September 19th, 2010
A colleague of mine recently suggested that New Media is everything newer than the pencil. However, I cannot accept such a simple definition; all media is new at some point. To the chirographic era, the pencil was new media, as was the Gutenberg press. Being that so many new media forms have arisen over the last few decades, what constitutes New Media may differ between individuals. For example, few scholars would consider the pencil to currently be New Media (although some might argue for it). However, as we consider a somewhat more contemporary example, such as the CD player, the level of agreement begins to rise. Of course, newer and unique media forms, such as Skype, Viddler, Jott, etc., are invariably agreed upon as New Media.
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May 12th, 2008
Lev Manovich sites the five principles of New Media as Numerical Presentation, modularity, automation, variability, and transcoding. It is the second category, modularity, with which I seem to take issue. Manovich calls modularity the “fractal structure of new media.” Read the rest of this entry »
May 8th, 2008
After reading Manovich’s chapter on this topic, my concept of defining new media is a bit fuzzy. I can provide examples of new media tools and features, but of increasing worth is the ability to provide a list of characteristics of what is and what is not new media. Manovich addressed exactly these points; however, I question and disagree with some of his points. (I’ll address these disagreements in a later post).
New Media is Read the rest of this entry »