Once upon a time, a wicked and wretched people were smitten with a catastrophe - potentially of their own making - which ground their world to a halt.
Great conflicts and controversies were unleashed, dividing families, pitting neighbor against neighbor, and leaving all of those effected (and all were), questioning the nature of "facts", "truth", and indeed the basic building blocks of shared reality.
Amidst this cataclysmic time, a technology was reborn. Once known by the the unimaginative name "webcasting", this decades-old solution in search of a problem finally found its truly killer app and re-emerged as the uninspired "livestreaming".
Gartner Research's Hype Cycle Diagram
It has been said that livestreaming ticket sales generated almost $1 billion for performing artists during the COVID pandemic, aka The Peak of Inflated Expectations. With the return of in-person live entertainment, considered by many to be the Number Three treatment for Post-Pandemic Stress Disorder (behind Drug and Alcohol Abuse and Civil Violence), livestreaming remains stuck in its Trough of Disillusionment. There have been no indications of a Slope of Enlightenment on the horizon.
The solution had its moment, though. The people sang, they danced. They laughed. They cried. They kissed COVID relief money goodbye. And for brief moments during a difficult time, all was well. The Arts survived.
Livestreaming returned to under the rock from which it crawled, to be called upon again the next time a feckless and short-memoried people need cultural nourishment and entertainment, perhaps when the air is too smokey to breath or the weather makes venturing outside impractical. Could be sooner than later.
