How will digital convergence affect the quality of the media that we us daily
Answers
Possibly more than any other term in the digital age, convergence conveys both the promises and hazards of using 1's and 0's to communicate. At it's most basic, convergence refers to the ways that various analogue media can be translated into digital bytes and manipulated by a computer. A webpage is a good example of this "new media": the whole thing can be assembled on a desktop computer which combines text, image, sound, video, animation, and other digital effects . In the early 1990s, however, an emphasis was placed on the convergence of the computer and television. A decade later, the convergence equation is more complicated: television, computers, cellphones, the internet, and their delivery systems--cable, wireless, telephony, satellite, broadcast--are scrambling the vision of the future.
Bringing separate analogue media together is possible because each has been translated to the digital form and can thus be combined and manipulated in a digital processor, the computer. We now have digital telephones and televisions replacing the older analogue versions, CDs and DVDs competing with audiotape and LPs, film and video. Print books can now be circulated as digital files, downloaded over phone lines or cable, and arrive as electronic books--again, all a series of 1's and 0's. It is this kind of convergence that is causing such a ferment of technological prediction.
As noted above, convergence often refers to the coming together of telephone, cable, and broadcast technologies, where telcos and the cable giants vie for carrier and content rights that have traditionally been separated by telecommunications regulators like the FCC (Federal Communications Commission in the US) and the CRTC (Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission). However, the phenomenal growth of multimedia and networked computers in the mid-1990’s forced many commentators to revise the terms of the equation. While deregulation is still an important concern, the availability of bandwidth for networked computers, and the development of affordable full motion video technology and cable modems re-defined the terms of the changing convergence equation. The networking of computers on the internet is, probably more than anything, defining convergence in the early years of the 21st. C.
source :: http://www.media-studies.ca/articles/converge.htm