internet, we are able to understand the significance of how much has change in such little time.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Skip to toolbar