A “New Media” Taxonomy

One of the challenges I have had in organizing the material for this study has been how to draw the line between “new media” and old media. Manovich (2001, p. 19) also wrestled with this problem and made an important point. The popular understanding of new media identifies it with the use of a computer for distribution and exhibition rather than production. Accordingly, texts distributed on a computer (Web sites and electronic books) are considered to be new media; whereas texts distributed on paper are not.

Similarly, photographs that are put on a CD-ROM and require a computer to be viewed are considered new media; the same photographs printed in a book are not. I agree with Manovich that to understand “new media” we must consider both the new media that have emerged with digitization and old media, which have been transformed by computers and digitization.

 But are the old media transformed by digitization “new media” or are they media that are new. Manovich avoids this problem by not identifying which media are new media. He entitles his first chapter: “What Is New Media”  By treating new media in the singular he avoids the agonizing task of identifying which are the old media and which are the “new media”; rather he treats the notion of “new media” as the way in which media are produced, exhibited or distributed.

 Our approach differs from that of Manovich in that following McLuhan’s lead in UM we study individual media rather than the phenomena of “new media” as a whole, although we examine some of the generic properties of “new media, “new media” that emerged since UM in Part III. For me the term “new media” is plural and hence the “new media” are those media, which I defined above as digital, interactive, incorporate two-way communication and involve some form of computing. In Part II of this book we will treat the media McLuhan analyzed in even though this entails looking at some media, which might be considered new media.

Dealing with the printed word we examine electronic journals, eBooks’, and magazines. These three media all belong to the category of “new media” but because they are transforming the printed word we deal with them, our discussion of the library and archiving, which are being transformed by digitization and search engines is which deals with search engines. A number of other “new media” will be treated in Part II because they represent the digitization of media.

The phonograph record and player have been almost totally replaced respectively by the CD and CD player (both stand alone and those embedded in computers), the Walkman, the MP3 player and the iPod. We will therefore treat these “new media” The Phonograph. Movies are a medium, which has not been obsolesced by “new media” but rather transformed by them. The digital video camera, VCR devices, and DVD (digital versatile disc) devices have all impacted on the movies and will be treated. Other “new media” have impacted the movies like computers, the World Wide Web, the cell phone and even iTunes.

By JOSHUA HELENA M

BAPRM 42571