It's Not About the Medium, Anymore

It occurred to me as I was moving audio files around on my computer today that the way Microsoft and Apple encourage us to organize our computer files – audio over here in this folder, video over there, photos here, text documents there – is an outdated way of thinking of the world.

But I'm more interested in the subject than the medium.

If I go to an industry conference or trade show, I want to know what happened there – I want to read about it, listen to what people said, watch the video of a discussion – and consume it all in one place. I don't care the medium, only that it's effective. Likewise, if I'm producing it. I want to give my users – who are readers, viewers and listeners – a package they can consume and enjoy, without making them have to go different places for different aspects of the same story.

The legacy thinking that goes from a legacy world of separate media consumed at separate times on different machines or pages is forcing us to organize in a legacy way.

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