"We are in the middle of a New Media revolution"

Manovich states that all forms of media have "The same potential to change existing cultural languages. And all have the same potential to leave culture as it is". (Manovich, 2002, p. 43) There has been a paradigm shift in the media landscape and the computerization of media has had a huge impact of the development of modern society "we are in the middle of a New Media revolution" (Manovich, 2002, p.43)

New Media exists on two layers, the 'Cultural' layer and 'Computer' layer. Technology-wise it is the convergence of many old media forms into one device, Manovich puts forward that the development of modern media and the development of computers where two trajectories that where designed to meet. (Manovich, 2002, p. 46)

Manovich states that there are five key principles of New Media, each dependent on the one the one that preceded it. Material principles such as numeric coding and modular organisation state that all New Media is composed of digital code and that any element of a media object is represented as collections of small, discrete samples. All these small elements are brought together into larger objects whilst at the same time maintaining their separate identity. (Manovich, 2002, p. 51) More far reaching principles such as automation and variability state that these previous principles allow many operations involved in media creation to be automated, which in turn partially removes people from the creative process. (Manovich, 2002, p.53) New Media is characterized by its variability, producing many different versions instead of a direct copy. (Manovich, 2002, p.56)

The most important principle of New Media is Transcoding. Transcoding refers to the way the human 'cultural layer' is interpreted in computerized processes and the 'computer layer' in human cultural terms.(Manovich, 2002, p. 63) Manovich believes each layer influences the development of the other and that they can no longer be viewed as separate entities.

"The computer layer and the media/culture layer influence each other. To use another concept from new media, we can say that they are being composited together. The result of this composite is the new computer culture: a blend of human and computer meanings, of traditional ways human culture modeled the world and the computer's own ways to represent it." (Manovich, 2002, p. 64)

Manovich states it's no longer just the way humans derive meaning from objects that shapes our cultural landscape, but that the computerization of content creates meaning and informs our understanding of cultural practices. The way computers represent human culture has an effect on shaping culture itself.

Bibliography

Manovich, L., 2002. The Language of New Media. [Online]
Available at: http://andreknoerig.de/portfolio/03/bin/resources/manovich-langofnewmedia.pdf [Accessed 13 October 2013].