Multimedia Technology and Consumption (Advatages & Disadvantages)

Unit 1A.4 Multimedia Technology and Consumption

1.       Convergence: Give a definition of this.  What form did early convergence take? And give some examples of present day technological convergence.

2.       Interactivity: In what ways is digital technology interactive? Can you give some examples? How has this changed the way we consume the media?

3.       Personalisation: How do we personalise our technology and what is the reason for this? 

4.       Fill in the table:

	Definition	Advantages	Disadvantages
Immediacy	Immediacy being the quality of bringing something into one direct, fast involvement with something. This gives a rising sense to an excitement.	Speaker and audience are closer to each over and they show warmth to each other; this shows respect from audience towards the speaker. Immediacy saves time because you can give direct orders to your audience and you can get instructions in a matter of a few minutes, this conveys your message at rapid speed. Therefore, saves you more time. Immediacy saves you money. This is by the simple fact on that if the verbal communication and information considered is understood and verbal, you won’t be wasting time, energy or money on explaining things differently for people to understand. This would all be related into social media factors and other ways of messaging; YouTube – videos and vlogs, Facebook – Share images and texts etc.	Immediacy is not convenient for long messages because it’s not convenient to be conveying long messages verbally as it may take up too much time and after you finished the ‘message’ you are trying to share with your audience, they would most likely forget the first important points you have spoken about. The Immediacy used may just have irrelevant information. While you’re having this ‘important’ discussion a lot of the information shared generally becomes ‘irrelevant’ as it just creeps up in the conversation.
Access	The means to have an opportunity to enter a place/thing.	Having access would allow you to connect and do anything you want on media or school or something. For example, you have the opportunity to enter the internet and ‘access’ the social media websites such as YouTube, Facebook; because you have accessibility to the internet. Another example, would be like going to school and you have media devices such as computers, laptops, and you have your phones and all of these can be accessed because you have the opportunity and right to use them and ‘access’ them too your own use.	You might have access to bad things. For example people with phones and laptops connected to the internet have everything easily accessible to their hands because their schools offer these items and the internet is a massive place. Having access has its disadvantages because let’s say for example if your child has access to the computer or internet through their phones, they might access and search for bad websites and videos for example; pornography or illegal websites.
convenience	Being able to successfully proceed with something without any difficulty.	Having convenience would be a massive advantage because you can be able to use your phones or computers to complete for example homework if needed and this process would be successful because the computers you have access too you have internet. You can complete your homework successfully without difficulty because you can research the internet; websites, Wikipedia etc.	Convenience has lots of disadvantages too because it has a similar aspect to being ‘access’ and has a similar concept. For example if someone have the ability to successfully search the web for bad websites such as before; pornography and illegal websites, they could because they wouldn’t have any difficulty doing so.
portability	Ability to move or carry something easily. Portable.	Portability in media has a very big advantage because it refers to our laptops and phones and many different media devices. This is successful in media because we have the easy ability to carry and move our phones and laptops everywhere we go, and this helps us because we can complete work or search the internet out of home. This also would save you time because if you need to research something but you’re not at home you can use your small, easy and light portable mobile device to access the inter-web and research.	Disadvantages of portability of would be like if you carry your laptop or phone around with you in public  there could be many chances of you getting ‘robbed’ for your items and the other disadvantages would be that carrying small ‘easy’ portable devices might be easily damaged when being moved around. Since the item is small and easy to move there could be high chances of you either corrupting your work on your laptops or destroying your different devices ; for example if you carry it around in public the movement could cause displacement inside of the devices or if the weather is not great and you need to carry your laptops/phones around with you, they can get water damaged and destroyed but you can’t prevent this because you need to take it with you.
connectivity	Being connected or interconnected.	Having connectivity is very successful and has a big advantage in media because it allows you to connect with other people on the internet or on different social media platform. This would come under platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and snapchat. You can make new friends or share work to each other or when you need some help you can easily search the web such as YouTube and watch videos and if they do help you, you can leave a comment and this allows you to tell the YouTuber for more information or give your gratitude for the ‘help’. Being connected is very useful in less economic countries because people can use their mobile phones or computers to talk and make friends with different cultures or talk to new people and make more friends. They could also use connectivity to share information or make awareness on YouTube for their countries etc.	Disadvantages of connectivity would be like whether if you were to be connected or not connected it can cause problems both ways. If you was too connected with someone online or on the internet using your mobile device they could take you for advantage or hack you and try get personal information out of you for their own uses. The second disadvantage would be that if you weren’t interconnected you could feel depressed or lonely by not having that access to be connected online. You use your mobile phones and join the new apps ‘snapchat etc’ to try and make friends and be connected but you find it difficult and people just don’t want to be connected with you. And this might actually lead to cyber bullying or dependent on your media device you might actually not be capable of being interconnected because your device may be too old or out-dated and cannot connect to various websites or download various apps, like other mobile devices/smartphones can.