The Mediaspace presents a number of new interesting characteristics and possibilities for new forms of media. We have collected these into a list of Mediaspace Potentials.

These can be used for example in future envisioning exercises, to help the participants to consider the impact of any of these potentials to a media product, system or practice they are processing. For example, how will a media format such as the "TV news" change when it can take advantage of the potentials "Software", "Navigable" and "Organizable"?

unbounded

Media is freed from its "containers" and "packaging". Customers and audiences can't easily be confined to the boundaries publishers want to maintain; they will have the option to connect any media to any other media, and will likely exercise that freedom. Nobody can own and control the delivery channels the way they do today.

open

The mediaspace is open for all actors, and all actors can practice media creation to the extent they have need, interest and skill for.

software

In media, meaning is encoded in human language, audio and images, meant to be processed by humans. In software systems meaning is encoded in a programming language, meant to be processed by the software. Media will aquire more and more characteristics of software systems and vice versa.

navigable

Media is not restricted to linear format - it can be designed as a space within which one can navigate according to various more or less convenient mechanisms. It becomes a necessity for all media to enable navigation to an appropriate extent.

structured

Audiovisual and audio media are now difficult to manage because their structures are poorly defined. This contuinues to be a strategic area for development. When all media formats have more useful structures, they are easier to manage with digital processing.

semantic

Media can have well developed metadata, or semantic encoding, which describes the content in a way that helps both people and machines to process and organize the content in a useful way.

organizable

Media can be better organized, so that it becomes realistic to gather media and make interesting collections and compilations for personal or sharing purposes; also including professional archives and personal archives and working "papers"; meeting notes, messages, reports, diary, notebook, etc.

interconnected

Any program, any media fragment, can be connected in unlimited ways and using multiple strategies to any other media. Some of the connections are designed by the author, some by readers/viewers, some by competitors, some by agents, some are random, and so on. Structures and tools will need to facilitate connections.

available

Media will not disappear from our reach, if we can recall any indicator of its identity. If we have a way to identify it, we will have a way of retrieving it. The cost of retrieval will become much more reasonable than it is today, because of the vast diversity of possible strategies how this can be realized.

shareable

Media can be shared with anyone who is connected to the mediaspace. Social recommendations become a common mechanism for selecting media. Shared media is essential glue that keeps any community together. Sharing will be organized in a variety of ways, and this organization must be designable by the community.

reconfigurable

Media can be reconfigured by anyone at any time. The author does not have control over the content which would prevent reconfiguration. Many authors might try to prevent it, but others will make their products easy and attractive for reconfiguration and possibly redistribution.

redistributable

Media can be redistributed. It should be possible to implement any kind of licensing strategy - including one which makes it easy for me to re-edit things and redistribute them, while the compensations for the material I have used will be automatically taken care of, without any additional negotiations.

changing

Programs can change and evolve. It becomes important for authors to be able to design for change. Tools must include mechanisms for managing the evolution. Authors may continue to build on their earlier work. Several versions may exist in time and space.

individual

As the digitalization and technological convergence of the media platforms dissolves the material, logistic and temporal boundaries between different media, people will get the freedom to organize their use of media as they please. Every person can have a very individual view of the mediaspace - a Personal Mediascape.

appropriate

As media converges, any media format can be used for communication, depending what is the most appropriate format for each situation and communication need. This will increase audio and video use in new application areas, as well as the need to prepare any product with multiple media delivery in mind.

diverse

Any type of activity and application may utilize any type of media. The potential for existence and availability of any kind of media of any kind of topic increases. New interesting hybrid applications and tools that enable them begin to emerge, driven by the social innovation of all kinds of people.

memory

The Mediaspace, as part of the Internet, is also an eternal memory. Anything published into the Mediaspace has the potential to be stored in it indefinitely. But once something has been published, there is no guarantee that it will be available and findable, nor that it could be hidden, protected or erased.