old media new media potato potata

Both of the readings for this week focused on the idea that the web pulls from the information distribution systems of the past: how what has come before it is adding to both the creation of and direction of digital writing or New Media. However, they do differ a little in their overall goals.

Bolter’s focus was mainly on “the qualities of the computer (flexibility, interactivity, speed of distribution).” Citing the many advantages of the web and digital writing, he poses the question of whether or not print is obsolete. While not really ever answering the question in an explicit way, he does explore the way print as a medium falls short when compared to digital writing. His reasoning for the advantage of digital writing is based around the idea that order is now not nearly as important as content: “[The web] is leading some to [explore] more fluid structures.” He also mentions that interactive visual elements of a web document make it superior to print as well. He does manage to tie in a nod to the role print and traditional writing structures and delivery systems has had in the development of web writing, mentioning in the section titled “The old and new in digital writing” that electronic writing is taking the best of all of the old forms and expanding on them. He also mentions that the use of electronic links with digital writing challenges the linear nature of texts because seemingly distantly related texts can be linked to provide new insights to old ideas. Ultimately, he postulates that digital writing allows “the mind itself to become the writing space.”

Manovich’s forward speaks to the idea that the new media/ digital writing should be studied now so that control could be taken over the direction it will ultimately take. Most of the forward is used to define what will be addressed in the book, so the reader gets a little flash in the pan of how he will define new media. He does mention that “What follows is an attempt at both a record and a theory of the present” and that he “aims to describe and understand the logic driving the development of the language of new media” (7). Mostly, as seen at the bottom of page ten, I felt like he is trying to map where the media fits in with the old media and why it is important to think of the development now to shape the future of the new media, and not stumble blindly toward some predestined idea of where it will go. Like Bolter, he gives a nod to the media delivery systems that led up to the new media, but wants to see how they will be used in the new media. He asks, “How do conventions and techniques of old media…operate in new media?” (8). He seems to want to both define the technology that is used, and what the technology is used for in new media/ digital writing. He situates new media in relation to visual and information culture (13). He also mentions that new media objects are cultural objects, representing some outside object with physical properties (15).

There are two concepts in these writings that stood out to me as being very connected.
The first is the idea that there can be a writing of the mind. Bolter mentioned it being a writing space, where ideas are constructed virtually and placed in virtual space. Manovich described it in detail and with varying ideas as a representation, not physical but alluding to something physical. This reminded me of something I have read about in fiction theory (big surprise there). Both Madison Smart Bell and Robert Olen Butler describe a successful characterization in a story as one where the writer is able to fully envision and embody the character, think as the character thinks, live by the rules that character must live by. Butler calls this the dream space, and Bell calls it something like the truth of the moment. Here’s the catch, though: all of this must be done in the mind, like some sort of self-hypnosis, so that what is dreamt or embodied is only a virtual representation of the character, most of which never gets articulated on the page. Whole scenes are played out in the mind, associations are made between seemingly random things, and subtext is built from representations. After reading Manoivich and Bolter this week, I sort of feel like new media has more to thank than just traditional media, that writing in the mind and virtual representation is something already experienced in a non-articulated way, even if it is just through a daydream.

The second idea I found to be similar in both writings is that new media/ digital writing has its roots in traditional media, it is vastly superior to that media. Mostly, the linear nature of texts is shown to be a drawback, and digital writing is described by Bolter as able to “tailor itself to each reader’s needs, and the reader can make choices in the very act of reading.” Manovich mentions that there are “new compositional and aesthetic possibilities offered by a computer database” (10). Choose your own adventure stories aside; I think that they are right for the most part. There are definitely advantages to reading as you want, cruising for what interests you, and choosing to focus only on what is relevant to you at the time. But isn’t that exactly what literary journals and variety magazines already do? In a single issue of VQR, The New Yorker, Gulf Coast, and many, many others, I can choose to read news, fiction, poetry, criticism, book reviews, scholarly essays, comics, a jumble, etc. The table of contents is my random access link to all of the information in the book, most of which is completely unrelated to the content before and after it. How can this be new media if there is an old media form that functions in the same capacity? Maybe I’m reading this wrong, but I feel like the only real difference between what these two are talking about and variety magazines is the presence of a machine, electricity, and a cool factor. Oh, and videos. I almost forgot the inevitable link to a cultural object. Yeah, like the motion picture camera versus the still, I will still oooo and ahhh. And yeah, I think that there is a lot to discover about how this new machine generated electrically powered coolness will affect the way we think about writing in general. This is probably what Bolter mean when he said the digital writing is taking the best of all of the old forms and expanding on them. But I just wanted to give props to an idea that is not so new that informs so much of the new media.

Oh, and you might all want to check out Electric Literature, it is a literary fiction magazine that chooses to publish in what it calls: “all viable formats.”