streamingsphere

With most of the background data and ideas gathered from observations and articles on the internet, it is necessary with a couple of references to established theories.

University lectures, Google, WikiPedia, as well as a number of the RSS feeds I subscribe to, have naturally become the main sources for this project. However only a handful of you may be aware of the theories and concepts that are becoming second nature to a whole generation. (I am thinking of the theories that have let to the popularity of YouTube, MySpace and Facebook to mention a few.)

Relevant Literature
How live streaming gives the public broadcasting opportunities is relevant to several of the topics discussed in “Remediation: Understanding New Media” by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, 1999.
Representation of one media in another is called remediation. Streaming is remediation of traditional TV. Specifically live streaming grants both immediacy and hypermediacy. According to Bolter and Grusin remediation is composed of both.

Immediacy is the desire to experience a representation close to, or instead of, reality. This desire in itself spurs the live aspect – Feeling close to the action.
The interactive aspect of web 2.0 solutions surrounding streaming enhances immediacy. Visitors can comment and converse on what they see in real time.

Hypermediacy is when a medium is repackaged, a new method, to enhance or even exaggerate itself. Streaming can therefore be understood as a repackaging of TV (and transmission). An example of our culture’s most influential expression of hypermediacy is the World Wide Web according to Michael Joyce (1995).

Who are the public and why would they want to broadcast? Streaming can provide availability – Distributing information and content to the masses and the desire to experience events as they happen or later “on demand”.
Traditionally broadcasting has been limited to sizable news-agencies. With advanced technologies, amongst Web 2.0, blogs are gaining authority, as much or more attention than certain news agencies. Any good idea or new concept can gain a great deal of attention on the internet. YouTube illustrates how user-generated video has taken this one step further, I consider live streaming the next step.

The Long Tail
The Long Tail Theory (Chris Anderson, 2004) is applicable to my topic: Our culture (and economy) is shifting from mass markets (small number of mainstream products – “hits”) toward millions of niches. As cost of distribution fall, especially online, there is less need to collect the consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. (This has already been true for movies etc. not available on TV.)
According to Anderson people gravitate towards niches because they satisfy narrow interests better. He says “In one aspect of out life or another we all have some narrow interest”.

Any of these millions of users in The Long Tail, with their ‘narrow interest’ can broadcast an event or show, covering their endeared topics, using live streaming.

Transforming the Media Industry
In the article Streaming Video Transforms the Media Industry (2004) Jan Krikke observes that the demand for live video solutions on mobile devices is pushing technological development. This is amplified by the convergence of computing and communications where digital media will be delivered to a multitude of different devices and networks.

Krikke also points out how the Real-Time Transfer Protocol, that most streaming solutions use, is attractive. It is bandwidth efficient, and the data is discarded after play preventing unauthorized duplication. In addition it is ideal for mobile phones that previously had rather limited storage space.