Summary

Starts with the popular definition of new media as anything that’s distributed on a computer, but Manovich finds that too limiting; he wants to include everything produced with computers, too. Computers are the convergence of computing and media technologies, starting with the Analytical Engine and the Daguerrotype, respectively. Computers used to just be big calculators, but now they have become media creation and manipulation tools. He marks new media as distinct from old media in that it has:

Key Terms

Numerical representation, that is, anything on a computer can be reduced to binary code;

Modularity, in that all the pieces still retain their identity and can be picked out of a piece of new media; 

Automation, meaning that because new media is digitized, many of the things that go into creating new media can be done without human interaction, on a level not previously possible;

Variability, in that multiple versions of the same thing are likely to exist for a variety of reasons;

Transcoding, meaning that all the parts of a piece of new media that have human or cultural meaning (like a story or a picture) also have a different level of meaning to the computer—basically the constituent parts of the software that converts it into an understandable form.

Old/New Media

Manovich’s dissatisfaction with what he sees as the popular definition of new media makes sense: books were a medium long before computers came around, but computers definitely did change books, so to leave them out of the definition seems strange in that light. Including things that are made with computers in the definition of new media makes sense because the whole concept of new media is ultimately tied to computers, and the whole “new media” thing is really a discussion of how computers have changed media.