Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide

I come late to this book, published in 2006. I do not regret it. It is a bit too focused on media, art, and "culture" for me, but I cannot penalize the author for being a master of arcane tid-bits. This book is a collection of previously published articles reworked into a book--for me, that is a good thing, as I do not cover the sources that originally carried the pieces.

The book comes recommended by Howard Rheingold and Bruce Sterling, two of the originals, so that alone should encourage anyone interested in this area to take this book very seriously.

Although the author focuses on "participatory culture" the emphasis is this book is on the CULTURE part, not the social networks, integral consciousness, appreciative inquiry, co-intelligence, and so on as I have learned from my Eco-Topia colleauges.

The author himself speaks early on about the book speaking to three concepts:

+ Media convergence
+ Participatory culture
+ Collective intelligence

He gets an A for the first, a B for the second, and a C for the third.

I don't consider myself qualified to be critical of this book, so here are the tid-bits that grabbed me:

+ Paradigm shift is not about communications among individuals but rather about their *being* in *being* with one another (from one to many and one to one to many to many)

+ Author credits Ithiel de Sola Pool (1983) with seeing the transitions that were coming

+ Convergence changes relationships and logics

+ The biggest convergence may be the sharp total confrontation between top down attempts to keep control, and bottom up demands to wrest control

+ Media right now is being excessively influenced by the wealthy that can afford the trinkets (look for my 1993 rant to INTERVAL on "God, Man, and Informaiton: Comments to Interval" for the other side of the story)

+ Public getting harder to "impress" (see my review of The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business

+ Emotions and feelings of connection matter more--the author writes of an "affective economy"

+ Producers are finding they must agree to co-creation (this media or cultural trend has a counterpart in the business world, see the Business Week cover story of 20 June 2005 on "The Power of Us")

+ Media industry is split between the prohibitionists and the collaborationists, and I am most fascinated to see mobile telephone companies in the latter category. If I had to place a bet on Nokia versus Google, I would go with Nokia.

+ In discussing the presidency, the author observes that what is changing is not the political parties, which we all know are Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It, but rather the communications and cultural norms. The author cites Joe Trippi's excellent The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything.

+ Other authors prominently cited several times include Pierre Levy, Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace (Helix Books) and Cass Sunstein, Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge.

+ Citing another author (always with credit) I am engaged by the concept of "adhocracies" as the opposite of bureaucracies.

+ Digital enclaves are becoming counter-productive, allowing nesting rather than engagement (at least among the one billion rich), need to get out and cross those cultural divides.

Four books within my ten book limit that cover material this book does not:
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People

A book just published that includes Yochai Benkler and 54 other Collective Intelligence gurus, none of them less Howard Rheingold in this book:
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

I am glad I got and read this book. It is clearly very learned in the media convergence and media-mind aspect, but it is not at all as versed as I was expecting in the nuts and bolts of participatory networking, appreciative inquiry, deliberative democracy, integral consciousness, world brain, etcetera, nor is it all oriented toward large scale problem solving with collective intelligence.

Well... Maybe I was expecting something more detailed and technic.
It still remain a good book, but it could have been more specific on the subject of convergence and old media, re-positioning and economic consequences.

There are at least 8 blank pages in the book. I have no time to return and exchange for another book as the class is currently in session.

Henry Jenkins says, in the Introduction to Convergence Culture, "This book is about the relationship between three concepts -- media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence." He then defines the terms and, a few pages later, still in the Intro, writes, "My aim is...modest. I want to describe some of the ways that convergence thinking is reshaping American popular culture and, in particular, the ways it is impacting the relationship between media audiences, producers, and content."

In contrast to McLuhan who is bold to a fault in Understanding Media (read just before Convergence), but bold and not afraid to be wrong, and that's important. Jenkins aims low, way too low. "Modest" here translates to not trying very hard. His few pages on Wikipedia are very good indeed (he's a proponent, so am I). But otherwise, from Convergence Culture one learns:

1) people get information and entertainment from a variety of media,
2) people can get the same information from a variety of media,
3) fans are passionate about their TV shows and classic popular movies and books and some like and utilize spoilers,
and, repeatedly,
4) the program he directs at MIT studies these phenomena.

Sorry, that's not enough for me.

I got this for university purposes, nothing more. Was actually surprisingly enjoyable, and considering that Jenkins professes his faults, surprisingly good. I was unaware of his expertise and prestige previously, so I had a nicely unbiased view. Weirdly, an enjoyable read.