Check out this media stack: two songs were created with instruments many, many years ago. Then they were recorded on tape. Then they found their way to mp3 format. Then they were imported into a game, where interactive graphics were added. Then a digital DJ remixed them, creating yet another format. Then they were output into a YouTube video (mp4 format). Then they were uploaded to a blog. That's seven different media transformations (assuming that the original tapes didn't go to vinyl or CD before turning into mp3s).
Taking this a few steps further, it's not hard to see that I could easily turn the blog into a link and then into a shorter, Tweet-friendly link, then post it to Twitter so it could then become a Tweet. Which someone could then post to their Facebook account via an RSS feed like Twitfeed. Which someone could then email to a friend, who in turn could gmail it to another friend through their cellphone, who could then conceivably embed it into a Word file as part of a new media project.
Along its journey, this evolving media has probably lived on server hard drives, user hard drives, traveled along fiber optic cables and copper wire, and might've even been in outerspace via satellites and maybe undersea via those fiber optic cables.
And hell, here's the link to the YouTube channel.
I wonder what those musicians would've thought if they'd only known...
