Hola! and New Media?

Cooper Cherry here, and this is my first attempt at entering the blogosphere, so this is an important date in history.

After graduating from high school I went to Victoria College for two years, initially pursuing an associate's degree in network administration. I switched to English and ended up transferring to Texas State where I graduated with a double major in English and Sociology with an unofficial minor in Mass Comm.

I have always been fascinated by technology and the web. I have done some rudimentary web design on wysiwyg editors (mostly at Homestead.com a few years ago, and Contribute more recently) and cutting and pasting html and javascript.

I love to learn and am interested in almost everything under the sun. Art, film, literature, and Postmodern philosophy are my main interests in addition to technology.

I agree with Manovich that new media are cultural objects which use digital technology. For me, new media is synonymous with the Postmodern epoch. It utilizes decentralization, user generated content, and democratizes the means of production and distribution. New media has eroded the old model of mass communication and placed more power in the hands of individuals.

Manovich defines the principles of New Media: numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, and transcoding. Variability means that a new media cultural object can exist in infinite states, which I think is one of new media's most important aspects. As Manovich states, this allows new media to be manipulated by software just like any other data. Through the bounty of cheap computing technology, individuals can now compete with major media corporations.

Negroponte astutely recognized the generational cultural divide that the new information society. New media technology and cyberculture have widened this gap to perhaps its largest point in history and will only continue to do so as technology progresses. Most heads of committees in Congress were already college graduates by the time television was widespread. This really puts the gap in perspective.

Manovich also had an interesting point in differentiating between New Media and Cyberculture, though I do not exactly see the need for separating them. In today's context New Media operates almost entirely through the Internet.

Negroponte also points out the erosion of the nation state as a viable political entity due to rapid globalization, largely made possible by computing technology. These technologies have allowed us to bypass space and time. As Mcluhan argued, we may actually be entering the era of the global village and tribal culture that is not defined by geography.

Baron's article was important in that it placed new media in its historical context and shows how something as mundane as the pencil, which is now ubiquitous became so widely used. We take language itself for granted as well, but its an incredible phenomenon.