"New Media" a simple yet tricky term got me mulling over it all through Friday evening. I mean, I’m studying New Media and Internet Technologies so one would expect that I should know much about the subject but when Mr Conway asked the question: “…what happens to new media when it becomes old?”
Hmmn, honestly, never really gave that a thought. What happens to me when what I’ve studied goes extinct? After deliberating the issue with my sister, she said after a short pause, that New Media would always be New Media.
That made a lot of sense because New Media is not just the IPhone or the Internet and when those evolve into something more high tech, it would still be New Media and the IPhone would just be old like the Newspapers and soon the televisions. According to Gavin (Lecture MED 506-6. 23 October 2009), it’s the form the content takes that actually makes it New Media- “the hard drive of the technology”. As long as "communication is mediated through a computer" (Lister et al 2003), there would always be New Media.
Televisions for example are neither old nor new media because there are still analogue TVs in use around the world. However, I believe it’s in transition and has been for decades. TV would probably change further to become entirely digital and even more sophisticated (become more interactive). There will probably be better consumer choice even possibly deciding whether or not to allow interruption by advertising.
There would always be New Media because of the insatiable hunger for better, faster and easier means of communication and they would have evolved from what we have now.
References:
Picture Source: ammaro.com
Martín Lister et al (2003): New media a critical introduction . Available at http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UkqomXHmoAEC&lpg=PP1&ots=_j-1ARNb45&dq=new%20media%20a%20critical%20introduction&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=&f=false. (Accessed October 2009)
No comments:
Post a Comment