Binary Models and Conglomeration: The Big, Smelly Mess of Modern Media

Binary, means two, not just the basest code language of this computer; binary models, in turn, means dividing a large concept into two important categories. There are many different binary models, but today we will discuss those related to media. These models include:

Hot/Cool-

Media which requires full attention, such as a book, is hot, while media which requires little attention, like a television show, is cool. To access how hot something is, I implore you to leave the room or skip ahead, and see how much you've missed.

Elitist/Popular-

Elite media has the ultimate purpose of you internalizing it, while popular media is primarily focused on entertainment. Think Citizen Kane Vs. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Content/Distribution-

Content providers are people who produce and publish media, like Warner Brothers, and Distributors are businesses which transmit these products to people, like Time Warner Cable. As you may have noticed, many companies are trying to become both, which we'll dive into later.

Information/Entertainment-

This was the only one I had to look up to remember, mostly because these two are merging, into infotainment. The line is becoming more and more blurred, and will probably be removed this from the list. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as it's balanced, which it's not.

These are all important, and distinct parts of media, the problem is, there's been some conglomeration. Conglomeration is when one large concept starts to devour other concepts, with binary models it seems the right is usually the glutton. 

Now, thank you Mr.Miller, for all the information above and your opinions on what's below, and to those who might be using this as a study guide, just use the top.

Right now, in this era of time-space convergence and obsessive pop-culture, we need to realize how our habits are currently, and might be, used by businesses.

There's already the debate over net-neutrality with the quasi-monopolies of media, such as Time Warner or Disney. Which brings into question whether the internet is a utility or not, which it definitely is for a lot of people.

There's also the problem of how we consume media, which is based more on binge consumption, instead of infrequent consumption. This makes sense because we have more access to media, and can access it more easily. Of course, you can argue that it creates media similar to books, because you read in your free time, and most likely have all the content in front of you, but it also causes media to lean a bit more to the right. Since movies, music, and television generally require much less attention to books, and because television can create less content for individual episodes.

Coming back to the quasi-monopolies; it's one of the basest rules of economics that says: competition is one of the few things that can sustain a free market. All of these big businesses swallow up possible competitors and create their own bubble of protection from all but, really huge established corporations. One reason we don't allow monopolies, is because they can limit free expression, since smaller content providers can't compete, or rely on them if they disagree with the message; while these businesses might not decree all non-christian media, they focus more on creating entertainment, and cold media, to produce a larger audience.

So now media is changing and converging, which will happen when the world becomes drastically different in thirty years. Not everything is a bad thing, but most have a possibility to, and we need to make sure they don't. Journalism is about truth, and providing important news to the people; if we continue to resort to sneezing panda videos, just to entertain, journalism is dead and buried.