"The medium is not the message in a digital world. It is an embodiment of it. A message might have several embodiments automatically derivable from the same data. In the future, the broadcaster will send out one stream of bits...which can be converted by the receiver in many different ways. The same bits can be looked at by the viewer from many perspectives. Take a sporting event, for example.
"The incoming football bits can be converted by the computer-TV for you to experience them as a video; to hear them through an announcer; or to see them as diagrams of the plays. In each case it is the same game and same pool of bits. When those bits are turned into audio-only, the acoustic medium forces you to imagine the action (but allows you to drive a car at the same time). When the bits are turned into video, less is left to the imagination, but tactics are hard to see (because of the pell-mell or the sight of people piled on top of one another). When the bits are rendered as a diagram, the strategy and defense are quickly revealed. Moving among the three will be likely."
Return to Book Review "A Little Bit of Everything, But Not the Whole Picture," by Kevin Hunt.