Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Old ideas on new media

My very first impression before ever cracking the spine on The New Media Reader was one of skepticism. How is a book published in 2003 even remotely relevant to a discussion about New Media, when tools are morphing and emerging seemingly every week?

Thankfully, this book is not about tools (though some of the "current" technologies referenced are delightfully antiquated), but rather about trends; trends in communication, trends in how we relate to and organize information, and most importantly, trends in how we respond to change we don't fully comprehend. The analysis and discussion of New Media can happen outside of the context of tools altogether, which is a Very Good Thing.

As Greg mentioned in his first post, many of the references are inaccessible to those not steeped in all facets of the New Media discussion. One might catch the literary (Borges) and sociological (post-modernism) references, but not the computing nods like Turing and Berners-Lee. Murray assumes too much knowledge of the both "sides" of the discussion. While I believe the special symbols in the margin are meant to provide context for her references, they are strangely analog and out of place for something that could be better served by the digital medium we're discussing. I'm thinking of an eBook in which you can highlight a word and either define it or pull up Wikipedia (yes, I said Wikipedia) citation for the person or concept in question. Maybe that's reserved for The New Media Reader 2.0?

Oblique references aside, I think Murray does a great job of laying out the forces at work and the actors involved to talk about where New Media began and where it is going. Thankfully, this is also done without gushing about the virtues of one perspective, but rather represents the necessity of all perspectives.

1 comment:

  1. This book represents the first time in my life where I would actually rather read the material as a PDF than in it's physical form. This surprises me because I've always been ocularly skeptical about reading a lot on a screen... and yet something about this particular material... yes, New Media Reader 2.0 would be welcome!

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