New media for new paradigms

Evolving consumer needs and desires for rich media services are explored from the point of view of three sources of insight: reluctant/disabled adopters, mobile services and the Kurzweil singularity. While it may be too facile to talk of "convergence" as a unified objective, the growth of synergy, flexibility and of similar services within competing offerings means that the challenge of utilisation of the uplink channel, characterised as a decrease in "asymmetricity" should be a focal point for attention. It is argued that: 1. There is a large unaddressed potential market for variable-interactivity media: 2. Mobile television is likely to be a completely new paradigm, also supporting the variable-interactivity concept and 3. The world post-singularity is likely to be radically changed and this is now so close that active efforts to plan for it are needed. All of these observations require common standards to facilitate solutions.