When traveling on any highway, it is important to recognize that principles the principles of traffic are also generally applicable when one grows and moves to a golf cart , bumper cars, or dune buggy (if so fortunate), and the collective principles learned at this level also carry forward as some of the foundational knowledge used to provide the needed skill for operating a full-sized automobile. And so the progression continues as one operates a gas-guzzling SUV, a trailer-hauling truck, and even a forward moving aircraft.
As a metaphor, this progression is roughly applicable to the principle of transcoding in media. When communicators take a principle, rule, or standard process of communication and apply it or build upon it in a new environment, they can be understood to have successfully transcoded it. This has been happening for ages, as described in the introduction of this paper, but as advances in media build upon advances in media, we are far more aware of successful transcoding and become more likely to experience, value, and attempt it ourselves. Bearing a variety of aliases in other realms and disciplines, e.g., best practices, aspirational models, et al, but these are all really januvian faces of observation and learning as they occur in varying phases of maturity.
Variability, Manovich’s fifth principle of new media, also finds its role in our allegorical mass transit system as an innumerable list of potential destinations, routes, speeds, lane changes, and a myriad of other options like style, make, model, and color of vehicle, windows up or down, radio or not, etc., etc., ad nauseum. But is this a new development in communication, language, and media? As we use varying approaches in styles, voices, and writing we express the variability that is available to the communicator. While it is true that certain forms and specifics may prove more effective, or may be legislated to be correct, the reality is that they are merely effective because they fulfill expectations. As popular transportational convenience leads to the blazing of new cow-paths in a grassy meadow, so too do conventions of communication meander with the needs and desires of the audiences who seekallusion to utilize them. No longer must the lover and business executive both labor in the bulk of their communications, convention and instantaneous feedback provide for quick clarification upon misunderstanding and the expansion upon request where proven necessary. The language, style, and structure that is correct is that which proves most effective. Any practitioner of communication … everyone … can attest to this. What makes variability so much more pervasive in the world today is, again the economic value of customization. If you can afford the tab, you can purchase your steak and require the chef to prepare it to taste. Thankfully for the common man like me, what was once reserved for an elite few has now been popularized by Burger King (“Have it your way.”). Variability seems to be ultimately personified in in the standardized practice of audience analysis and its younger sibling, usability. And so it is that the common man like me can also produce a highly customized publication like this in place of a standard paper produced to the highest of APA standards. Moreover, I didn’t have to procure an entire printing press, design team, and technical staff to get it done. End product: my reflective content delivered in a way that communicates more about me, and hopefully, about the learning that has taken place through the course experience. If this desired end isn’t readily achieved, with the media chosen, then, as the lover scorned and executive who hears his Trump-esque boss say with panache, “You’re fired,” I will mourn my poor mark with the standard 15-second-in-car-drive-off-interview and a lot of pouting. J/K. LOL. :)
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