"New" & "Old" Media

According to Dr. Stewart's notes (found at Blackboard Academic Suite): "Firstly, it is important to see beyond a technological determinist perspective of the media and realise that terms like old and new media are rooted in the cultural assumptions of the society using such terms. Secondly, to see that computer-based media are being used in an era already deeply effected by the effects of earlier mediation.Thirdly, to provide a intellectual framework with which to discuss the effects of media (Old and New) and fourthly to argue that what is new ( if indeed anything is new about New Media) has to be considered from many different directions."

So we have to look around us and wonder: is this an "old" or a "new" media? Is the phone an "old" media? What about Internet? "Old" or "New"? I find it very difficult to define what is "old" and what is "new". Nevertheless, there is a yardstick-based model for discussing the binary opposition between ""Old" and "New" Media. According to the notes:

"In all, Leaning identifies about five types of 'yardstick' (considered by many commentators as being applicable to this issue) that could make a meaningful distinction between old and new media.

• Systemic
• Technical
• Aesthetic
• Logical
• Political

Systemic Considerations

Systemic attributes are the ways in which the media are dealt with by the market and by the state.In particular we have to consider

• Ownership - The number, diversity and Sector of the Ownership;
• Regulation - Government, Inter-Government, Industry Standards and 'Social Mores';
• Access- How is easy is it to set-up in a particular media etc.

Technical Considerations

• Electric vs Non-electric - All media identified as new are electric (unlike newspapers). However, not all electric media (e.g. 19th Century Telegraph) are now regarded as new media.
• Analogue Vs Digital - all new media identified are digital, but again this is not an exclusive definition.

By being digital and electric the new media tend have certain other sub-characteristics:-

• Digital media tend to be easy to reproduce (a point that is well made by Richard Wise in his book Multimedia: A Critical Introduction). Information is not copied, but reproduced through a set of instructions. This ease in turn gives rise to a number of cultural phenomena such as 'peer-to-peer' file sharing, with open source software programmers making their code available to one another or music fans sharing of digital music files through file formats like mp3.
• User Control of flow - Digital Media make a virtue of hypertextuality, links and interactivity.
• Relative Ease of geographical distribution. The digital media are examples of what economists have been describing as the 'weightless' economy. They are easy to pass around the world via cables and satellites. However, it is worth noting that just because they are realatively easy to disseminate does not mean they are easy to access or control.

Aesthetic Considerations

It is worth asking the question - Do new media look, sound, taste, touch, smell and act any differently from old media?

Remediation

Bolter and Gruisin, in their book Remediation, propose that new media constantly 'remediate' existing media forms ie: they borrow ideas, convention and images from older, established forms. This is not idea uniquely associated with the new media though, as it is worth noting that the start of the TV news has a series of headlines ( a term and concept borrows from print newspapers). It does, however, mean that interface designers etc. will be subject to conservative cultural forces that will demand that their productions conform 'old' print-based models. Old media informs the look and feel of new media.

[We will come back to Remediation during the course of this module time and again. We will question this theory's applicability, its use and insight. You might be interested to know that there are other theories of the relationship between media - for example Lev Manovitch has recently developed a compex typology that explores the relationship between New Media and Film.]

To quote Leaning:-

" new media will not be dramatically different in look and will constantly borrow and make reference to the styles of the old media"

As we will see this is particularly pronounced with branding and the aspects of corporate culture involved with marketing.

Mediamorphosis

Another author that has considered this question is Roger Fidler in his book Mediamorphosis. Fidler argues for a process of change deeply dependent upon the interactions between media (old and new) and the wider society. Fidler gives a very good account of the development of text systems. In particular, he focuses on the 'failed' new media such as the Prestel 'teletext' system developed and implemented in the UK in the 1980s. The system is still in operation but has never been the success that either the Internet or the Minitel system developed in France has been. One of the key differences identified by Fidler has been the importance of person-to-person communication in the uptake of a new technology. In particular, the chat-rooms, e-mails and other flirting spaces of mintel and the world wide web.

Interaction/Interactivity

Interaction is a key 'buzzword' word in media circles at the moment and a number of definitions of new media centre on struggling with what a meaningful definition and usage of this term might be. I will address this key term in later lecture, however, just for now it is worth considering - what do we mean by interaction, who is interacting whom/what? Is this an exclusive feature of media ( new or old)? Is this the 'holy grail' of the new media project?

Tim Berners-Lee, the computer scientist who developed the world wide web at CERN, for example, wishes to develop the web beyond its current hypertext links and interactive pages to make it a 'fully intercreative medium'.

What does Berners-Lee mean by intercreativity? How this different from "Old" Media.

Logical Considerations

Leanings argues:-"With the new media the user is no longer just a consumer."

The old media needed enormous capital, cultural and technical resources. This is no longer true with new media. It was very, very hard to set up a television station. It is much easier to set up a website. In fact individuals have been able to set-up their own pages. It is easy to become a new media author ( in fact a number of commentators have argued that it is too easy) and to express your views, complete with typing errors, spelling mistakes and factual inaccuracies. This is important for our discussion of late modernity as the state and the corporate sector formerly had sole control over the dominant hegemonic forms of information.

Political Considerations

At this point in the lecture it is worth contexting cyberculture in two other contemporary cultural debates, namely those surrounding globalisation and individualisation. These processes have been described by Manuel Castells ( among many others) in his trilogy The Information Age. In this massive work he describes the economic and social changes that have already occurred as a result of a network society. In particular, the global capital markets, the inter-connectedness of markets for goods and labour and the dramatic effects on corporations of processes such as outsourcing. New media, the technology, its practitioners and the wider culture loosely referred to as cyberculture are the child of this network society and also one of its driving forces. However, this does not mean that new technology automatically guarantees a new world order (as witnessed by the bursting of the dot.com bubble in 2000). The future is never that simple!"

Do we need to distinguish "old" from "new" media? When I am using the internet or the phone does the characterization "old" or "new" media affect my use? Personally, as a user of media, i never thought of characterize the media I use. I never thought it was going to be useful. I still don't, but I am sure that helps in order to understand the procedure of mediation and to be able to develop new techniques and forms of mediation.

Another question that I have is: "New" and "Old" Media or "New" vs "Old" Media? I mean that the media which are considered "old" should help to the development of the "new" ones? Or there should always be a "race" in the field of media about which is the "newest" and which the "oldest" media? I hope the correct answer is "New" and "Old" Media and this is why I chose this title for my post. I would like to see different media to be connected to each other because this connection, firstly, affects the users. The technological gap between people, which is caused by many different reasons (age, geography, economy, gender etc) is getting narrower and, in the end, it will not be the technology that will define people, but people who will define technology.