The Future Of Entertainment Technology
Entertainment technology’s evolution has always been somewhat unpredictable. It takes a lot of trial and error to attract audiences to new formats, which has been the case with recent innovations like streaming media as well as virtual and augmented reality.
Generally speaking, ‘entertainment’ refers to anything created in order to please audiences. And although the ways in which people can be entertained change and increase as technology develops, there remain several categories into which electronic entertainment can be broken down.
Entertainment Formats Through The Years
Prior to the technological advancements that led to the rise of the film industry, the novel was an extremely popular way to tell stories to masses of people, which was largely enabled by the printing press. Now, with giant digital platforms like Amazon, self-publication is not only easy but in many instances also very effective.
Radio dramas of the early twentieth century arguably paved the way for the podcasts of today, which have also enabled independent self publishers all over the world. Each new recorded music format, from vinyl to tape to digital, revolutionized the art of music itself.
Audio-visual technology evolved within the film and television industry for most of the twentieth century, which led to the rise of digital and streaming video. These are some of the most popular forms of entertainment, as mass audiences tend to gravitate toward visual formats.
Text, audio and visual technology all coalesce in the form of interactive entertainment experiences. Video games have been enormously popular for more or less their entire existence, in many cases acting as killer apps for their respective hardware systems.
The rise of social media has redefined many aspects of human life, including how people consume entertainment. And virtual as well as augmented reality systems explore new possibilities in terms of how people can interact with technology. A major common theme throughout the history of entertainment technology, as well as with these new formats, is the use of storytelling.
The Power Of Narrative
By nature, technology has a tendency to unite people and communities. Inventions like the printing press, the television and the internet all facilitate shared experiences among communities. These shared experiences ultimately evolve into narratives.
For much of human history, civilization has documented narrative through text (stories, fiction,historical accounts, etc.). Now, with the advent of ecommerce, digital publication allows authors from virtually any background to self-publish their own narratives.
Audio technology has similarly evolved to allow almost anybody with a microphone, computer and internet access to become a regular content creator. News, commentary and other audio content can now be shared through expansive digital audio networks.
Narrative structure is essential to filmmaking as an art form, and episodic content employs compelling story arcs in order to attract long-term audiences. This shows how narrative is not just an artistic device but also a tool for commercial viability.
Episodic content in particular uses narrative elements like ‘cliffhangers’ in order to maintain audience engagement. This technique is emphasized within the realm of interactive entertainment, including social media and video games, which employ user reward systems in order to incentivise sustained consumption.
Aside these strategies that are meant to, among other things, grow and solidify the customer base, user hardware also plays a key role in entertainment technology trends. The more convenient the device is to use and own, the more likely it will play a key role in the future of entertainment technology.
Mobile Entertainment
The tendency for hardware to become smaller, simpler and/or more portable is a natural course of technological evolution. Modern mobile technology traces its roots back to the cellular phone, which first appeared around the mid-twentieth century and continued to evolve for a few decades before a market-ready model was made available.
The first generation (1G) cell phones that were brought to consumers in the 1970s and 80s were bulky and did not work very well. When 2G came around in the 1990s, useful features such as Short Messaging Services (SMS) had been added, and existing features were improved. 3G added even more features around the turn of the century, which laid the foundation for the smartphone revolution shortly thereafter. Now, with 4G technology and 5G on the horizon, transmission rates are significantly improved, along with all sorts of multimedia capability (including playback and recording).
However, smartphones (as well as other mobile devices) still have plenty of limitations when it comes to multimedia. Screen sizes, storage and battery power are still lacking in mobile technology when compared to traditional hardware devices that are generally larger and tend to be tethered to power sources more often.
Nevertheless, there have been dramatic improvements in smartphone technology since the iPhone first debuted over a decade ago, especially in multimedia playback and recording. And now there are even ways to either connect smartphones to projectors (via HDMI, WiFi or various other methods) or even create DIY projectors using mobile playback devices and cardboard boxes.
Immersive Technology
The latest developments in entertainment technology are in the immersive space. People have always been drawn to immersive entertainment. Attractions such as theme parks and haunted houses offer people a complete momentary escape from reality. And now that virtual and augmented reality technology are available to general consumers and audiences, people can escape without even leaving their homes.
Virtual reality technology has had a long and volatile history, which started around the 1960s but didn’t begin to stabilize until recent years, when user experience began to dramatically improve and VR headsets became viable products for mass consumption. Augmented reality has been around for roughly as long as VR, and spiked in popularity recently with the release of the Pokémon GO app.
Both VR and AR have the unique ability to provide vivid and totally immersive user experiences, expanding the possibilities of storytelling and world-building in entertainment. They give users an enhanced or improved version of reality, or just replace it with something better altogether. But there are also drawbacks, as the technology is still not very flexible and has a lot of limiting features, in addition to certain health risks (like disorientation or even addiction).
Improvements are being made to these innovations, however. These include more social features to allow for more immersive collaboration among VR and AR users. Artificial intelligence is even being incorporated to provide immersive experiences that are more detailed and accurate.
Conclusion
Entertainment technology throughout history has largely served as a way for people to escape from reality, but also to bring people together into a new shared reality where stories become common experience. With the rise of hyper-real multimedia in the form of ultra high definition video and audio, immersive experiences with strong social features will be the next phase in the development of entertainment technology.