Understanding new media

The term “new media” in general refer to those digital media that are interactive, incorporate two-way communication, and involve some form of computing as opposed to “old media” such as the telephone, radio, and TV. These older media, which in their original incarnation did not require computer technology, now in their present configuration do make use of computer technology, as do so many other technologies that are not necessarily communication media, such as refrigerators and automobiles. Many “new media” emerged by combining an older medium interior “New Media” and Marshall McLuhan with computer and a hard drive. We have surrounded the term “new media” with quotation marks to signify that they are digital interactive media. When we use the term new media without quotation marks we are generically denoting media that are new to the context under discussion.

To better illustrate the difference in the terminology we can say that today all “new media” are new media. We can also say that in TV could be classified as part of the new media of its day but not as “new media” as we have defined the term above. TV integrated with a computer to form a digital video recorder such as the TiVo system can be, on the other hand, classified as an example of the “new media”. Our definition of “new media” is similar to the definitions of other authors. Some describe “new media” as the ability to combine text, audio, digital video, interactive multimedia, virtual reality, the Web, email, chat, a cell phone, a PDA such as the Palm Pilot or BlackBerry, computer applications, and any source of information accessible by a personal computer. Lev Manovich for one describes new media as new cultural forms which are native to computers or rely on computers for distribution: Web sites, human-computer interface, virtual worlds, VR, multimedia, computer games, computer animation, digital video, special effects in cinema and net films, interactive computer installations.

 Bolter and Grusin define new media in terms of remediation: “We call the representation of one medium in another remediation and we will argue that remediation is the defining characteristic of the new digital media.” They then go on to say that “all mediation is remediation” If this is the case how does one distinguish new media from old media? In fact their idea originates with McLuhan, who observed that the first content of a new medium is some older medium. A similar problem arises when Bolter and Grusin make the point that old and new media re mediate or refashion each other mutually. “What is new about new media comes from the particular ways in which they refashion older media and the ways in which older media refashion themselves to answer the challenges of new media”. Once again, this statement does not tell us which are the new media and which are the older media and amounts to defining new media in terms of chronology.

Their statement contains a truism, however, that applies to the relation of newer and older media through the ages. The written word refashioned the spoken word, and the spoken word responded to the challenge of the new medium by adopting the new vocabulary that writing made possible. We shall return to this point below when we discuss the changing figure/ground relationships that new media engender in. An important distinction between “new” and “old” media as we will use the term is that the old media are for the most part mass media, which is not the case with the “new media” with the possible exception of the Internet and the World interior understanding new media: extending Marshall McLuhan Wide Web. Although the latter two media may be considered mass media because any one with a computer and a telephone or cable connection can access them, they are nevertheless “experienced on an intimate level, each user working alone with the screen and interface”.

By PROTAS LEVINA

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