Week 1: What is New Media
Manovich, What is New Media
Manovich outlines how the development of the computer and the development of new visual media run in parallel for quite a while, ultimately ending with the computer taking precedence over visual media as its primary site for creation, storage and manipulation. He identifies five characteristics of new media: numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, and transcoding. These characteristics of new media can be summed up in, or considered a subset of, what Manovich considers the "most fundamental quality of new media...its programmability." This programmability exists in two separate layers: the cultural layer and the computer layer. This conceptualization of new media actually parallels earlier theories of communication (drawing primarily from cultural studies) that distinguish between communication-as-ritual and communication-as-transmission.
One aside I'd like to make is in reference to Manovich's thoughts on variability. In discussing interactive filmmaking, Manovich notes Weinbren's argument that (in interactive media) "making a choice involves moral responsibility," and to this I would add, "...and therefore rhetoric."
Enzensberger, Constituents of a theory of the media
Enzensberger critiques marxists for either using media and remaining apolitical or for remaining political and basically refusing to use media. As Baudrillard later notes, Enzensberger falsely suggests that ideology is transmitted through media rather than being embedded within the media apparatus itself.
Baudrillard, Requiem for the Media
Baudrillard explains how Enzensberger critiques the Left for either adopting new media and becoming apolitical or for avoiding new media entirely while continuing politics through old media.
Importantly, Baudrillard notes that media do not proceed helter skelter out of some dominant ideology. Rather, the structure/strength of ideology is perpetuated through the creation of the media. Baudrillard is challenging Enzensberger's argument for ideology's independent, rather than co- or intra-dependent ontological status.
Urricchio, Historicizing Media in Transition
While I'm unfamiliar with Urricchio's other work, he seems to be writing from a cultural studies perspective. Also, in laying out his case for taking history as (dynamic) text rather than object and in discussing the non-linearity (or, conversely, the "manufactured linearity") of modern histories, Urrichio is drawing on Foucauldian notions of history and knowledge. The thesis here seems to be that we need to consider and write the multiple histories of new media and technology, rather than trying to create a unity where none may exist.
Bolter, Theory and practice in new media studies
Bolter's thesis is that theories in the humanities often deconstructs practice, whereas theory in other disciplines affirms practice. He holds up the poststructuralists as examplars in the humanities of scholars who both theorized theory and practiced theory. He posits that new media may allow humanities scholars a more easier entry point into not just theorizing but also practicing critical theory.
Thoughts:
The debate between Enzensberger and Baudrillard can, I argue, be broken down as Marxist readings of the conceptualizations of communication-as-ritual and communication-as-transmission. It is also in Baudrillard's comments that we can see parallels to Manovich's theory of new media. Baudrillard notes that the perpetuation of ideology is not a technological/technical issue (as Enzensberger claims), but rather "media ideology functions at the level of form, at the level of the separation it establishes, which is a social division" (p. 280). So, it actually seems that Manovich, when writing of the cultural layer and the computer layer might be synthesizing both Enzensberger's and Baudrillard's perspectives. With the exception perhaps of Manovich's piece, all of these readings seem to show a trend towards a cultural studies approach to new media.