Another important trend is the Individualization of Cultural Practices.
Such individualization has a very very long history
because it started more than 100 years ago.
In the early era,
we can speak about miniaturization of devices.
So the usage of less voluminous components,
more flexible materials et cetera,
especially in radio industries for example,
which drive for example the radio which became much more compact,
and radio has been progressively moving from
living room as a place of collective practice,
to kitchen, cars et cetera,
and then become absolutely personal.
The same logics with every device.
For example with Video VHS,
or DVD, tablets et cetera.
Television also has been installed separately in kitchen,
in children's rooms etc.
So, from this point of view,
the individualization could be considerate as the mythologies of industrial independence.
In the reality, dependency is very crucial because we are absolutely,
we become as slaves of devices according to some scholars.
If we'll take a look on a very brief evolution of such kind of practices,
we can see that for example,
let's take a music, let's take a music.
What was the music collective practice at the end of 19th century?
It was the collective listening to piano
for example or even the collective reading of newspapers.
But in field of music,
it was a collective usage of piano especially in the living room et cetera.
During the first half of the 20th century,
we can see the evolution of this practice,
where we can see the usage of the gramophone,
phonograph and some other music recording devices.
First of all, such devices replaced piano,
especially living rooms of the city or urban apartments,
where you have no enough space to place the piano always.
Then, such field of collective practices was moved to the radio.
Radio was installed in the center of the living room and the practice
of listening to the radio was mainly family-based, so collective also.
And sometimes, these devices for listening to radio has been combined,
converged with the devices to consume the music.
Then, it was a television era and then the second [inaudible] 20th century,
these radio has been replaced in the living room by the particular television,
by the particular device,
which we call television,
and then by different kind of magnet-based film music recorders.
And then, we can see how progressively the end of 1990s,
1980s, such fields as radio,
as music becomes absolutely personal with not digital but analog Walkman,
the audio cassette Walkman and then digital Walkman with a compact TVs,
which has been able to move for example and installed in the cars et cetera, et cetera.
And of course, it means, such long history,
it's not only the history about the personalization of devices,
it's also the history of the fragmentation of tastes,
of social tastes, and practices of people,
because a number of channels has become much more larger,
which means that it creates a split of tastes
between for example children and the parents,
which would like to watch different kind of television content,
diversity of tastes in field of music,
which created the incompatibility over the music,
which the parents would like to listen
for with their music for younger et cetera, et cetera.
And it drives of course these evolution of devices of course.
And actually, we have dealt with an era of personal consumption and personal devices,
because we can observe that the number of function in
one device is permanently growing actually in the contemporary smartphones.
We can listen to the radio or watch the films,
listen for their music, read books,
and do a lot of other things.
But at the same time,
we can observe that the number of connected devices is permanently growing.
So, it means that multi functionality does not lead to a reduction of number of devices.
It's very interesting trend.
Yes, from one hand,
we could think that the appearance of the smartphones which becomes much more
bigger with a screen will drive the disappearance for example, of tablet PCs.
But that's not the case,
tablets are proliferating also.
Means that the people have a distinction at
the level of usage between tablet and smartphones.
It's different devices in terms of practices
and how the people are organized in such practices.
And according to all different kind of forecasts,
we can see that the number of such connected devices will grow in the future,
which means that even if the functionality of devices is
growing and devices are becoming more universal and actually have a connected TV,
you can use the Internet on your TV sets et cetera.
At the same time, you prefer to use the Internet in
another kind of devices even if your TV set is connected to internet.
So, of course, this fragmentation or de-standartization of the content making of
the individualization also drives
these three odd relationship between content, device, and network.
Content it's the mainly non-material form of content.
Network, it's the service which makes these content accessible to people.
And device, it's some kind of particular technological device,
technological tool without which,
you can't consume the content.
And from this point of view,
it creates a permanent de-standartization because there are different devices,
different standards for such kind of devices and such devices are
also creating a different kind of standard of creation of content.
And sometimes, the incompatibility between one platform and another.
And finally, finally of course,
as it has been pointed out during the first week,
we have dealt with that also
the very strong age and gender dependence in the usage of different kinds of devices.
It means that individual or collective practices are very different
depending on gender and especially depending on their age of users.
And the older generations of users who watch much more television,
than the younger generations.
And the younger generations don't consider TV as their everyday practice.
It doesn't mean that they don't watch it but it means that they prefer
to consider it as the tool inside the high variety of other kind of practices.
Is just an example.
We can find a lot of such examples in other fields,
in other platforms where the radio sets with the reading of books with
their press will say the periodic press etc, etc.
And of course such dependence gender and age dependence also creates
the different relationship to this personalization, personalization of devices.
Iliya KiriaProfessor
