New Digital Media
Wikipedia defines digital convergence as the term used to refer to the trend of using a single technological infrastructure to provide services that formerly required several different devices.
This is a phenomenon
that has been gaining prominence in the last few decades, and becomes ever deeper
nowadays due to the rise of new digital media and the progressive development
of the internet, which strongly affects intellectual production, be it the creation
of music, the production of games and videos and even the production of texts.
Thanks to the global computer network, games have become interactive: virtual
worlds bring thousands of players together in a single game. Videogames undoubtedly
now stand at the vanguard of knowledge in computer science. And they also are
currently the fastest growing entertainment media in the world, reaching ever
more people of all age groups, instead of being restricted to children and teenagers.
In technical terms, they have achieved a stunning level of realism.
But what are the impacts of these new media? According to Martin Heidegger, behind every technique there are hidden causes, uses and consequences which, even though they question human action, are independent of human will. He believed that we had to reach the essence of technique and see what is hidden there. If we think of them as techniques, the internet and the new digital media may actually become everything that humankind wants them to be, they may become the "efficient combination of human intelligences and imaginations", tools to serve the collectivity.