In As Ivan Seidenberg discussed in his 2011 CES keynote, there technology is having a dramatic impact on the way we live our lives today. Wireless data usage and Smartphone penetration is growing rapidly; a new computing platform for mobile broadband has emerged, creating the market for mobile apps that is changing the way we relate to the Internet. Millions now have increasingly high speed broadband access to the Internet in their home.
These connections are sparking a revolution in digital media, fuelling growth in game consoles, HDTV's, DVR's, home networking equipment and more. The increasingly common factor in this media-everywhere world is the moving image self-generated or highly produced, on the move or in the home, over the web or in the workplace, 3D, holographic, or immersive. Video, as a real-time communications option, brings depth, context, personalisation and choice to the communications experience, and is fast becoming a transformational force.
The consumer takes control
The moving image has always had a powerful sway over people - from magic lanterns to the talkies, we have striven to deliver, translate, replicate and control moving images.
We have seen tremendous advances in image technologies over the past few decades. Today, the ability to capture still and moving images is available to everyone with a mobile phone. We can access, print and share our images on the go, at home, everywhere. We choose from hundreds of TV channels, download our favourite films in seconds, watch programmes on demand, enhance our learning experience with a click of a button, and create and share our own content quickly and simply with friends or others around the globe.
We are all TV cameramen, journalists and editors, of our own and others lives. And the boundaries between the different media we use to communicate and access information and data are blurring, as we (and they) become more social.
This confluence of networks, devices and lifestyle has made video an integral part of our personal lives but it still doesnt explain the transformational power of the moving image.
The power of the visual
Video might literally mean I see, but video today is really about engagement and participation. The moving image infuses every moment of our lives and is easier and cheaper to create and share than ever before, enabling geographically-dispersed individuals to form communities of interest, and gain insight into the worlds and activities of others.
Use video in a Sentence
This is important. Thanks to technology, our community is no longer the streets in which we live, but rather is linked and defined by real and virtual superhighways, fixed and mobile communication lines, real and imagined worlds. Building in real visual aspects to dispersed, pan-regional, global communities helps make them feel more real, and creates engagement for their constituents.
Perhaps one of the other results of the growth of social, video-based communications is to make us think again about how we engage on a personal level. So many of us now have hundreds of Facebook friends, with whom we share life updates on a second-by-second basis. But with whom do we have our real relationships? It tends to be with the small group of people you prioritise as those you will meet in person, and follow face to face. And video is enabling those relationships to be maintained, even if face to face is increasingly over geographical distance, and enabled via a computer screen or smart phone.
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