What needs to be clear is that the new media we define has its historical background and can only be relatively new (p 1 1). From now on, television and automation certainly can't fall into this category. But from the analysis of McLuhan's time, it is "new media". "There are new media at any time node, or more accurately, there are relatively new media." (p5).
So, can we simply define "new" and "old" media in chronological order? However, the proper meaning of new media lies in its "newness" at the time point, but it is not limited to this: as a type of media, it certainly has the special attributes of media: instrumentality, transformation, communication and so on.
Robert Logan, the author of this book, clearly pointed out in his introduction: "One of the purposes of this book is to update and understand the media." In addition, the author himself is a core member of McLuhan's ideological circle, so the positioning of the media and even the methodology of analyzing the media in this book follow the Mai style: the media is "a tool or technology" (p9) to some extent, but it is not just a "negative channel for spreading information or ideas". (p3 13). It seems contradictory on the surface, but in Logan's view, the main motive of studying media in a wheat way is to "understand the changes brought about by the advent of any new media, including positive and negative changes" (p 16), instead of just defining him as a narrow-minded technologist, who understands a core principle of media methodology, namely, "Media in society" Later, Logan demonstrated with two famous sayings: "Media is information" and "Media is a living whirlpool".
Therefore, from the perspective of media attributes, Logan clearly responded to Bolt's and Grusin's statements about the mutual remedy and remolding of old and new media: "We call the reappearance of one media in another media as remedy, and we think that remedy is the defining feature of new digital media". "The newness of new media comes from their special way of remolding old media, and in order to meet the challenge of new media, the old media remolded itself" (p4).
So, in the author's opinion, what is new media?
Non-mass media and interactive media. Logan pointed out: "An important difference between our so-called' new' and' old' media is that most of the old media are mass media, and the so-called' new media' in this book is not mass media" (p5). In addition, although the Internet and the World Wide Web are increasingly regarded as mass media, they are classified as new media by Logan in terms of user experience, differences in information acquisition and interactivity. Speaking of interactivity, Logan then gave the definition of "over-generalization" on this basis: "Some old media are very interactive, such as oral words used for face-to-face conversations and telephone calls, and written words used for communication are another example. However, every kind of "new media" is very interactive, and the mass media is not interactive-that's for sure. " (p5)
Starting from this broad and affirmative definition, we can see the Wikipedia-like communication mode brought by new media: it "allows users to actively participate, and they are no longer passive recipients of information, but active producers of content and information" (p5). When we are sending and receiving emails, chatting on QQ, writing blogs, opening online stores or even just surfing the Internet, we will also find ourselves "creating our own links to connect the existing information on the Internet". (p5)
"The new media is certainly different from the old media, but one of the main differences is not the content, but the strengthening of our way of thinking. The interactive media we see, such as the Internet, is not only the result of innovation, but also an innovative mechanism and process for everyone to enjoy and share. This is a very exciting achievement. " (p5) Logan quoted jaron lanier, a pioneer of virtual reality, to illustrate the characteristics of new media "providing an outlet for innovation". In Daniel's narrative, we can find that the interactivity of new media is the reason for its strong influence on social and economic fields.
So, where is the "new" of new media?
The word "new digital media" appears in the definition of "remedy" of new media mentioned above by Bo and Ge, and the author also wrote that "they (referring to new media) are digital media, and the information they intervene in is easy to process, store, convert, retrieve and hyperlink, and the most remarkable feature is easy to search and obtain." (p6) In fact, the concept of new media comes from McLuhan, who understands that the primary content of new media is another kind of media, that is, the old media has become the content of new media, especially with the digital wave, the media tend to merge. Take online news as an example, its content is still mainly provided by traditional media.
But the question is, in today's digital transformation of traditional media, can the original old media be classified as "new media" or can it only be regarded as new media after digital transformation? In order to solve this problem, Lev Manovic can be described as "painstaking", but he only put forward digitalization as the standard on how to divide "new" and "old" media, but this involves a clear identification, "using a single media to avoid the painful task: which is the old media and which is the new media". (Page 8)
Did our author give a clear answer? Yes, but no.
"Yes" means that the author points out in the form of a message in Chapter 5- 14 of New Media: Overview: (p42-43)
(1) bidirectional propagation;
(2) "New media" makes information easy to obtain and spread;
(3) "New media" is conducive to continuous learning;
(4) combination and integration (Alignment and Intergration)
(5) the creation of community.
(6) The portability and flexibility of time give users the freedom to travel through time and space;
(7) Multi-media integration, which can play multiple functions at the same time and combine multiple media; Take the camera phone as an example, it has both the function of telephone and the function of sending photos by the camera.
(8) Interoperability, otherwise media integration is impossible;
(9) Content aggregation and crowdsourcing, digitalization and media integration contributed to this result;
(10) Diversity and selectivity are far superior to the previous mass media. The long tail phenomenon refers to the phenomenon that the products or services with small sales volume but many kinds are not paid attention to, and the total amount is huge, and the accumulated total income exceeds the mainstream products.
(1 1) Bridging (or merging) the gap between producers and consumers;
(12) Social collective and cooperation in cyberspace;
(13) Digitalization promotes mashup culture.
(14) Change from product to service.
Among them, the first five articles are the information about the Internet identified by the author in the early stage of the development of "new media".
I didn't say anything, because the author is different from Manovic in the research path. As mentioned earlier, the methodology adopted in this book also follows the self-learning style, that is, the phenomenon of "studying one media one by one, rather than studying new media as a whole". ”(p8)
To understand the new, we need to review the old.
Undoubtedly, "rationality" refers to McLuhan's prediction of the age of power information in his works represented by Understanding Media.
To what extent does "new media" confirm that commodities refute McLuhan's prediction?
What we can see is that physical bookstores are dying out and paper books are constantly being forgotten, which seems to confirm Mai's vigilance against the impact of electronic culture on written culture, but Logan found that "the content of new media is often text" and "compared with the previous mass media era, young people spend more time on texts", thus "reversing written culture and reversing the negative effects of mass media". (page 35)
We see that online open classes make the educational resources of colleges and universities export to the society, and education has taken a big step towards popularization. Then let's take a look at McLuhan's observation on that era of electric pow and mass media:
"The function of electricity is not centralized, but decentralized."
"Under the condition of electric speed, consumers become producers because the public becomes players who participate in the role." (page 37)
Are you surprised at the similarity between Michael and Oracle? This old experience can't be said to be "outdated" today. Taking the Internet as an example, its operating principle is to achieve complete decentralization, which is in line with the strategic consideration of "not putting eggs in the same basket" under the special background of the Cold War. On the other hand, on the open Internet platform, the extreme democratization force also comes from the integration of netizens in the roles of consumers and producers.
"The Internet also enables small business owners to compete with multinational companies on a global scale. They can sell their services and products on the website, so the decentralization and democratization of the economy will be realized. " (p38) Honey, what are you talking about? That's guaranteed ~ ~ (Taobao)
It is said that this is an information age. The recent miracle of House of Cards shows the vast market behind big data mining. Unfortunately, this time, McLuhan was right: "He firmly believes that with the power media, the learning and acquisition of knowledge has become the main activity of human beings." (p38) Replace "electronic media" with "new media", and then interpret the current knowledge: "Knowledge is the ability to use information (situational data) and achieve goals" (p38-39), so it can explain the "big data mining" that sounds high-end and high-end.
We can also see ...
For the new media, some people see that it has impacted all aspects of life and marveled at its magic; Others think that this is only the product of technological development in the information age, and there is no essential difference with "old media". In fact, as the title shows, the new media has both a "new" side and an "old" side.
Note: Understanding New Media-Extended translation by Robert Logan of McLuhan [Canada].
? Fudan University Press, September 1 Edition 20 12