New Media, Lev. Manovich

I present my ideas based on the article "What Is New Media?" by Manovich:

While media may be true enough, new seems not to be the preferred word.  The word new implies a freshness, of a modernism in this context.  And that is so often where peoples minds go to I believe when we hear "new media."   Instead a word like digital media may be more proper.

Manovich also talked about hypermedia.  The idea of hyperlinks revolutionizing the web linking almost anything to to its point of origin.  This reminds me heavily of the popular search engine google.  The basses of googles success lies in this hypermedia principle.  The way google search works is off of algorithms to find you the most relevant and productive results.  One way it achieves this is to look at how many other sites are linked to that page. The more links, the more popular it must be, and therefor gets a better rating in your results.  This idea was revolutionary to search at the time, and is a large reason of there rocket to fame.

Andrew Sullivans take on blogs in new media was fresh for my self-stereotyped idea of bloggers and blog uses.  He explains how the medium is (unlike my precurrent views) not just an outlet for lonely computer geeks and drama queens.   This information  channel is a most unseen and  coveted form for journalist, creative writers, or even philosophers.  Its different from the essays, periodical, and published papers they usually write, but takes its advantages from that fact. As Matt Drudge told Sullivan, “the key to understanding a blog is to realize that it’s a broadcast, not a publication.”  I find this a most honest truth coming from a background in radio.  I don’t think one could blog without the comfortability of there own words. No staff between you and your audience, just your one way dialogue.

I liked near the end Sullivan connected blogging to post-modernism.   Like post-modernism and in fact broadcasting blogging seems to be sans detailed so to speak.  The format almost calls for a summarization of thoughts as a replacement to multiply drafted essays. As a result you get these unstable, slightly blurred, truths.  This demands a different mindset for reading.  I think he says it best when he talks about blogs as jazz.  Yes, Classical music is wonderful, but jazz can be just as great.  “Jazz and blogging are intimate, improvisational, and individual—but also inherently collective” Sullivan explained.  It’s a 21^st century outlet for the 21^st century mind.

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