BigShinyThing

Writing on the BBC News site, Internet law professor Michael Geist notes that:

The telecommunications and broadcast industries’ vision of the future of the internet invariably involves its convergence with television.

However, he argues, these plans may have been thrown into doubt, by the emergent phenomena of what he nicely terms ‘clip culture’:

The emergence of video sharing sites is yet another seemingly instant internet success story that has caught many by surprise.

Last month, two sites, MSN Video and Youtube, attracted nearly 10 million unique US visitors each.

[...] Telecommunications companies and intransigent broadcasters face an even tougher choice, as their vision of an on-demand converged internet, must now compete with the clip culture.

The emergence of clip culture represents a lot of unanticipated demand, for a lot of unanticipated content. And the lack of anticipation is what’s making the media giants twitchy: their fear is that betting the shop on converged IPTV might not be as sure a thing as they have thought. Read more in his article.

And as a nice example of the pull of clip culture, ladies and gentlemen — and because here in London it’s a cold rainy Friday and we could do with some inspiration — for your enjoyment, we present Sister Rosetta Tharpe and her electric guitar:

[Via our new favourite music blog, MoistWorks]