Dave on my iPod

When I was young lad, Convergence meant the coming together of computers and (fixed line) telecommunications. Then along came mobile and then the internet and then we called it IT and then we all started to go digital and then we added broadcast to the mix, and then all media, and now we have ubiquity and social networking. So Convergence is really all about citizen access to all the amazing things that technology can do for individuals and so enrich their lives.

It is a truism that new forms of communications are largely additive. The number of fixed line calls have held up well against the onslaught of mobile, texting is almost completely additive and email may have hit postal volumes, but only just. (NB Texting is so new that WORD still underlines it with that angry squiggly red line!) We have gone from one TV channel to hundreds in my life time, but films are even more popular. I have just spotted that Dave TV is now the 10^th most popular channel in multi channel households – a little different from the days when BBC news readers wore dinner jackets!

Convergence and communications have unsurprisingly followed the same path. We are offering the citizen more and more technology, it is additive (and sometimes harmlessly addictive), lives are being enriched and it is all being absorbed without too much pain, certainly by the young and middle aged! In other words new forms of Convergence are additive.

The challenge of Convergence (if you must call it that) is therefore clear. We need to make sure that we enrich all our citizens’ lives while the technology and media industries remain profitable. One follows the other!

I cant wait to see Dave on my iPod.