Below is a brief list of points from Manovich’s principles of new media that I consider not only important but also interesting. I recommend not taking them as an exhaustive interpretation of what Manovich is trying to say in his book. But I keep coming back to these notes myself when I want to remind myself of the main points before I set out on a deeper analysis.

Numerical representation

  • all new media are based on digital code (whether at their creation or when converted from an analogue source)
  • A new media work can be formally described in mathematical terms
  • New media works can be changed and modified algorithmically
    • The medium is programmable
    • digitisation: sampling and quantisation
    • not all old media are continuous: film, halftone photographs, print
  • What is the reason that new media are continuous?
    • Human language is continuous too
    • If the basic tool of communication is continuous, we can expect other means of communication to be continuous as well
    • It follows the logic of Fordism, of the industrial division of labour, standardisation and the assembly line, where production was broken down into individual operations that could be optimised well and, where possible, the workers replaced
  • New media, however, anticipate rather the logic of post-industrial society
    • Where media are made to order

Modularity

  • The fractal principle of the medium
    • By combining the smallest discrete elements, larger and larger wholes are formed, yet the elements can always be modified at any level
    • This modularity is found in HTML, MS Word, etc.
    • Essentially, it is the principle embodied by object-oriented programming

Automation

  • Principles 1 and 2 allow part of the creative process to be automated
  • An example is the automatic generation of web pages based on input or on data about the user
  • Every computer game contains AI, artificial intelligence
  • the problem is not to create a new media work, but to find it.
    • Finding and reusing already existing media is easier than creating them anew

Variability

  • The shape and look of a new media work are not fixed; it can potentially exist in infinitely many versions
  • Old media could be copied, but the copies were identical = the logic of the industrial age
  • New media are variable, liquid, mutable
  • New media accommodate the logic of post-industrial society
    • Just-in-time access, on-demand access, adapting the new medium to the user, etc.
  • media stored in databases, which themselves become a cultural form
  • Content and interface can be separated. Several different interfaces can be created from the same data.
    • New media can use information about the user and automatically adapt their look and functions
    • A new medium can be navigated with a structured MENU; a new medium often has no predetermined way in which the user should navigate it. The structure of the new medium, or rather of the information presented, follows from the cognitive process of the user
    • Hypermedia, hypertext, linking of media
    • Regular updates of the medium, even without the user’s knowledge
  • Scalability of the medium: different versions and sizes of the same medium can be generated
    • Scalability also means that the medium will differ in the amount of detail at different levels
  • Very similar to how detail is created in virtual reality. If not much detail is needed, it is not rendered, which speeds up rendering but also saves resources, etc.
  • Open vs. closed interactivity
    • Open interactivity as Wittgenstein’s theory of family resemblance, later as prototype theory
  • From a historical perspective, the principle of variability shows how technology is intertwined with change in society
    • the logic of old media corresponded to the logic of industrial mass society
    • the logic of new media corresponds to post-industrial society
      • it favours individuality over conformity
    • in post-industrial society every person constructs their lifestyle from a palette of available options
    • every visitor to a web page gets a customisable version
      • Google AdWords targeted specifically at the user
      • FB ads according to interests, etc.
    • new media technology as a utopia of an ideal society made up of original individuals
    • Choice represents a moral responsibility for the representation of the world (see Grahame Weinbren)

Transcoding (Recoding)

  • at a general level, new media fall apart into two separate layers: the cultural and the computer layer
    • short story, composition versus package, process, class, function
  • since the cultural layer depends on the logic of the computer one, we can expect the computer layer to have an impact on the cultural one
  • new media may look like traditional ones, but that is only on the surface; deep down they are entirely different

To understand new media, we must turn to computer science = the study of new media is thus the study of software (software studies)