Channel surfing is old school. Why can't the channels surf for you. That's the idea behind Pandora and Last.fm. Netlfix and Hulu are also heading in that direction. But for now they've already made getting your daily dose of big production video candy easier than ever.
Who would have known we would be here. When the term "mainstream" media was coined. Who knew all the popular media of today would actually be streaming onto our technological devices. Most popular media is continuously being distributed instantly all over the world, from just a few sources and websites.
We all drink from the stream these days. That sounds a little cultish, but's it's not that deep. Media companies, like Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, and Last.fm have made getting music, and videos as easy as thinking about it. We discriminate between good and bad now, by what's easily available, not where it's coming from. Well almost.
It's true that all the big budget content is easy to find, but that's just divided everything up into two categories. The "Mainstream" and the sublets. Now that nearly all the big stuff is in one literal and symbolic "stream" finding other sources is a more personal activity.
It's the motto of the hipster, look for what nobody's looking at. Except now that we're all a little more mature it's more than that. The mainstream can't satisfy all the cravings we have for entertainment. So now when we go away from the mainstream we're looking for the flavor's that we don't normally taste, but still have a penchant for.
It's hard to guess where we'll be in the future, as distributing and creating content get's easier and easier. Likely the mainstream will always be there, but people will also have several other streams. Social streams made up media from their friends (This one already exists, informally on content sharing sites like deviantart.com, writerscafe.org, soundcloud.com, etc.). Cultural streams that attach consumers to their core identities. Ideologic, educational, religious streams and so on and and so on.
