Re: <nettime> What *ARE* New Media?

[Phil Graham <phil.graham@mailbox.uq.edu.au>]

Lots of people ask me "what do you mean by 'new media'?". To me, it is a 
term that only has meaning in relation to older media at any given time in 
history. Paper was once a new medium. Television, telegraph, radio, the 
alphabet, etc were all new media at one time. It is a term that, for me, 
implies and entails historical analysis rather than narrowly signifying 
ICTs or whatever is the new medium du jour. The specific questions the term 
implies is "what are the social implications of these particular new 
media?"; "how do they change human capacities to relate and organise?"; 
"how do they affect political economic formations?". People like Lynne 
White Jnr, Innis, and McLuhan seem to me to have asked the questions that 
frame the notion of new media, at least as an area for research. I am 
always surprised when people define a specific group of obviously ephemeral 
(or transitional) technological objects as new media.

My two cents.

Best regards to all,
Phil

At 05:31 AM 14/10/2003, steven schkolne wrote:

>hmm, i always thought new media was just a way to talk about multimedia
>without sounding dated
>
>audio/visual -> multimedia -> new media -> integrated media -> whatever
>
>or maybe this is the history:
>
>computer art -> new media -> digital art
>
>anyway, imho new media is not a very descriptive term, an ephemera of
>historical note, and not really worth an effort to fix its definition
>
>steven
>
>
>
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