Physics and media

Bits are bits has been the very successful mantra of the MIT Media Laboratory for its first decade. “Media” has historically meant film vs television vs radio vs newspapers vs books, each of these an entirely separate business, even in a company that does all. In retrospect it is now obvious how artificial it is to categorize information by the package that delivers it. These barriers are now being blown to bits, correctly focusing the interest where it should be: on how to gather, filter, transform, and deliver information to people in a form that is appropriate to the context. Ideas rather than pixels can and should be the primitive unit.