Journalist Mark Glaser has an article up on the pbs.org MediaShift blog about the changing face of media in the 21^st cen­tury. He talks about how both tra­di­tional media and new media must learn from each other, and merge the best prac­tices. I like the point he makes about the techno-genie… once it’s out of the bottle, no one can put it back in. We’ve seen the same phe­nomena with all tech­no­log­ical break­throughs: TV, radio, Film, Nuclear weapons, cell phones, you name it.

No longer do people rely on TV Guide to pro­gram their lives around their favorite TV shows. Now they can use a dig­ital video recorder or watch shows on-demand online and fit their TV watching into their lives. The people are taking con­trol and watching, and lis­tening to what they want when they want — and on the devices they want. And that goes for TV as well as radio and audio, with pod­casts allowing people to listen on their own time and fast-forward or rewind shows at will.

What do we gain? We get more con­trol of our lives and our media expe­ri­ence and we are no longer slaves to pro­gram­mers. But what do we lose? We are losing shared expe­ri­ences, where we all watch the same shows at the same time, or watch the same sporting events together. And our “water cooler” talk has a new eti­quette, where we must tell people not to ruin our favorite shows because we’re taping it to watch later!