All forms of new media incorporate old media. (Marshal McLuhan) From the oral tradition to writing, movies, and the Internet, and now to algorithmic search engines that rank an index of personal preference.
As more media is incorporated, the old is subsumed into the new form: theater may derive from oral tradition and writing, but you did not read or speak while watching it, and yet today, television is watched in tandem with streaming video gamers while talked over and casually reading closed captions.
As media progresses from fixed entertainment into a distended flood from the index of self, all prioritized by rank, AI will increasingly mold the new media to the individual’s taste. This promotes a gothically incestuous spiraling inward, where algorithmic determination forms an ever-reducing, ever more specifically shallow taste loop.
As the new form engulfs us and incorporates us, will content be choked out?