The New Continuum…

Time to get back into the swing of things. Over the last few months I’ve been “experiencing” the internet rather than writing about it, i.e., observing it. Being a developer I don’t just get to “see” what’s happening I can make it happen too. However, it is pretty easy to get lost in the trees when exploring the forest, so every so often I have to step back a little and take a look at the big picture. As notably predicted for the last 25 years, not only in my own observations, but countless others, the World Wide Web, better known as the “Internet”, is rapidly becoming the backbone of today’s media…and no, not just social media…all media. But that is not the realization that I’m going to write about. As far as it goes, that is not even a realization as a statement of the obvious. The realization comes from the fact that for the first time the “media” is separating from the “medium” but the messages must still remain in tact.

“The medium is the message” is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message

Two hundred years ago, carrier pigeons were the best way to get the news…depending on where you were of course, but the message was confined to the characteristics of the pigeons. If a particular pigeon was not necessarily a home body or fell in love with a lovely little pheasant along the way, it was entirely possible the message could be lost. Technology has been seeking the perfect “lossless” protocol ever since. But to make a long story short to transmit information via pigeon, you needed a pigeon. To send telegrams you needed a telegraph. To read a paper you needed a printing press. To listen to radio broadcasts you needed a radio. To watch a movie, you needed a theatre and last but not least to watch television…well you know where I’m headed.

As the Internet becomes the “Net”, the universal medium that now carries messages, images, text, news, movies, television, you name it, the “media” now has to conform to a multitude of platforms of all shapes and sizes…not just one. But as the medium becomes more universal, everything from your mobile phone to your refrigerator will eventually be attached to the ‘Net’… a good deal of thought now has to be put into the form as well as the substance. Using a telegraph meant clicking the clicky thing, short for a dot, long for a dash…and that’s it. Hopefully, the tapper and tappee at either end had the skills to both send and decode the message. The medium only had to convey that message using its own unique protocol.

Now the protocol is becoming universal.. HTTP.. but the devices are becoming more complex, in other words, its the “clicky” things that are changing, becoming more diverse. Do you want to receive your messages on your laptop, your mobile phone, your television, your refrigerator? All these are possible now and each platform has to be taken into account on its own merits. Each platform, though connected to the web still has its own unique characteristics, functions and abilities than can be taken advantage of when consuming that message. Your laptop, can organize your messages, your mobile can notify you when they arrive, you’re refrigerator can order a quart of milk from shop.com when it “notices” you need it. The possibilities are endless. So are the choices modern web designers/developers have to make. Hence, the continuing rise of the new generation of “User Experience Designers”. The catch phrase for technology professionals in the early 21st century. It is the User Experience Designer that has to figure out, given a single message, how that message will be perceived, viewed, collected and stored not by the medium but by the device attached to the medium, your browser, your tablet, your mobile phone, your toaster…whatever.

The foot soldier in all this will be the hardworking, every-present, ubiquitious “App”, made popular by the Apple eco-system and now sweeping through the universe at light speed. There are apps for everything, keeping in touch, hiding in secret, collecting bitcoins and selling old socks. You name it, there has to be an app for it. In digital advertising, clever slogans and fancy jingles have given way to the “app”. You can’t just sell dog food, you have to have an app that will keep track of Fido’s calorie in-take and weight. The “app” has to be in as much demand as the product you’re selling! That can be a pretty tall order. And from an insiders point of view, before one can even begin to explore actually creating an app, the first and most important question to ask is “Web or Native”?

This has been and will continue to be an ongoing debate for years to come. As the Internet continues to change human culture, all these new devices and capabilities are creating cultures of their own. Its not enough just get a text message, If I have an Iphone I want an Iphone text message. If I’m team android I want an android text message. If I’m on my laptop do I want a Safari or Chrome or (God forbid) an Internet Explorer message? It may seem trivial but its not. Developing apps used to be a simple matter of knowing a technology that was both reasonably popular and that you had or could acquire some familiarity with. Not any more. We no longer deal just in the technology realm alone but the “culture” of technology. Apps can be, but are no longer expected to be, monolithic. Facebook is Facebook on your laptop, but is it still Facebook on your Iphone? On your Samsung? On your toaster?

That’s right, what If I want my toaster to post to my Facebook timeline.. “the toast is done”. That may seem far fetched, but wouldn’t that be a good idea if I were Braun, or more importantly SELLING Braun toasters. Here the question of “Web or Native” goes well beyond just a matter of technology, but to once again returning, in no small way, to the “medium is the message”! Given my 1000 word limit. I won’t go into the debate itself in this article. But it will be the source of articles to come.. .stay tuned! (On the device of your choice, of course!)