Twice the speed, half the content? What price quick consumption?
I’ve been meaning to put this into words since I met up with @philcampbell last week, where we briefly touched on the subject of how content is being optimized, streamlined and piped at high pressure to whatever device we’re using in our hectic lifestyles, to get the same content we consume when we’re sat at our desktops or laptops.
Should this be the case? When mart phones first hit the market, designers and developers created content for those devices which was either solely for that platform (i.e. it wasn’t to be consumed elsewhere) or it was seen as a “quick hit”, a fast means to get hold of content in the knowledge that you’ll see the bigger picture when you touch base at a larger viewing port.
The concern is now, with the advent of the iPhone and its brethren, these devices are being used as the primary device for devouring information. The meager inches provided by these devices are the main route for news, books, photos, videos, games - whatever can be created and used, it’s all going through this little rectangle, this tiny letterbox looking out into an incredibly big world. What sacrifices are being made to ensure we’re getting the content we want, when we want it, on the gadget in the palm of our hands? What’s being trimmed at the edges to ensure everything (figuratively) fits? Which articles are being sold as full fat, when we’re just getting skimmed?
I’m a developer, I’m lucky - I have two big monitors. I’ve got a browser with 10 tabs open, I’ve got Twitter running, news feeds streaming in, blog updates pouring through - if something catches my eye, I’ve got at least half a dozen instantly accesible sources available to cross reference and expand on the item. Nothing is trimmed down for the sake of efficiency, I don’t have to close all but one application. I have a huge canvas to display and order the information I need to see the bigger picture.
Oh, and I can see my mate’s Facebook video of him crashing his mountain bike in such better clarity.
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