Hello All,

I finished reading Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide by Henry Jenkins on Tuesday for my review essay, and I really enjoyed it. Henry Jenkins, if any of you aren’t familiar with him, is a professor at MIT in their Comparative Media Studies program. He is one of the foremost Media scholars in the world. His book is essentially about the intersections between Old Media (radio, televisions, movies) and New Media (the Web, Internet, fan culture, fan fiction, user generated content, etc.). What was interesting about Jenkins’ assessment is that it does not in any way suggest that Old Media is dead, or is dying, but rather, that we are living in a time of reciprocity. One supports the other.

I like that his explanation was not so cut and dry.  New Media forms are not wiping out old ones as some observers predicted 10 or 15 years ago, but they are learning to live together.  Remember, McLuhan said, “It would seem natural that older forms are put to new uses and discover new roles.  The book, for example, in our time has discovered many new functions that it never had fifty or a hundred years ago.” He was right.

Anyway, I’m working out some of these ideas in my head, and I haven’t been reading other stuff this week so I wanted to bring up Jenkins’ book.  You can check out Jenkins’ blog here.