BOB: Barron's Own Blog

New Media Defined [Generally]

Ah, the big question, “What is it, really?” Honestly, I continue to wrestle with that very question. To use a new media asset to assist in answering the question, I’ll refer to the commercial shown in class, where the 1800’s era business consultants are looking for better ways to do things, and one comes up with a novel solution, only to be chased down by the mob who is yelling, “Witch!”

I’m not bringing up the commercial to take up space, rather, to provide the opportunity to discuss the first image I have included in this document. Provided by Th!nkMap™, the Visual Thesaurus, these two images demonstrate well the one new media tool that assists the user to visualize complex semantic relationships between words, much as creative connections are done in the neural space. You will notice that the first image begins with word “medium,” not actually the word “media” as one might anticipate. As the image illustrates, the medium is closely related to the spiritualist, long valued for the ability to transport and translate important messages. Working around the image in a circular fashion, the word is also connected to states of being, hence the difficulty of describing a specific point in the metamorphosis of communications across time. Because humans are temporal, tangible things, the medium must necessarily deal with and utilize real matter, emotion, or the more convenient metaphor or symbol to effectively get the point across.

So, historically speaking, communication has generally been best when it happens face to face, between those who have worked out a complex system of understanding. Working such a thing out requires a substantial investment of time and trust, and there it is … market economics. Just as you probably didn’t appreciate having to read across the “BAM” gap up above, the scarcity of resources and transfer of wealth rears its ugly head to encourage improvement in communication. Who was it that said, “Necessity is the mother of invention?” Basically, all of humanity shares a general distaste (and in some cases a full-fledged loathing) for running. we value and appreciate “better” aka new mediums. Again, because we are temporal beings, we invented the written word to save our thoughts and adventures for all of posterity to enjoy. Similar need for improved trust and proofs of veracity brought about new tools to take the place of physical proximity, e.g., the royal seal, personal signature, courier, and postal employee. Today this may not seem very sophisticated, but if we are honest and humble, we must acknowledge that society is still doing the same thing, just improving the method and, er, the media. Tablets became scrolls, stories became books, hand-written became machine printed, stories and books became graphic novels, movies, and syndicated sit-coms, village gossips became newspapers, and the courier finally gave way to email.

And our pocketbooks and bellies have felt the effect. Improved media gave way to better communication within peoples, between groups, and eventually across all varieties of cultural divides. Again, the transfer of wealth, like mosquitos in tall grass, thrives as improved media greases the wheels of commerce.

The understanding of new media is, in my opinion, best understood when gazing carefully through the lens of philosophy, while feeling around with one hand to find the best available tool for the job. Strangely, it often feels like the right tool is just beyond reach for the current situation.

Because the philosophical thought of the current era is widely characterized as being progressive, aka “postmodern,” it seems unlikely that the we may fully understand new/current/modern media without understanding more deliberately that media which is of the past. Manovich, in The Language of New Media, offers a seemingly ironic maxim. He holds that, to actually understand what new media is, we must fully engage in understanding what it is not.

Strangely, however, I did not find his text to generally lead this reader very far in discoursing the negative space of new media. Rather, he invested much energy in examining five general elements that frequently characterize new media: numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, and transcoding.

As personified by our first in-class discussion when we addressed each of these five items, new media can not be definitively expressed or constrained by these. Our collective post-modernity has taken root and progressed into full bloom; we, myself included, reject the authoritative position in favor of the more generally palatable relativism of inclusion.

Lanham, in a four-word title, The Economics of Attention, confirms my earlier assertions about the effect of market economics on media. As we have moved from agrarian to urban, agricultural to industrial, then into service and now a knowledge economy, the courier of old becomes the negotiator, mediator, and knowledge broker with his own stake in the transaction of communicating. How does he do it? Let’s look back at Manovich’s five elements.