Thoughts on the Black Box Fallacy

In class we discussed the "Black Box Fallacy" theory that Henry Jenkins describes in his book Convergence Culture. Jenkins is arguing that there will be no final black box to gather and collect all the media forms we are using. I don't think that's entirely true.

Lately we have seen more and more media boxes and media center software being developed, not only by major corporations like Apple, but also by smaller companies such as the people behind "Plex" and "Boxee" which are two of the major media center softwares out there today. I think people are actually looking for this one box that can do it all. These software solutions make it easy to gather all your own media while also being connected online to enjoy the web and all that comes with it (Youtube, Netflix, Hulu, Spotify etc.). The possibilities are almost endless...

I think an interesting idea right now would be if for example the Apple TV would evolve further and run Apple's iOS. iOS is not only a solid OS but with the App Store you get endless of possibilities. For example, I can now stream live TV to my phone, I can rent tv shows, buy movies and music, play games and so on. Recently Boxee has taken the step from only providing software to also making the hardware and that means we have many great options to chose between. I can definitely see these boxes replacing everything in the home, except the computer of course. So I would argue that we are still looking for this one black box where we use the phone and computer as hubs to send out the media.