WHAT ARE THE NEW MEDIA

The term new media will in general refer to those digital media, which are interactive, incorporate two-way communication and involve some form of computing as opposed to old media such as the telephone, radio and TV.

Older media, which in their original incarnation did not require computer technology, now in their present configuration make use of computer technology as do so many other technologies which are not necessarily communication media like refrigerator and motor car. Many new media merged by combining an order medium with computer chips and hard drive. We have surrounded the term new media with quotation marks to signify that they are digital interactive media. When we use term new media without quotation mark we are generically demoting media, which are new to the context under discussion. 

To better illustrate the difference in terminologies we may say that they all new media are new media. We can also say 1948 that TV could be classified as part of the new media of its day but not as new media, as we have defined the term above. TV integrated with computer to form a digital video recorder such as TV system (30.10) can be on other hand classified as an example of the new media.

Our definition of new media is similar to the definition of other authors some described new media as the ability to combine texts, audio, digital video, interactive multimedia, virtual realities, the web, email, chart, the cell phones, a PDA like the palm pilot or blackberry, computer applications and any source of information accessible by one's personal computer. Manovich, L, described a new media as a new culture forms which are native to computer or rely on computers with distribution: website human-computer interface, virtual worlds, VR, multimedia, computer games, computer animation, digital video, special effects in cinema and net films, interactive computer installations. 

Bolter and Grusin (1999) defined new media in terms of remediation: we call the representation of one medium in another remediation and we will argue that remediation is the defining characteristic of the new digital media. They then go on to say that all mediation is a remediation, if this is the case how does one distinguish a new media from old media. 

In fact the idea originated with McLuhan who observed that the first content of new medium is some older medium. A similar problem arise when Bolter and Grusin make the excellent point that old and new media re-mediate or refashion each other mutually, what is the new about new media comes from a particular ways in which they refashion older media and the ways in which older media refashion themselves to answer the challenge of new media, once again this statement does not tell us which are the new media and which is the older and amount to define new media in terms of technology. 

The statement contains a truism, however, that apprise to the relations of newer and older media through the ages, the written word refashioned the spoken word and the spoken word responded to challenge of the new medium by adopting the new vocabulary that written made possible. 

BY MWINYIJUMA REHEMA 

BAPRM III - 42686