Lecture 25 min.
Post-convergent literally means "after convergence." Convergence is similar to "merging." Different objects, such as two different rivers, can merge at a certain point, as they draw closer together. In a convergent state they move as a single entity; in a post-convergent state, they exist after that merging has taken place. Virtual worlds are an example of a post-convergent environment of the early 21st century. Virtual worlds constitute a complex matrix of interdependent relations among media elements such as sound, image, network, time, interactivity, and other antecedent technologies. From this standpoint, no single media element contained within virtual worlds exists without the others, and all of them influence one another, albeit unequally. Although this complex system contains many types of multimedia, a user may focus on only one aspect, such as the streaming of an audio file. The potential for active interaction within and among agents in an environment is best characterized as a Deleuzian network of relations among differential speeds that are not distinguished by form or function, and as Anna Munster's differential relations between embodiment and technique, in which both the artist/composer and the user become nodes within this interdependent network — satisfying Luciano Floridi's test of successful observability, along with direct and reverse presence at different levels of abstraction.
The concept of convergence has been in use for at least the last decade and has become widespread, occupying a prominent place in media theory. Its earliest implications for communication can
be traced to the growing incursion of new digital technologies into communication processes and the media. In the 1970s, convergence began to be formulated as a
concept describing how new telecommunications technologies created an intersection of processes and procedures that expanded the possibilities of mediation
and transformed traditional modes of communication. For example, David Farber and Paul Baran (1977), in "On the Convergence of Computing and Telecommunications
Systems," explain how they managed to write their paper despite having traveled 500 miles apart, using a "computer communications system." Exposing the losses and inefficiencies of
traditional publishing, they offer an early view of media convergence: "Once the words in this paper were entered into the computer system, they were in fact
"published" if a copy was stored in the publicly accessible portion of the computer communications system's memory" (Farber & Baran, 1977, p. 1166).
In media theory, the notion of convergence has been widely used to describe
the effects of the emergence of digital technologies in everyday life. In this regard, digital technologies have made it possible to use other media (and originally older media,
such as television, radio, and the telephone) so that they overlap with another medium. One of the earliest formulations of this notion of "media convergence" was proposed by Nicholas Negroponte (1991). By 1979 he was developing the argument for media convergence, in which he presented a Venn diagram depicting the convergence of the "broadcast and motion picture industry," the "computer industry," and the "print and publishing industry," and predicted that "the overlap between the three circles will be near total by the year 2000" (Gordon, 2003, p. 59). He later described the context in which digital technology transforms telecommunications: "The broadcast spectrum is limited, whereas fiber, like computing power, is something we can keep on using more of. These facts mean that the channels for distributing different types of information (...) will become interchangeable" (Negroponte, 1991, p. 104).
As digital technologies continued to permeate traditional media, convergence theories became increasingly elaborate. Jay D. Bolter and Richard Grusin (2000) applied this logic more explicitly to media through their concept of "remediation," defining a new medium as one that "fulfills the unfulfilled promise of an older medium" (p. 60). With respect to culture, Henry Jenkins (2006) coined the term "convergence culture" to describe how digital media transform not only the media technologies themselves but also how we use and behave in relation to digital technology, through "the flow of content across multiple media platforms," produced by different actors (Jenkins, 2006, p. 2). In this respect, convergence implies the coming together not only of media but also of formats and content, resulting in an increasingly complex mediation through digital technologies that entails profound changes in culture.
From this point on, the concept of convergence has been applied to various dimensions as a way of describing and explaining the incursion of digital technology into social life. Examples of this trend include professional convergence, in which different competencies and skills are combined within a single profession (such as journalism), becoming increasingly common and even necessary. For instance, with regard to the transformation of journalism in the digital age, some scholars explain convergence as having several aspects, such as organizational, technological, professional, and communicative ones. They describe convergence in practical terms, observing how "convergence culture" transforms every aspect of life, including business practices, content generation, and even training and education in media professions (Salaverría & García Avilés, 2008).
The term "convergence" continues to flourish in media-related academic work and is still used to explain communicative changes brought about by digital technologies,
mediation, such as "a new form of mediated communication: interactive communication" (Velázquez García, 2013, p. 128). Attributing profound transformations in modes of communication to convergence may seem understandable, since so far advances in digital media have not entirely displaced historical ideas about traditional media (i.e., a smart TV screen still evokes the idea of "television"). Nevertheless, convergence, which arose in the context of media and culture, has become a "commonsense" construct that, rather than advancing research into the digital, has stalled discussions of media evolution in terms of the specific qualities, attributes, and effects that digital technology can bring to increasingly anachronistic ideas about media. In this respect, convergence theory fails to account for the observable trajectory of digital development as it advances into uncharted territories far removed from mere overlap.
Convergence in the post-convergent context. Given how the digital ecosystem is evolving, there are several ways in which the concept of convergence fails to explain the current evolution of media. Applying convergence to new forms of media production, presentation, and consumption entails the assumption that the evolution of digital media depends on a collision between old and new media. That is, it insists on preserving the identity of traditional media in the face of digital evolution, even though the lived experience of the digital continues its trajectory of depositing these media meta-narratives under new ones. Convergence thus places emphasis on a nostalgia for media in developing an ontology of the digital, since its inherent logic is to distinguish how media objects and practices enter the sphere of the digital, into the place of convergence. To apply the theory of convergence described here to the new digital media context is to insist on a kind of "epicenter" for describing digital media and life. That is, the place where different media, content, and behaviors converge becomes the locus of "digitality," while its exterior is preserved indefinitely as the very condition of convergence. Discussions of convergence require this duality, which by its nature denies the expansion of convergence into a totality. One problem with simpler theories of convergence is that they become too quick to equate convergence with innovation, as is often the case in the convergence literature, since convergence in this sense becomes digitality, a state in which digital media find their way into material experience.
As digital mediation continues to evolve, this characterization of convergence loses its ability to be anything more than a generational descriptor, since it places too much emphasis on old media. Discussions of convergence thus rely on a history of media finding their way to a point of contact. In this sense, the idea of the "digital native" depends on an increasingly historical notion of the "non-native"; professional convergence in journalism is defined by the historical role of the journalist and the traditional skills required of him or her; technological convergence is dictated by the notion that traditional media, formats, and content still determine how media, formats, and content exist and will exist in digital form. Convergence should therefore be understood as a moment in the evolution of digital media technological development, a transition toward territories and an ecology that have yet to be mapped and explored. As a theoretical inflection point, it is always destined to become obsolete within its own logic. What I mean is that the very logic of the digital is to continue pushing the boundaries of the analog and to incorporate all forms and modes of representation into digital representation and consumption. Moore's Law serves as an example of this, whereby digital technologies exponentially become
more powerful, compact, and cheap; the possibility of quantum computing and current fundamental developments in artificial intelligence mean that digital technology will undoubtedly continue moving further and further away from the stage of convergence and into the territory of post-convergence and its consequences.
In this regard, the development of media requires a theoretical grounding for post-convergence — a theory that can account not only for the current state of digital developments in laboratories around the world that have not yet become mass-market products, but also for upcoming developments in production, representation, and consumption, including the possibility of unprecedented graphics rendering, immaterial interfaces, and
artificial intelligence. That is, how does the concept of post-convergence account for the exponential development of digital technology? What might its explanatory potential be once digital media cease to be discrete units that come together through an electronic environment, and instead simply become the environment itself, through which mediation is truly possible? That is, what happens when the very interval of convergence — its meeting point — becomes the sole space?
Theoretical foundations of post-convergence: software, digital technology, and the Internet. To conceptualize post-convergence, it is necessary to examine the evolution of digital technology and its rapid mastery of every aspect of media. Over the last decade alone, computing has grown exponentially into an increasingly powerful and ubiquitous phenomenon, as devices become ever smaller while digital computing
plays a decisive role in the functioning and organization of human processes. Digitality (as coined by Negroponte, 1995) continues to acquire an ever-growing role in every human
dimension, from healthcare, education, and defense to entertainment, information, and consumption.
The representation of media in digital form lies at the heart of this transformation. One key aspect of this paradigm shift is a fundamental feature of digital technology: programmability.
As Lev Manovich (2001) argues, even though digital media are based on numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, and transcoding — characteristics
that he identified in non-digital media — it is their programmability that is the one characteristic without historical precedent compared with previous media. That is, digital
media exist only in their capacity to dynamically invoke, encode, and order within a codified environment.
In this regard, Manovich (2013) made the case for software studies, arguing that any understanding of digital technology must attend to the growing role of code and its effects in the material world. In his words, "digital media" is the result of the gradual development and accumulation of a large number of software methods, algorithms, data structures, conventions, and interface metaphors" (p. 34). As software continues to evolve, and increasingly efficient hardware and interfaces keep pace with it, we can expect digital technology to become ever more synergistic with our lived experience. For Bruno Latour (2011), speaking of digital networks, this has shifted the boundaries between the material and the virtual, since "the spread of digital technology has considerably increased the material aspect of networks: the more digital an event becomes, the less virtual and material it becomes" (p. 802).
Although the history of computing and digital technology lies beyond the scope of this article, it is important to briefly examine the nature of one important component of digital technology: the World Wide Web. The Internet, together with the hardware that makes digital computation possible, constitutes one of the fundamental structures through which digitality becomes possible. Its rapid and extensive evolution has become the principal organizer of the global network of processes and interactions that make up the world we live in. The World Wide Web has existed for more than two decades, but its clear evolution from a vertical to a rhizomatic system has only recently been noticed. It is clear that the World Wide Web marked a shift away from the more passive, monolithic nature of older media. For example, the transcendence of space and time, and the ubiquitous spread of hypertext, signaled a fundamental change in the way information is disseminated and consumed.
The first stage of this technological paradigm, known as Web 1.0, treated reading as its main organizing principle. The first iteration of this system was still characterized by an "inert" quality, since it provided only information that was accessed in a one-way fashion. This version of the network, which was defined only retrospectively in relation to the network that now exists, was characterized by static web pages that displayed largely unchanging information, since Internet use was mainly focused on accessing information.
At this stage, the core components of digital technology converged: hypertext, self-production, and the disruption of space-time. However, reading remained the dominant characteristic, in the sense that the mode of information on the Internet was mostly static (as opposed to dynamic), and could only be accessed through more or less direct means (i.e., literal search, exact URLs). HTML and more complex computer code were the only gateways to creativity on the network. The lack of interfaces for interacting with the Internet meant that opportunities for creation and interaction were not yet widespread, which reinforced a "read-only" approach to digital technology. Thus, the logic of hypertext, although crucial to the evolution of the dynamic web, was mostly an agent of horizontal organization, linking to more static information. This is why Christian
Fuchs et al. (2010) describe Web 1.0 as a "tool of cognition" (p. 43), as its model.
relied primarily on the logic of reading (Aghaei, Nematbakhsh, & Farsani, 2012, p. 3). The next stage in the development of digital technology became the technology known as Web 2.0. This stage was characterized by a "read-execute" information mode. At this stage, the experience of digital technology becomes increasingly dynamic and all-encompassing. The versatility and power of collaborative interfaces allows users not only to read information but also to produce it and, more importantly, to use data for various purposes (to execute data). Thus, because data is dynamic and executable, using the Internet becomes a highly social activity, since users are connected through the use and usability of data. This iteration of the Internet effectively expanded the logic and scope of hypertext, turning the Internet from a space of knowledge into a space of interaction. Following Bolter and Grusin, Web 2.0 in this sense "remediated" (in the sense of both "fixing" and "reformulating") the logic of Web 1.0, "fulfilling the broken promise" of the hyperlink. In this sense, the Internet and its objects are now reproduced not as products but as services that are fueled and sustained by human interaction. This is the phenomenon that Tim O'Reilly (2007), in one of the first systematic analyses of Web 2.0, described as an "architecture of participation" (p. 22).
The novelty of Web 2.0 applications, according to Xavier Ribes (2007), lies in the new communicative uses and situations that arise from the interconnection of new data with already existing data. This iteration of the Internet is based on databases, dynamic computing languages, interfaces, crowdsourcing, and social networks. Its logic rests on the seamless interplay of material and virtual experience. It is sustained by the logic of the platform, which depends on human-centered computing for its deployment. The platform in this sense becomes a specific locus on which people can build and create, both literally and figuratively. Through this model, traditional paradigms of content consumption, characterized by the monolithic nature of the information source and passive reception, are no longer relevant. Instead, consumers of information also become its producers, since the interconnection between systems and devices makes possible a cross-platform environment through which real-time interaction between the material and the digital action becomes possible. Thanks to Web 2.0, our lived experience becomes increasingly interwoven with real-time information networks, which allows for a substantial change in the process of meaning-making. This effect, illustrated by the mantra of collective intelligence, points to a new metaphor in which mediation enables a brain-machine processor through which "distributed labor networks [use] the Internet to harness the spare processing power of millions of human brains" (Howe, 2006, para. 8). The social and the virtual become entangled in a constant exchange of information, which in turn produces a feedback loop that has come to organize human behavior and social institutions. There is growing speculation that we have in fact entered the next stage of digital development, which it is logical to call Web 3.0. Some authors link the beginning of this stage to a stronger presence of ubiquitous computing, embodied in the smartphones that have become so important in our lives. Geolocation, thicker client applications launched from smartphones or tablets, and the context-sensitive intelligence of search engines have become harbingers of the evolution of the digital ecosystem (Cabage & Zhang, 2013). However, the most compelling feature of this stage lies in a fundamental effect of Web 2.0: the enormous volumes of data it produces. Sustained efforts are already underway to make sense of and personalize the use of
this enormous amount of data. It is expected that, following Web 2.0, intelligent systems will be produced that can not only find, gather, and analyze data, but also match
it against our preferences, desires, and even intentions. As Tim Berners-Lee (2001), inventor of the World Wide Web, stated regarding Web 3.0: "The Semantic Web will bring
structure to the meaningful content of web pages, creating an environment in which software agents, moving from page to page, can readily carry out sophisticated tasks
for users."
Web 3.0 will focus on internal processes, in which "the concept of a website or
web page disappears, where data no longer belongs to an owner but is shared, where services display
different representations of the same network / the same data" (Naik & Shivalingaiah, 2008, p. 502).
In this respect, it becomes an operative database that is no longer external to human
activity, but a constitutive agent. Its operational logic consists in "linking, integrating, and
analyzing data from different data sets to produce a new stream of information" (Aghaei,
Nematbakhsh, & Farsani, 2012, p. 5). It uses data to "map out" the meaning
of its content as it relates to human existence. As a technology, it is working toward the
moment of self-awareness.
There is also speculation about what comes after Web 3.0, referred to as Web 4.0, but also as the WebOS (the web as an operating system), in which there exists "an interaction between people and machines in symbiosis" (p. 8). At this stage, "machines will be smart," reading the content of the network and reacting by executing tasks and making decisions about what to execute, serving sites quickly, reliably, and with more command-oriented interfaces" (Choudhury, 2014, p. 8100). At this point, the digital and the material fuse into an interdependent relationship. Digital mediation, in this respect, is no longer an "external" phenomenon. All human processes
will come to depend on the digital. This would be the embodiment of post-convergence.
The concept of post-convergence has been discussed only partially in terms of media. Its nature, relevance, and usefulness have been assumed or implied through references to media theory, rather than discussed directly. As a concept, it is subordinated to the persistence of convergence, and its ontology remains largely unexamined. Yet theories of post-convergence are crucial to the development of media theory. Post-convergence is not simply the next stage of convergence, but a context that reflects fundamental perspectives on the future of life through digital media. More importantly, post-convergence now pushes us to think about the nature of media as a fundamental product of the networked digital ecology. Post-convergence pushes us to develop metaphors and methodologies for studying emerging media that go beyond what was shaped by previous understandings of media
and the digital. That is, it obliges us to consider the digital on its own terms, from the perspective of the digitally native.
Anders Fagerjord (2010) offers an attempt, albeit an indirect one, to describe post-convergence (in the context of "post-convergence"). Studying YouTube, he intuitively recognizes a manifestation of digital media that marks a radical shift from previous media (television), one that creates something fundamentally new in the medium. He is right to formulate the fundamental claim that "convergence is over. Media have already converged" (p. 188). However, he misses the point by proposing "remix" as the natural successor to convergence, since this concept entails the configuration of discrete units into a single media production, conceptualizing the unit as a fundamental aspect of the outcome. Moreover, as I argue here, the realization of post-convergence does not entail predetermined forms or predictions, but constitutes the ground on which the uniqueness of emerging digital media can be assumed.
From the standpoint of digital design, Adam Nash (2010, 2013), nevertheless, represents one of the few instances in which post-convergence has been examined more
closely. In his work on affect in digital data and multi-user multimedia environments,
he provides a clear description of what a post-convergent medium is:
It marks the phase in the development of a new medium when it becomes self-aware as
such, for instance when practitioners begin to act within the medium in order to explore its intrinsic qualities
- as opposed to merely expressing its content, that is, that of preceding media - in order to create work that
is possible only in the new medium. (Nash, 2013, p. 13)
Following this logic, a post-convergent approach to emerging media raises
the question of "what can be done in this medium that cannot be done in any other?" (Nash,
2010, p. 31).
As a harbinger of post-convergence, convergence as a theory of digital media
was always destined to become obsolete within its own logic and promises. It provided
the necessary platform for launching a new theoretical framework from which
to map and delineate the territory that we are only now beginning to discern and understand.
Thus, post-convergence should not be understood simply as a theory for explaining
any and every specific aspect of media. Instead, it should be regarded as an ontological
truism, one that can only enable the observations, theories, and methodologies of digital
media as they emerge. In other words, post-convergence is not a theory in itself,
but a theoretical realization.
Reflecting on post-convergence is critical for the present and future of media theory. If convergence was the inflection point signaling the moment
when digital media began to penetrate deeply into life, then the future of media
exists only within post-convergence. Media theory must therefore proceed from this understanding
in order to develop explanations capable of accounting for the current state of media phenomena, moving past outdated notions of the digital and of the evolution
of media. More importantly still, an awareness of post-convergence obliges media theory to
move beyond the present, in order to envision the future of media and its significance, so as to provide assessments, forecasts, and interventions that can keep pace
with the speed of digital evolution.
I argue that the theorization of post-convergence should not be taken for granted, since
its significance for theories of media and culture is too great. Post-convergence,
in the sense that I propose, is not merely a concatenation of convergence but, rather, its principal aim. That is, post-convergence was always the implicit analytical goal
of convergence, in the sense that convergence, as the coming together of different media, implicitly
calls forth its full realization in post-convergence. This claim can hold true only within
the context of rapidly evolving digital technologies, which, as I have tried to demonstrate in these pages, already signal the onset of the age of post-convergence.
The theories of post-convergence therefore presuppose a "digital materialist" approach,
one that firmly grasps social, cultural, economic, and political processes through digital processes. In this respect, the digital and the material,
along with their analysis by post-convergent subjects, are subject to what Quentin Meillassoux
called - "correlationism," the notion that "our knowledge of the world is always the result of a correlation between subject and object" (Galloway, 2013, p. 354). Digital
materialism, which develops out of the acceptance of post-convergence, observes
the materiality of digital media, and, according to Jussi Parikka (2012), its task is to "think
[digital] materialisms in their plurality in such a way as to make possible a grounded analysis of contemporary culture" (p. 99); that is, culture in digital form.
Analyzing digital media through the lens of post-convergence is not only
concerned with how the digital interacts with life, but also assumes that the digital has become a fundamental aspect of it. It is assumed that the stage of interaction
corresponds to convergence, while symbiosis corresponds to post-convergence.
Post-convergence thus entails the notion that digital processes, events, and affects are not merely "blended" with lived experience, but have also acquired a "seriousness"
of their own - a material density - that could potentially do away entirely with
the virtual, in order to become a new kind of real. It understands that the "modalities
of differentiation in [digital] media occur not only at the level of display, or even at the level of programming, but in a genuinely ontological way" (Clemens & Nash, 2015, p.
9). In this respect, while convergence implies the encounter of discrete media objects, events, content, and cultures, post-convergence moves beyond the encounter in order to
embrace a synthesis of life and the digital that gives rise to new forms and affects, which must be studied in their own right, from within the digital.
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