For more than a decade now, technologists have been talking about convergence. Unusually for the technology sector, it is a fairly normal word which belies the enormous changes already unfolding in the world of media, telecommunications and hardware. Convergence is a single force with ramifications for a large number of big companies, making almost everyone affected by it very, very nervous.
This convergence thing is all about technology – computers and internet connections specifically – getting off the desk and into our living rooms, phones and even cars. While it is having effects all over the place – VoIP is a communications convergence between your phone and your computer – I’m going to focus for the moment on the media, specifically TV.
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