The De- fault
Every new medium arrives already apologising for itself. A field study in four embarrassing episodes — and one that isn't over yet.
Every new medium, when it arrives, does the same thing first: it imitates the medium it is replacing.
Not because the builders are lazy.
Because the new medium doesn't know what it is yet.
The old medium is the only available template.
Early radio announcers held newspapers up to the microphone and read column by column into the transmitter. Literally. This was considered good broadcasting.
Early television was radio with a camera pointed at it. The script was identical. Nobody had thought to explain to the camera what it was supposed to be doing there.
c. 1952
Nixon sweated
under the lights
and lost the election.
Radio listeners thought Nixon won.
Television viewers thought Kennedy won.
Same words. The camera had become an argument.
The web's first pages were TV schedules converted to HTML. Broadcasting, with a scrollbar. Clicking "Back" was the most revolutionary thing you could do.
Then the audience
became the content.
Wikipedia. Blogger. Craigslist.
Not a delivery mechanism — a conversation that left a record.
Every link an argument. Every edit a claim.
AI arrived and began
imitating everything
simultaneously.
This is not a criticism.
This is what every medium does in its mimicry phase.
The rupture hasn't happened yet.|
