Though the Prologue to Manovich’s Language for New Media is a little abstract, it contextualizes “new media” within a historical context. The Man With a Movie Camera, the film that Manovich deconstructs, was made in 1929. Manovich uses still images from the film to frame the underlying characteristics of new media. Though he recognizes the contributions and aspirations of filmmakers like Vertov to fracture existing relationships between audience and film, Manovich does not consider film per se to be a “new media.”
Though I am aware there are semantic reasons for referring to “new media,” it is a messy term. The most inherent aspect of what makes it “new” has nothing to do with time per se. The idea of hypertext, for example, is not “new” exactly. Engelbart, the father of HCI, was conceptualizing how hypertext would function in the late 1960s. “The Mother of all Demos” was conducted in 1968 and should look very familiar to anyone familiar with how computers process data.
The shift from traditional media forms to “new” or digital media has fractured the transmission model of communication, especially in terms of mass communication. Now end-users (aka, digital citizens) have choices about what they want to “consume,” as well as when, with whom, and for how long.
But consumption really isn’t the most interesting part. With digital media, we all have the option to play along too. Ben notes the significance of video games as complex environments. In addition, we all have access to mix, mashup, and redistribute textual, visual, or video content. We can instantly share information via wikis, blogs, twitter, SMS to any number of people from our closest friends to a global community. Though we have this capability, how many of us actually take advantage of the possibilities though?
