Mediamorphosis

Defined by its creator as; “The transformation of communication media, usually brought about by the complex interplay of perceived needs, competitive and political pressures, and social and technological innovations,” (R. Fidler, Mediamorphosis – Understanding New Media, 1997) Mediamorphosis is more commonly known as the “digital metamorphosis”, this is to explain and estimate the changes of the digital world and its culture.

Since the word was coined by Fidler in 1990 the digital world has seen great changes both technically and socially. ‘New media’ has been created to update and upgrade old media; technology is now on a conveyor belt where devices are constantly going round and round but evolving every time they pass.

We are currently on our 4^th generation of mobile phone, a device now capable of thousands of functions with communication from phone to phone almost being inferior to its ability to perform so many other tasks such as surf the internet, take photographs, record video and sound, make payments, and scan bar codes.

We can see this through the global decline in SMS messaging that started in 2009. As we can see from the graphs below iPhone sales were at an all-time high during 2011 with over 20 million being sold in one quarter, however, at the same time in many countries in Europe including Poland, Germany, Denmark and Spain SMS messages were starting to decline. This proves that people were still buying and upgrading their mobiles but the way in which they are using them is changing.