When the platform doesn't matter

With the much anticipated and highly dubious flash export for iPhone coming out, I’ve noticed many of our traditional authoring platforms blending into each other.

We’ve all noticed that Photoshop does a little more of what illustrator does. After Effects does a little more what 3D software does. Adobe programs aside, I think this is a trend that goes beyond our normal digital authoring platforms.

I see traditional print designers now being able to design for “interactive”. (Welcome to digital my print friends, we’ve been here for awhile) Marketers creating and distributing content through Facebook and Twitter without need for extensive tools. Videographers can easily create titles and basic effects.

So before the discussion about “needing to broaden your skillset” takes over, or a discussion about “knowledge of all master of none”, I want to extrapolate this into the future based on the idea that all things that are technical will become easier.

When you take into account all the places we place our time for entertainment and knowledge; movies, video, blogs, news, games, webertainment, info sites –there is a specific technical challenge needed to overcome each in their own world. Right now to create a website you need to choose Flash, html or something else. A video needs a editing tool and then needs to be exported to be viewed. But this is starting to change.

Games need a performance machine, but we’re realizing that the base system  you need to play a game is accelerating faster than our ability to create meaningful rich content. Likewise the ability to create on multiple platforms is now creating ubiquitous exporting of games. Video tools are now becoming more affordable and the ability to create stories without need for expensive shoots or sets is totally possible.

So when the tools arise to create fundamentally original art, that is neither game or movie or website–what will the tools be to create it? Single creators will usually lead the charge, so this new authoring platform must be accessible, none of this Avatar $300bn stuff. It will also need to work across so many forms of our current concepts of “media”. It’s hard to think how it coud be accomplished. But that’s where it’s going.