In 1895, the Lumière brothers invented cinema. In 1896, they retired from filmmaking. This anecdote encapsulates a distinction that is easy to state and difficult to keep in view: the difference between a medium and the forms that medium makes possible.
Every significant technology for recording and transmitting experience is first a medium — a set of capacities, a new relationship between producer and receiver. The forms adequate to that medium take decades to develop, and they almost never emerge from the people who invented the medium itself.
The Industry's Persistent Error
The history of media technology is littered with the consequences of confusing a medium with its first forms. When television was invented, the initial assumption was that it would be a delivery mechanism for radio content and theatrical performance. When the internet arrived, the initial assumption was that it would be a delivery mechanism for print, broadcasting, and retail. In each case, the medium's most significant capacities were not those that replicated existing forms.
We are in the same moment now, with respect to AI and networked participation. The assumption — in most industrial contexts — is that these technologies will make existing forms cheaper and faster to produce. This assumption is not wrong. It is simply incomplete, in the way that assuming television would be cheap radio was incomplete. The medium is not the forms it enables. The forms adequate to the medium are not yet known.