Apple’s digital personal assistant ‘Siri’ is just one example of the way in which convergence is affecting iPhone users – but to what end?
Apple’s developments in terms of the iPhone, I would suggest, are one of the most-followed technology fields.
There is likely not a day which goes by without someone ‘leaking’ information about new developments at Apple headquarters, including the filing of patents for out-of-this-world innovations, discussion forums on what the best screen size is, and when Apple will announce the release date of their next gadget.
Why is this? Why is the iPhone such a popular media subject?
When Apple first released the iPhone on June 29, 2007, the company’s co-founder Steve Jobs said “We want to reinvent the phone”. (‘Apple unveils iPhone’, Macworld).
Since this initial debut, there have been five subsequent releases of newer models: iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and iPhone 5.
With the release of each new generation comes a wave of media and online storm, critiquing, discussing and marveling at the developments.
Audiences are being shaped by these developments.
Jobs’ vision of reinvention has certainly been realised, as the iPhone opened the gateway to a bevvy of other devices which offer their users the ability to complete a multitude of tasks using this palm-sized device.
Apple’s iPhone is media convergence in action. Every time somebody pays a bill using their bank’s app, books tickets to a concert, gets a stamp on their loyalty card for their local café using their iPhone, they are blurring the lines between the physical and cyber world.
As Henry Jenkins states in his interview with Peter Zak for MIT Enterprise Forum (Ehu Terminology on YouTube), media convergence is being shaped “top down by decisions made in corporate boardrooms” (in this case, Apple), and “bottom up by decisions made in teenagers’ bedrooms”. In terms of the iPhone, this means the demands of consumers, who in this evolving media landscape are actually becoming prosumers (both producers and consumers of media), are often shaping the decisions of the developers. Of course, developers would always be targeting the needs of a certain market, but with the iPhone, the range of Apps available which enable prosumers to create and share their own content often means they are going beyond the ideology which was behind the creation of the device.
Certainly, Jobs succeeded in reinventing the phone; in fact, I would argue, Jobs created a whole new device, of which the ability to make phone calls and send text messages is only a small part of the device that is the iPhone.
According to Mashable as of November 19th, Apple had approved more than one million Apps for their app store; these applications allow prosumers to access a huge number of other platforms, all from the one device.
To prosumers, the iPhone is not just a phone; it is a device which allows them to communicate in a multitude of ways with the world, and, taking on a dialogic role, the iPhone allows the world to communicate with the prosumer.
Such is the realm of convergence, even a personal assistant can be digitized, with ‘Siri’ up for the task. The lines between cyber and physical reality, it seems, are becoming murkier with each new generation.
P.s. Thankyou Cult of Mac for the image.
