I think that the definition of ‘New Media’ rests heavily in the idea of convergence, two separate entities coming together to form an object that can be shared and manipulated, modified and programmed mathematically.
In ‘The Language of New Media’ Lev Manovich traces the birth of new media back to the synthesis of two key developments that took place in the 19th century. The first, the invention of computing and media technologies and the second ‘the rise of modern media technologies’. (Manovich, 20) On their own, neither of these two entities represent new media, a calculator, while still a computing device could never be described as new media in the same way that a newspaper, no matter how many digitally printed pictures it contained could not be described as new media either. It is only when we see the combination of the two, the transformation of pictures and print into ‘objects’ that can be combined and adapted without ever losing their own independence, that we are truly left with something that can be defied as new media. (Manovich, 30).
Similarly in The Geology of Media, Jussi Parikka reminds us that new media is also always dependent on another combination of elements. The immaterial data we have come to know as software and the internet and the metal, geological objects we hold in our hands or type on at our desks. (Parikka) An iPhone with no battery could never be defined as an object of new media however the internet with no actual tangible device to access it through would amount to nothing at all.
However looming over the trouble with defining new media is the constant question of the future of new media. By definition something that is new will one day become old and Parikka suggests that the future of new media depends on the amount of resources available to create the necessary hardware needed for new media to exist. For new media can only survive as long as all the different elements involved in it are still present and the diminution of these resources could lead to new media one day becoming ‘dead media’. (Parikka).
Bibliography:
Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. London: The MIT Press, 2007. 10-61. Print.