Well, ironically, only one year after the first publication of “Convergence Culture”, on a stage in San Francisco, a man wearing a turtle neck, makes a joke about Jenkins’ despised Black Box — and the punch line of this joke would change the world forever:

The iPhone was born and instantly revolutionized the world it was born into. Admittedly, there have already been so called “smart phones” out there, but, as Steve Jobs joyfully stressed, “the problem is that they’re not so smart and they’re not so easy to use”.

Steve Jobs reinventing the smart phone.

That is why, in the aftermath of the iPhone introduction in 2007, many were critical of the self-proclaimed messiah of convergence. Matt Rosoff of CNET, for instance, asked:

“The real question: can the iPhone break the convergence rule? That rule, proven time and time again, is that consumers (not necessarily businesses) prefer products with one primary function over products with multiple equally weighted functions. It’s OK to add a secondary function that doesn’t get in the way–adding an inexpensive camera to a cell phone, for instance. But as soon as you try to combine two previously separate devices, consumers react with indifference at best.”

Obviously, time has proven him wrong. Ever since, people like to describe the iPhone as the first real smartphone. But why? What change has it brought about? The iPhone is called the first real smartphone exactly because it solved Jenkins’ Black Box Fallacy. Finally, distinct media were converged within one device that actually functioned as a Black Box. “It works like magic”, claims Apple’s magician-in-chief Steve Jobs, hitting the nail right on the head. In order to provide a product that convincingly converges distinct media within one, you need to act like a magician with a black box: Make believe! iPhone users don’t want to experience the system at work: They don’t want to hear the scratching sound of the gear wheels meshing one medium with the other beneath the surface of their oh so shiny and smart phones. Instead, the iPhone experience convincingly makes believe that the electronic device we’re holding in our hands is not a robot but a human(like) being that understands the ways we interact with it (and we can even call her Siri). The success of the iPhone ever since is due to the brilliant witchcraft of its interface. We ooh and ahh at the magic trick performed in front of us exactly because we just can’t make out how it can possibly work so easily. If you want to satisfy consumers’ needs, you must protect the secret of the Platonic cave. And I’m sure that, by now, Henry Jenkins won’t “have to figure out which button to push” if he receives a call on his Black Box.