"we are at the stage of the invention of the television camera"

"In the development of the internet and connected, two-way media, we are at the stage of the invention of the television camera...

We have not yet created media or entertainment native to the internet. We will not for a while, it’s going to take us time."

From the blog of one of the blokes who runs the internet story company Six to Start.

I'm not sure about it being the invention of the TV camera - "birth of cinema moment" sounds cooler.

But otherwise I'd pretty much agree with that.

Which is why I've been trying to figure out  what are stories for mixed realities?

Here are some of the states of the art  so far.

Comments

[Holly Gramazio]

Oh, I very much disagree with it! I agree with pretty much all of the import of Dan's post, but that pull-quote, no. I think people have been saying for a long time that "nothing has yet been made that is native to the internet", that we "don't know what real internet content will look like", etc; and it just isn't true.

It's 2009 - the internet is pretty old now! One of the year's big fads, Omegle, was made by someone who was born after search engines and www. There's no need to go around saying "we don't know what stuff that is native to the internet will be like" - we can just look at the internet and see. If it's stories, more often than not it looks like fanfic communities or webcomics, for example.

Of course there's other stuff out there, there'll be more other stuff to come in the future, it will be exciting to find out what that other stuff is, etc, but the fact that many large institutions are still grappling with What To Do About The Internet does not even slightly mean that we are at a moment equivalent to the birth of cinema or the invention of the television camera. And to say that it does is to dismiss, however unintentionally, millions and millions of pieces of heartfelt Twilight fanfic, sporadically updated webcomics, meticulously created fanvids (a form of creative criticism which is massively dependent on and emergent from the internet), and incredible hosts of other work that come from people doing stuff rather than institutions making decisions, all for the sake of a metaphor.