by Jean-Yves Le Moine, published on 28.07.2009

In the middle ages, man thought that the earth was flat. The discovery of perspective marks the beginning of the Renaissance, the beginning of modernity: man knows that the earth is round and he has adopted a point of view. He observes the world. Later, man went to the moon, he saw the earth from the sky, he discovered that there wasn’t just the world of man but a global universe to which man belongs.

Long after the industrial revolution and Taylorism, new technologies have started to create new uses; Apple and Nokia were the first to put man at the center of technology. “User centric” type experiences and living labs multiplied. The technology evolved. Businesses started selling more and more services. Google then thought of not selling services but of offering new types of services for free, creating added value on which the business can make a profit. The 2.0 economy was born.

These past few months, we’ve witnessed a new change in the paradigm, it’s no longer the technologies that create the uses but the uses that propel technological evolutions, that personify them. Twitter is a living proof of that. Man is still at the center, but he has become an actor. He interacts with other on his environment.

The use of content fits within this logic; man is no longer just at the center of content, but he wants to be able to interact with the story. The audiovisual consumption is not reduced to the viewing of content, it’s comprised of a wealth of other activities around the audiovisual content:

-           viewing

-           getting informed/ discovering

-           acquiring

-           discussing

-           sharing/ redistributing

-           stocking/ organizing

-           transferring

The content has become social, even if individual uses continue, even if we still watch almost as much television, we do more and more things at the same time, before or after the broadcasts! Young people have become increasingly multitasking, they exchange content and discuss it more and more. This fragmentation is hitting us like a wave.

Transmedia is in sync with these uses: through its multiple entry points, it gives access to a fragmented content-universe through which we can evolve alone or in a group. Like cinema, it could become the media form that most resembles life…