TV is undergoing such rapid and massive changes, it’s impossible to predict an overall outcome, unless it’s simply an ongoing process of ever-accelerating change.
Only AI will be capable of keeping up with such a rapid transformation of technology, available now from youth to a generation defined by, and defining of, the Digital Age.
I, for one, welcome our Millennial overlords. They drove the liberation of music, voices and images from physical media and opened up a global conversation.
The last big shift like that was… what, from chiseling stone to writing on paper? Both are physical media, so… never?
Nothing has had a more radical impact, debatably on the world, but certainly on the media business, which amounts to a multibillion dollar global communications and content distribution trade route reaching nearly every human life form on earth, or at least in the lower 50.
Khumbu Icefall
I haven’t been to the land of ice and snow, so I don’t know, but maybe there, too. It’s astounding when you think about it. A single conjure and the Khumbu Icefall is right before my eyes thanks to somebody with a digital camera and the internet, and the entire generation of code writers in between.
The Virtual Reality Everest summit is coming to a headset near you, rest assured. It’s just a matter of time—and not that much time—that this experience will be carried on that trade route.
By whom, we don’t yet know, because the parties maintaining the route are evolving, and being evolved by, the Digital Age. Reliance on cable and wires is receding. The broadcast industry, its engineering community in particular, is functioning remarkably well in a blindfolded game of musical channel assignment.
Drones, meanwhile, are being dispatched by wireless providers to bring us each a bandwidth thoroughfare, wherever we may be.
Thus, one thing seems certain about this evolution. It will be delivered over the air.
