Techno-Cultural Convergence: Wanting to Say Everything, Wanting to Watch Everything

The opportunities created by the emergence of digital technology give rise to more new ways to communicate, with more people, and using more technologies. The communicable world has broadened, and the world of communicators has multiplied ad infinitum. Today, we want to say everything, everything can be watched, and everybody wants to communicate. Although we are a communication society, at the same time we are “anxious” about communication. The availability of technologies, communication opportunities, and people communicating has placed us in a scenario where we come together/apart in many ways. Maybe the most significant result of the so-called process of techno-cultural convergence is the sense that meanings are transmitted, technologies are becoming hybridized, and communications are intersecting. This paper explores how the processes whereby people, needs, and technologies intersect become hybridized, and coexist in the Internet, currently the most paradigmatic object in convergence. Several examples of users' “communities” content interacting in different Web spaces are analyzed to show how each of the aspects defining techno-cultural convergence relates to the expressive needs of individuals and their cultures, and to the technological possibilities of the formats they use to communicate.