I’ve been thinking quite a lot recently about how media is evolving. The demise of the traditional newspaper, the rise of virtual worlds and the ever popular comic-book movie are all really fascinating cultural shifts.
I’m also really interested in “what has influenced what.”
For example, the influence of Beatles is widespread throughout music. Jay-Z and Lebron are teaming up as celebrity influences athlete (or is it vice-versa?). The Newton was a stepping-stone of the iPhone. Rumor had it the recent film Cloverfield might have had a tie-in to the television show Lost.
I have assembled a matrix of mixed media influence: What media has lead the creation of another type? It is far from complete and my limited knowledge of many media genres (as well as limited time) has only allowed me to take a feeble stab at filling out the matrix. I now open it the community and would love to have others help flesh this out– if anyone even finds it helpful :)
In order to dissect, here is how it’s set up:
The above translates to: Has an offline product ever directly lead to the creation of a virtual world? (Answer is yes: Webkinz were toys that had a social networking component added later). The second line is the opposite: Has a virtual world ever led to the creation of a physical product? (Answer is ‘I dunno).
Here is the link to a Google Spreadsheet Version, or click here to download as a PDF