The Future of Ubiquitous Media
By Kaywan Shiraz
Note: This is a repost from my personal blog from February 7, 2010
Nestled in the trendy mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles, the Interpublic Emerging Media Lab aims to prove that any message can be embedded into…well basically anything. IPG’s high-tech lab seems more like the geek’s ultimate fantasy apartment than a space for intensive media study, but big name companies and cutting-edge marketing firms use it as their playgrounds. Their goal: to provide real-world demonstrations of how media can be integrated into life. Be it a fridge that’s connected to the home network, a gaming-intensive dorm room, or an interactive bar, IPG Labs develops innovative ways for companies to reach out to their customers. However, with so much media integrated in everyday devices, what can we do with all this information? There’s already the phenomenon of email fatigue — long-term email users get overwhelmed with daily e-mail. What about information fatigue after media becomes hyper-ubiquitous through the proliferation of wirelessly integrated devices?
There are several online tools that scratch at the torrent of information provided by ubiquitous connectivity. iGoogle, Friendfeed, chi.mp, and various identity and media aggregators are trying to to find order in the midst of the digital chaos. But what if every single item in your life was fighting for your attention? Your computer(s), mobile phone, and game consoles all are networked to the larger Internet community, spouting bits and bytes of every topic and product imaginable. Soon, networked televisions will be more commonplace and they will provide you customized (and ultra-relevant) information from multple sources. But how much information can we really take in we saturate our lives with these “smart” devices?
The study “How Much Is Too Much? Media Structure, Content, and Cognitive Load, and Overload,” viewers were given increasing amounts of visual and aural inputs through the television. The study tried to find at what level does the average person start ignoring or confusing inputs.
“Initial results say that increasing the number of dimensions increases reaction times and decreases recognition. Signs of cognitive overload appear at 4-5 dimensions of information.”
If television viewers alone reach cognitive overload after 4-5 dimensions, imagine if your Chumby tells you 5-6 different things, your iPhone is alerting you about recent news items, and your car radio is scrolling the latest song and associated advertisement — all at the same time. At some point, the average media consumer will loose tons of information or worse, get the messages jumbled in the mix.
The same overload issue can be applied to social media. Conversation fatigue is a very real thing. Jennifer from the Search Engine Guide Blog shares her dialy social media routine:
“On an average day, I skim through roughly 400-500 RSS feeds. I have active accounts at four or five major social networks. I run three blogs. My instant messenger program generally has five to six conversations windows running throughout the day. All in all, I spend anywhere from 4-6 hours a day using or talking about social media and Web 2.0 tools and another 2-3 hours a day writing.”
Jennifer solves her time sink dilemma by prioritizing what messages and conversations are worth participating in:
“Out of that 4-6 hours I spend reading each day, I might find two to three topics worth writing about. I have to wonder if I might not find the same amount of topics with less reading. Or perhaps the same amount of topics with less reading, but more thinking.”
I see the same trend with technology; where Jennifer picks and chooses specific places like Facebook and LinkedIn, we’re going to pick and choose which devices to pay attention to. A media-saturated bar (like the one on the left) might not be that good for advertisers who bank on one message per technology.
With fatigue and overload issues on the horizon, the world needs something simplier. If we can get one plug-in wireless communication and computing device with variable projection or display technology, then our TV won’t need to spout 5 lines of stock tickers and local weather conditions and the toaster won’t spit out a torrent of RSS feeds. Defeating ubiquitous media fatigue is all about the individual’s total control over the information they want, instead of having multiple devices pushing all of your senses at once. But that’s probably something advertsers don’t want…
You can find IPG Lab’s thoughts on the future of media on their blog, The Future of Media. Oh! Click on the pictures in the post to find out what tech is in them.
