Honestly, I’m currently unsure of exactly what new media entails. My initial thought was, “Oh, new media… internet, television, video games, animation…” but the list went on and on. Is this all considered new media? Are these things really even new anymore? What’s old media? Clearly I’m a bit confused by attempting to define new media. I feel like attaching the word “new” to a term can add confusion, because “new” is a really subjective word.
After reading Lev Manovich’s essay, I now understand what the word “new” is referencing when people speak of new media. I guess now I’d say that new media what happened when computational technology combined with older forms of media (still images, film, printing press, etc) and eventually lead way to interactive media. I’m kind of wondering if new media and interactive media are similar terms. I believe that Manovich is saying that a computer isn’t considered new media in it’s original, computational-only form. It’s new media when it’s used to store and compute things like sound, images (moving and still), etc. I feel that the ability to read pixels rather than simply numerical data was a big part of the formation of new media.
