Today I went to an interesting talk by Timothy Garton Ash at the London School of Economics. Via a long-winded thread of thought that need not detain us here, he reminded me of an idea from another life that is very relevant to on-demand media.
It's this: desire (e.g. for content) can only exist in someone who is already skilled in a practice (e.g. that of wathing TV); and true desire is never divorced from the practice (the 'means') through which it is to be satisfied. You can never want just Star Wars; you can want to watch Star Wars tonight, in your living room or in the cinema, alone or in company. Watching movies is the practce; Star Wars is an instantiation of it. The fact that sometimes you need to watch it in any medium (e.g. just so that you can understand something someone said) is just a marginal case and should not be confused with what Star Wars really is.
This is just one more angle on an old argument in this blog: that content is not the thing; and that the notion that consumers want their content 'anywhere, anyhow', while possibly useful in some contexts, is essentially mistaken.
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