Pergola15 hosts presentation of Link, dressed in blue

Presentation of Mediamorphosis, a new issue of Link, to take stock of these years, the platform years. In short, the aim is to bring us up to date on the ‘mediamorphosis’ that has long been underway. Indeed, in the last few years, digital platforms, from Netflix to Tik Tok and AI have changed in depth and revolutionised many aspects of our lives. In particular, interactions between people, habits, access to new professional opportunities, and the way goods and services are purchased have changed.

Presentation of Mediamorphosis, a new issue of Link, to take stock of these years, the platform years. In short, the aim is to bring us up to date on the ‘mediamorphosis’ that has long been underway. Indeed, in the last few years, digital platforms, from Netflix to Tik Tok and AI have changed in depth and revolutionised many aspects of our lives. In particular, interactions between people, habits, access to new professional opportunities, and the way goods and services are purchased have changed.

The last Mediamorphosis was in December 2017 and the work at the time was based on a historical reconstruction. Basically, the intention was to understand where the new appeared from and how it tried to correct the past. But now a further step is being attempted: to subtly decode the workings of the new digital ecosystem and with it the time in which we live.

The most interesting questions during the presentation

• How do information, narratives and entertainment change in an industry structured on big platforms?
• What margins for free creativity remain if everything becomes a fragment of content to be hurled into the indistinct stream of Instagram and TikTok?
• What challenges and opportunities arise from artificial intelligence applied to text and images or from immersive spaces shaping the metaverse?
• Is television receding or returning central in the online audiovisual explosion?
• Do podcasts work?
• What is left of the crypto world?

And further questions loom: what do the platforms want from us?

These have undoubtedly been the years of platforms – whether designed for entertainment or business – and we are so immersed in them that we no longer even notice them. It is no coincidence that everything is read through their operating logic and transformed to their measure. In other words, the flatness of life is determined.

But the diktat of growth also brings with it an inevitable death drive: what if the world is dominated only by large predators? How many can survive? And what happens to the smaller ones?

A fascinating characteristic of platforms is their drive for continuous growth, an insatiable hunger that drives them to occupy more and more space. That is, they are global, titanic, inherently monopolistic organisms by nature. First and foremost, the lesson came from the audiovisual world. But not only that, just think of network-born entities such as Google, Amazon, Meta and, to a lesser extent, Netflix. Then the lesson drove the old 20th century dominators to a drastic transformation in order to survive. As a result, evolutionary processes and mergers of immense magnitude took place in order to achieve the critical mass necessary to become platforms themselves. All the mergers that have taken place in recent years go in this direction: Disney-Abc-Lucas-Marvel-Pixar-20th Century Fox, WarnerBros.-Turner-Hbo-Discovery-Eurosport, Viacom-Cbs-Paramount,Comcast-Nbc-Universal-Sky.

What are the ways out if we are hunted by platforms?

I will go to another land, on another sea. There will be a better city than this…In this welter how long will the mind last? Wherever I turn my eye, wherever I look…a chased from the platform I am…. Perhaps Constantine Kavafis.