A lot of interesting points surrounding media authorship through software brought up by the author. One that I've long thought about is the consolidation of media creation tools. Especially in the video production world, the Adobe Creative Cloud software suite, Adobe Premiere in particular has grown to become the standard in recent years for prosumers, boutique design studios and productions companies and in some cases extending its use to major movie picture studios. Since 2008 the proliferation of HDSLRs, handheld cameras typically used for high end photography that recently have implemented cinema quality video features, have dominated the low to medium level video production world and again influencing the high end major movie studio productions as well.
These two technologies have dropped in price drastically in the last 10 years, in concert with online communities mostly in agreement of the best tools for the majority of users has led to an army of video producers using very similar tools for the job. This uniformity in tools across the video production landscape is fundamentally defining the aesthetic of media in this day and age. As technology and the market evolve, new cameras and iterations of software will replace the current wave but as it stands now the majority of motion graphics being produced are being made in Adobe After Effects. As extensible and powerful Adobe After Effects is, what does it mean to the media landscape if every video uses the same formula to generate motion blur? I believe the defining aesthetics of this era will become more apparent with time but are rooted heavily in the uniformity and overlooked constraints of modern software and hardware.