Describe New Media

Look at the last 5 people you’ve sent text messages to. Unless one of those contacts is a grandparent or a North Korean immigrant, there’s a good chance they can give you an intuitive answer as to what “New Media” is. Even without a dictionary, they will probably cite websites, CDs, computer games, or iTunes as examples. That is, they have a “gut feeling” about what new media means. Yet the distinction between old and new media may be blurrier than your North Korean friend might have imagined. In Business Week’s 2007 article entitled “Turner’s Secret Web Weapon”, the writer describes how TV executive David Levy is attempting to marry the two realms by having TV content (old media) interact with accompanying digital content (new media) that viewers can access on their laptops (http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2007-12-19/turners-secret-web-weapon). Maybe old media isn’t done after all.

In The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich points out how difficult it is to draw a line between what constitutes old and new media. After all, computers are often used to process photos or ads, which are then in turn printed back onto paper. Which domain, old or new, can lay claim to such Frankensteined examples of media? Does the definition of new media rely mainly on society’s gut feeling? Trying to distinguish old from new is often enough to make Kim Jong Un’s head spin.