Manovich distinguishes “new media” as media that can be translated into numerical data that is accessible to computers; when media becomes quantifiable and computable, that is when it has shifted to new media. The computer then becomes a media processor that allows for remediation and translation of prior media into new media. This is a refreshingly definite definition of new media that I feel is a lot easier to digest than other definitions that other theorists have provided. Of course, it is limited in a sense, but then again all other definitions have limitations of their own. Instead, when using this definition, it becomes clearer to see that new media is specific to digitized media, though there are overlaps. Even so, Manovich avoids the word “digital” because in itself has connotations and “old media” had lots of digitization already. Because of this, Manovich also focuses on scale in order to differentiate old media from new media. He also talks about how much tracking is involved in new media and users’ agency because of it, as do many other media theorists that we are reading. When we use new media, we are subject to the tracking and storage systems that are inherent, regardless of whether the sites have notified us or asked for our permission or not. In addition to this, we as users are also subjected to the unspoken limitations built up by computer engineers and web designers; we may not be as free as we think we are when we use the internet. This brings up the question of how much of our freedom and privacy we are willing to give up in order to be involved in the new media culture.
Ong Yan Ting
Gitelman talks about the unifying logic of media, and how all old media were once new media. She argues that when a media is at the point of being new, many people will analyse how they work and the potential consequences, ie the form of the technology. However, as it becomes old media (or with the speed of technology innovation, just older), people tend to ignore the form of the technology and go right into the content that the media is trying to portray. And it is only when the technology fails that we are reminded of the form that the content exists in.
Tan Yuan Ting
trying to send this for the 5th time on a sunday.
New media – if you had asked me, and I hadn’t seen the readings, as predicted, I would have associated it with things completely relating towards computers.
Manovich mentions the shifting functions of the computers, on how it used to be a communication device, a calculator for equations, but is now used as a media processor (in addition to previously mentioned things).
He argues that culture undergoing computerisation will have general tendencies such as (1) numerical representation – new media being programmable and having a mathematical function.
(2) modularity – of how media is made up of different individual/independent parts but can be put together to form one part, or be broken into more independent parts, such that it allows for easy deletion of media as well.
(3) automation, – low level automation vs. high level authmation, and media access. low level automation is where the user creates and modified a media object from the start, while the other requires the computer to understand the semantics. media access came from how with creation of enormous amount of media material, and the need to store and classifying them, and to have a way to search for them.
(4) variability, and (5) transcoding –> which I’m a little lost about. so I shall leave it there.
Tiffany Goh
This week’s theorists advocate the examination of social history and social structures in order to get at the functionality of technology.
Manuel Castells in his article The Space of Flows, defined this as the possibility of practising simultaneity without contiguity with the use technology. The most classic example I think of outsourcing by huge Multinational Companies (MNCs) to drive down production costs and make the most profits out of their business. Through the globalization process and deeply rooted in a neoliberalist economy, MNCs have made the dialectic tension of decentralization and centralization possible at the same time. On the one hand, the manufacturing and sale of a commodity can occur in multiple places in the world- decentralization and on the other hand, management is centralized in the MNC that has the financial capital to call the shots. Hence, this has given way to the creation of network societies such as financial markets, transnational production networks, media networks, networked forms of global governance and global social movements.
Spaces of flows are made up of nodes and networks- places which are interconnected by electronic powered communication networks through which information flows. Nodal points such as economic cities which Castells terms “major cities” are ones which the MNCs are mostly situated in. Mostly situated in developed countries, these major cities outsource the manufacturing of their goods to developing countries or areas within the city which are less developed. Where there is a constant “race to the bottom”, this has resulted in the proliferation of sweatshops, and the creation of what Castells calls “spheres of dysfunctionality”. Economic inequality and injustice are some of the negative social implications and what Castells is trying to drive at is the importance of tracing the production of something as simple as a Nike T-shirt for example to the social history and structures involved in it and technologies’ part to play in it.
Similarly, Lisa Gitelman highlights the important questions of meaning and agency behind the use of new media. We often take technology for granted and at face-value. However she urges us to think critically about both the communicative ways in which new media functions as well as the technological protocol behind it. She noted that media is always historical and that it is tied to social and cultural histories. Implicated in broader cultural and political flows she brings up the questions of whether the culture industry is the dominant force which imposes meaning or re we able to exercise agency as consumers?
Manovich furthers the issue of agency by referencing Louis Althusser. Manovich in his anaylsis, was interested at getting at whether or not the culture industry is indeed an ideological state apparatus which makes us “always already” subjects of the capitalist mode of production. New media, for him, is the translation of all information into numerical data accessible to computers.
Lee Cheong Khi
Manuel Castells is trying to make a case on the space of flows. To him, he is not interested in how division of labor becomes hierarchical, where the less developed countries are always placed at the periphery. He states that instead, such hierarchies “can be blurred, and even reversed”. A new industrial space has been emerging, as defined by the “versatility of its networks.” This new industrial space highlighted the importance of spatial proximity as a material condition where information, technology, etc can flow anywhere. He ends with the idea that architecture meant the space of places which remains a place itself, while people around it “look more like a flow”, which results in the altering of the dynamic and meaning of places.
Khrisha Chatterji
Manovich explores the notion of new media and is quick to add that we should not take popular definitions of new media as the only definition. I think she makes the claim that new media is not exactly new media and that it has always existed because media can be seen as a process. For her, new media only became new and different from old media because of following five factors: (1) numerical representation, (2) modularity, (3) automation, (4) variability and (5) transcoding.
Gitelman looks to new media in the historical sense as she believes that the different versions of looking at media history enables us to understand how people understand the way things work, how people communicate, how they differentiate, etc. She, like Manovich, wants to provide a new perspective of looking at new media. She makes the claim that media are historical subjects as they are “socially realized structures of communication, a ritualized collocation of different people on the same mental map, sharing or engaged with popular ontologies of representation.” (p.7) Media are sites where people experience different sorts of social meanings and these meanings are influenced by technological conditions and the culture industry. For her, media is the result of socioeconomic forces and not a force in its own right as it is dependent on how things like how production and consumption are defined.
Castells analyzes the social meanings of space and time. He sees space and time as interrelated as “space organizes time in the network society.” He sees the interaction between technology, space and society as something complex and he seeks to analyze this complex interaction in what he calls the “space of flows.” Technological changes, like the new industrial system makes viewing the global and the local complicated, it led to the creation of a new dynamic of the global and the local, new spatial division of labour, etc. It has also led to a new form of informational city and new urban processes as results of how space is differentiated in social terms. He uses megacities as an example to explain the new spatial form. Space of flows is actually constituted by a circuit of electronic exchanges, constituted by its nodes and hub and refers to the spatial organization of the dominant, managerial elites. Ultimately, “space of flows is made up of personal micro-networks that project their interests in functional macro-networks throughout the global set of interactions in the space of flows.” (p.446)
Yeow Xinyin Christy
Castells proposes that space should not be disconnected from time and hence the hypothesis that space organizes time in the network society. Castells refers to the ‘space of flows’ as “the material organization of time‐sharing social practices that work through flows”. He argues that a group’s position in time becomes more important than their places. Society is constructed by three layers of flows: (1) circuit of electronic impulses- such as telecommunication and broadcasting which are based on information technologies. (2) Nodes and hubs that are based on an electronic network and hierarchically organized according to their relative weight. (3) the spatial organization of the dominant and managerial elites. The example of the Barcelona airport was to show how architecture could be regarded as a media. This media allows the space of flows to be experienced and exposed.
Gitelman reminds us the word media is plural, not singular, ‘media are’. By using two relatable examples of the sound recording in the late 19th century and the Internet in the late 20th century, she allows us to see how the chronological development of the two examples parallels each other in terms of invention and audience appropriation. Inscriptive media, she argues towards the end, is impossible to disentangle from our sense of history.
Manovich begins with the history of the daguerreotype and the “Analytical Engine”. The bounds for new media according to Manovich, are set by five “principles of new media” present in most new media objects. These principles reflect the differences of industrial and post-industrial economies which include the assembly line where manufacturing is divided into discrete tasks (numerical representation). They include (1)Numerical representation, (2) Modularity, (3) Automation, (4) Variability, (5) Transcoding. Manovich later compares between the properties of the cinema and new media and demonstrates that neither discrete representation, multimedia, nor random access are unique to new media as they are present in cinema too.
Frances Tan Wei Ting
This week’s readings are concerned with new media.
Castells does not talk directly about new media. Instead, he discusses a new spatial logic, the space of flows in an informational global society. This spatial logic is compared to the space of places, another spatial logic.
In the informational global society, there is a new industrial space that is “marked by fundamental discontinuity milieux of innovations, new and old, constitute themselves on the basis of their internal structure and dynamics… Once established, milieux of innovation both compete and cooperate between different regions, creating a network of interaction that brings them together…” (pg 422). The “milieux of innovation” refers to the “specific sets of relationships of production and management, based on a social organization that by and large share a work culture and instrumental goals aimed at generating new knowledge, new processes and new products”. Mega-cities are “globally connected and locally disconnected” nodes that concentrate the world’s power and direct flows in this new industrial space. These are flows of capital, information, technology, organizational interaction, images, sound and symbols. The space of flows refers to “the material organization of time-sharing social practices that work through flows”, constituting of material supports (circuit of electronic exchanges, place nodes and hubs with specific characteristics, and spatial organization of dominant managerial elites who exercise directional function wound which space is articulated).
The space of places refers to architecture. Postmodern architecture blurs and removes meaningful relationships between architecture and society. It becomes increasing ahistorical. The place is not necessarily a community, but it can help community building because it is a “locale whose form, function and meaning are self-contained within the boundaries of physical contiguity”.
Manovich talks about a number of things. Firstly, it tries to define new media by finding characteristics that distinguish it from old media. These “new” characteristics arise from the convergence of computing and media technologies, such that there can be “translation of existing media into numerical data accessible for computers”. These characteristics include numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability and cultural transcoding. The last three are dependent on the first two. They follow post-industrial society logic of giving the users the impression that their choices, thoughts and desires are unique and thus the media they use can and should be customized. This reminds me of Adorno’s readings in which this choice provided is in fact a totalization, and not “free” at all. This is contrasted against the logic of modern mass society in which everything, including the users and their beliefs, are and should be standardized. The modern society creates while the post-modern society accesses. This difference is due to the increased accumulation of media materials allowed by technologies. A different view of new media views it merely as a particular type computer data. But if that were truly assumed, the “need” to look at “new media” surely would be diminished.
Manovich also lists what new media is not, and uses the example of the cinema to show why. These include:
1. New media is analog media converted to a digital representation
2. All digital media share the same digital code
3. New media allows for random access
4. Digitzation involves inevitable loss of information
5. Digitally encoded media can be copied endlessly without degradation
6. New media is interactive.
They are not necessarily true and they are not necessarily characteristics particular to new media only.
Some other issues of the Manovich reading (not all): Freedom and moral responsibility in use of new media. Assumption of isomorphism underlying the idea that new media technologies externalize and objectify reasoning. I am also reminded of Ong’s article.
Gitelman discusses media history, which usually naturalizes, essentializes or cedes agency to media. She also talks about media archaeology, which is “a methodology, a hermeneutic reading of the ‘new’ against the grain of the past” instead of a chronological narrative form. Media is defined as “socially realized structures of communication”, with supporting protocols that are invisible and led to their authority. Protocols refer to normative rules and default conditions. Media is meaningful and yet unacceptably unreal. They are concerned with representations and transmissions. Media are not ahistorical. They come from somewhere and are “functionally integral to a sense of pastness”. Media is difficult to historicize because their being bound up in the operations of history. The specifics of media is important, although media are frequently lumped together. Media audiences also contribute to questions of what to do with media. These audiences either have agency or they do not. It also makes little sense to distinguish between producers and consumers at the “beginning” of a medium. The materiality of media is also important. Media often presents a temporal asymmetry in the representation of the past (discrete, formal, in isolation) and the representation of the present (nuanced or lived periodicity).
Gitelman also talks about the “data of culture”, which refers to “records and documents, the archivable bits or irreducible pieces of modern culture that seem archivable under prevailing and evolving knowledge structures, and that thus suggest, demand, or defy preservation”. She also mentions a little of the literature about globalization and imperialism.
An interesting that is in Gitelman’s readings is “Media help to ‘organize and reorganize popular perceptions of difference in a global economic order,’ so that increasingly ‘one’s place is not so much a matter of authentic location or rootedness but one’s relationship to economic, political, technological and cultural flows’ “. With this, it becomes clearer how the reading by Castells can relate to the course.
Manovich distinguishes “new media” as media that can be translated into numerical data that is accessible to computers; when media becomes quantifiable and computable, that is when it has shifted to new media. The computer then becomes a media processor that allows for remediation and translation of prior media into new media. This is a refreshingly definite definition of new media that I feel is a lot easier to digest than other definitions that other theorists have provided. Of course, it is limited in a sense, but then again all other definitions have limitations of their own. Instead, when using this definition, it becomes clearer to see that new media is specific to digitized media, though there are overlaps. Even so, Manovich avoids the word “digital” because in itself has connotations and “old media” had lots of digitization already. Because of this, Manovich also focuses on scale in order to differentiate old media from new media. He also talks about how much tracking is involved in new media and users’ agency because of it, as do many other media theorists that we are reading. When we use new media, we are subject to the tracking and storage systems that are inherent, regardless of whether the sites have notified us or asked for our permission or not. In addition to this, we as users are also subjected to the unspoken limitations built up by computer engineers and web designers; we may not be as free as we think we are when we use the internet. This brings up the question of how much of our freedom and privacy we are willing to give up in order to be involved in the new media culture.
Gitelman talks about the unifying logic of media, and how all old media were once new media. She argues that when a media is at the point of being new, many people will analyse how they work and the potential consequences, ie the form of the technology. However, as it becomes old media (or with the speed of technology innovation, just older), people tend to ignore the form of the technology and go right into the content that the media is trying to portray. And it is only when the technology fails that we are reminded of the form that the content exists in.
trying to send this for the 5th time on a sunday.
New media – if you had asked me, and I hadn’t seen the readings, as predicted, I would have associated it with things completely relating towards computers.
Manovich mentions the shifting functions of the computers, on how it used to be a communication device, a calculator for equations, but is now used as a media processor (in addition to previously mentioned things).
He argues that culture undergoing computerisation will have general tendencies such as (1) numerical representation – new media being programmable and having a mathematical function.
(2) modularity – of how media is made up of different individual/independent parts but can be put together to form one part, or be broken into more independent parts, such that it allows for easy deletion of media as well.
(3) automation, – low level automation vs. high level authmation, and media access. low level automation is where the user creates and modified a media object from the start, while the other requires the computer to understand the semantics. media access came from how with creation of enormous amount of media material, and the need to store and classifying them, and to have a way to search for them.
(4) variability, and (5) transcoding –> which I’m a little lost about. so I shall leave it there.
This week’s theorists advocate the examination of social history and social structures in order to get at the functionality of technology.
Manuel Castells in his article The Space of Flows, defined this as the possibility of practising simultaneity without contiguity with the use technology. The most classic example I think of outsourcing by huge Multinational Companies (MNCs) to drive down production costs and make the most profits out of their business. Through the globalization process and deeply rooted in a neoliberalist economy, MNCs have made the dialectic tension of decentralization and centralization possible at the same time. On the one hand, the manufacturing and sale of a commodity can occur in multiple places in the world- decentralization and on the other hand, management is centralized in the MNC that has the financial capital to call the shots. Hence, this has given way to the creation of network societies such as financial markets, transnational production networks, media networks, networked forms of global governance and global social movements.
Spaces of flows are made up of nodes and networks- places which are interconnected by electronic powered communication networks through which information flows. Nodal points such as economic cities which Castells terms “major cities” are ones which the MNCs are mostly situated in. Mostly situated in developed countries, these major cities outsource the manufacturing of their goods to developing countries or areas within the city which are less developed. Where there is a constant “race to the bottom”, this has resulted in the proliferation of sweatshops, and the creation of what Castells calls “spheres of dysfunctionality”. Economic inequality and injustice are some of the negative social implications and what Castells is trying to drive at is the importance of tracing the production of something as simple as a Nike T-shirt for example to the social history and structures involved in it and technologies’ part to play in it.
Similarly, Lisa Gitelman highlights the important questions of meaning and agency behind the use of new media. We often take technology for granted and at face-value. However she urges us to think critically about both the communicative ways in which new media functions as well as the technological protocol behind it. She noted that media is always historical and that it is tied to social and cultural histories. Implicated in broader cultural and political flows she brings up the questions of whether the culture industry is the dominant force which imposes meaning or re we able to exercise agency as consumers?
Manovich furthers the issue of agency by referencing Louis Althusser. Manovich in his anaylsis, was interested at getting at whether or not the culture industry is indeed an ideological state apparatus which makes us “always already” subjects of the capitalist mode of production. New media, for him, is the translation of all information into numerical data accessible to computers.
Manuel Castells is trying to make a case on the space of flows. To him, he is not interested in how division of labor becomes hierarchical, where the less developed countries are always placed at the periphery. He states that instead, such hierarchies “can be blurred, and even reversed”. A new industrial space has been emerging, as defined by the “versatility of its networks.” This new industrial space highlighted the importance of spatial proximity as a material condition where information, technology, etc can flow anywhere. He ends with the idea that architecture meant the space of places which remains a place itself, while people around it “look more like a flow”, which results in the altering of the dynamic and meaning of places.
Manovich explores the notion of new media and is quick to add that we should not take popular definitions of new media as the only definition. I think she makes the claim that new media is not exactly new media and that it has always existed because media can be seen as a process. For her, new media only became new and different from old media because of following five factors: (1) numerical representation, (2) modularity, (3) automation, (4) variability and (5) transcoding.
Gitelman looks to new media in the historical sense as she believes that the different versions of looking at media history enables us to understand how people understand the way things work, how people communicate, how they differentiate, etc. She, like Manovich, wants to provide a new perspective of looking at new media. She makes the claim that media are historical subjects as they are “socially realized structures of communication, a ritualized collocation of different people on the same mental map, sharing or engaged with popular ontologies of representation.” (p.7) Media are sites where people experience different sorts of social meanings and these meanings are influenced by technological conditions and the culture industry. For her, media is the result of socioeconomic forces and not a force in its own right as it is dependent on how things like how production and consumption are defined.
Castells analyzes the social meanings of space and time. He sees space and time as interrelated as “space organizes time in the network society.” He sees the interaction between technology, space and society as something complex and he seeks to analyze this complex interaction in what he calls the “space of flows.” Technological changes, like the new industrial system makes viewing the global and the local complicated, it led to the creation of a new dynamic of the global and the local, new spatial division of labour, etc. It has also led to a new form of informational city and new urban processes as results of how space is differentiated in social terms. He uses megacities as an example to explain the new spatial form. Space of flows is actually constituted by a circuit of electronic exchanges, constituted by its nodes and hub and refers to the spatial organization of the dominant, managerial elites. Ultimately, “space of flows is made up of personal micro-networks that project their interests in functional macro-networks throughout the global set of interactions in the space of flows.” (p.446)
Castells proposes that space should not be disconnected from time and hence the hypothesis that space organizes time in the network society. Castells refers to the ‘space of flows’ as “the material organization of time‐sharing social practices that work through flows”. He argues that a group’s position in time becomes more important than their places. Society is constructed by three layers of flows: (1) circuit of electronic impulses- such as telecommunication and broadcasting which are based on information technologies. (2) Nodes and hubs that are based on an electronic network and hierarchically organized according to their relative weight. (3) the spatial organization of the dominant and managerial elites. The example of the Barcelona airport was to show how architecture could be regarded as a media. This media allows the space of flows to be experienced and exposed.
Gitelman reminds us the word media is plural, not singular, ‘media are’. By using two relatable examples of the sound recording in the late 19th century and the Internet in the late 20th century, she allows us to see how the chronological development of the two examples parallels each other in terms of invention and audience appropriation. Inscriptive media, she argues towards the end, is impossible to disentangle from our sense of history.
Manovich begins with the history of the daguerreotype and the “Analytical Engine”. The bounds for new media according to Manovich, are set by five “principles of new media” present in most new media objects. These principles reflect the differences of industrial and post-industrial economies which include the assembly line where manufacturing is divided into discrete tasks (numerical representation). They include (1)Numerical representation, (2) Modularity, (3) Automation, (4) Variability, (5) Transcoding. Manovich later compares between the properties of the cinema and new media and demonstrates that neither discrete representation, multimedia, nor random access are unique to new media as they are present in cinema too.
This week’s readings are concerned with new media.
Castells does not talk directly about new media. Instead, he discusses a new spatial logic, the space of flows in an informational global society. This spatial logic is compared to the space of places, another spatial logic.
In the informational global society, there is a new industrial space that is “marked by fundamental discontinuity milieux of innovations, new and old, constitute themselves on the basis of their internal structure and dynamics… Once established, milieux of innovation both compete and cooperate between different regions, creating a network of interaction that brings them together…” (pg 422). The “milieux of innovation” refers to the “specific sets of relationships of production and management, based on a social organization that by and large share a work culture and instrumental goals aimed at generating new knowledge, new processes and new products”. Mega-cities are “globally connected and locally disconnected” nodes that concentrate the world’s power and direct flows in this new industrial space. These are flows of capital, information, technology, organizational interaction, images, sound and symbols. The space of flows refers to “the material organization of time-sharing social practices that work through flows”, constituting of material supports (circuit of electronic exchanges, place nodes and hubs with specific characteristics, and spatial organization of dominant managerial elites who exercise directional function wound which space is articulated).
The space of places refers to architecture. Postmodern architecture blurs and removes meaningful relationships between architecture and society. It becomes increasing ahistorical. The place is not necessarily a community, but it can help community building because it is a “locale whose form, function and meaning are self-contained within the boundaries of physical contiguity”.
Manovich talks about a number of things. Firstly, it tries to define new media by finding characteristics that distinguish it from old media. These “new” characteristics arise from the convergence of computing and media technologies, such that there can be “translation of existing media into numerical data accessible for computers”. These characteristics include numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability and cultural transcoding. The last three are dependent on the first two. They follow post-industrial society logic of giving the users the impression that their choices, thoughts and desires are unique and thus the media they use can and should be customized. This reminds me of Adorno’s readings in which this choice provided is in fact a totalization, and not “free” at all. This is contrasted against the logic of modern mass society in which everything, including the users and their beliefs, are and should be standardized. The modern society creates while the post-modern society accesses. This difference is due to the increased accumulation of media materials allowed by technologies. A different view of new media views it merely as a particular type computer data. But if that were truly assumed, the “need” to look at “new media” surely would be diminished.
Manovich also lists what new media is not, and uses the example of the cinema to show why. These include:
1. New media is analog media converted to a digital representation
2. All digital media share the same digital code
3. New media allows for random access
4. Digitzation involves inevitable loss of information
5. Digitally encoded media can be copied endlessly without degradation
6. New media is interactive.
They are not necessarily true and they are not necessarily characteristics particular to new media only.
Some other issues of the Manovich reading (not all): Freedom and moral responsibility in use of new media. Assumption of isomorphism underlying the idea that new media technologies externalize and objectify reasoning. I am also reminded of Ong’s article.
Gitelman discusses media history, which usually naturalizes, essentializes or cedes agency to media. She also talks about media archaeology, which is “a methodology, a hermeneutic reading of the ‘new’ against the grain of the past” instead of a chronological narrative form. Media is defined as “socially realized structures of communication”, with supporting protocols that are invisible and led to their authority. Protocols refer to normative rules and default conditions. Media is meaningful and yet unacceptably unreal. They are concerned with representations and transmissions. Media are not ahistorical. They come from somewhere and are “functionally integral to a sense of pastness”. Media is difficult to historicize because their being bound up in the operations of history. The specifics of media is important, although media are frequently lumped together. Media audiences also contribute to questions of what to do with media. These audiences either have agency or they do not. It also makes little sense to distinguish between producers and consumers at the “beginning” of a medium. The materiality of media is also important. Media often presents a temporal asymmetry in the representation of the past (discrete, formal, in isolation) and the representation of the present (nuanced or lived periodicity).
Gitelman also talks about the “data of culture”, which refers to “records and documents, the archivable bits or irreducible pieces of modern culture that seem archivable under prevailing and evolving knowledge structures, and that thus suggest, demand, or defy preservation”. She also mentions a little of the literature about globalization and imperialism.
An interesting that is in Gitelman’s readings is “Media help to ‘organize and reorganize popular perceptions of difference in a global economic order,’ so that increasingly ‘one’s place is not so much a matter of authentic location or rootedness but one’s relationship to economic, political, technological and cultural flows’ “. With this, it becomes clearer how the reading by Castells can relate to the course.