According to the readings in week 3 and week 4, which is ‘The Language of New Media’, it is obvious that the achievement of new media and the development of computer technology are inseparable. Today we are in the middle of a new media revolution— the shift of all culture to computer-mediated forms of production, distribution, and communication. Accordingly, texts distributed on a computer (Web sites and electronic books) are considered to be new media, whereas texts distributed on paper are not.

 

From the article, there are five principles and here are some key points for each:

• Numerical Representation: Media can be described mathematically. It is not material, in a more important stage, media is more focus on online collaboration, it is the form of logical and sampling.

 

• Modularity: It is necessary that a piece of media has to make sense because it may be watched independently of the source. However, it also allows for several pieces of online media to function together efficiently yet separate as well. In another word, each element has to have a narrative arch but it is possible that everything could be connected together, which mean stitches the possibility that what you make might be seen in conjunction with something else.

 

• Automation: This word is easier to understand. For example, the computer does things for us by a simple control such as clicking a button adjust brightness button in photoshop. It also provides the characteristics of ‘share instantly’, ‘filters’, ‘live stream’ and ‘unregulated’. We can share everything we did online with digital media tools, such as phones, laptops, the live streaming is also allowed as many bloggers do. The videos or images are unregulated online as well.

 

• Variability: The experience of variability is obvious because there are multiple fragments, distinct even customization of content. The online media provide different versions for different people and reveal the scalability to us.

 

• Transcoding: It is the principle that we use commonly. There are different formats, such as mp4, mov, etc. Different formats have their own standards by compression the quality to fit the media workflow. The transcoding exists on numerous platforms and has a high level of portability.

 

After reading the article, there are some important points that I read again because of some of them may be related to the project I chose on Docubase, or give me some fresh ideas:

 

• Although new media are included different products, such as videos, films. However, it has to admit that a new media object consists of independent parts, each of which consists of smaller independent parts. For example, the World Wide Web as a whole is also completely modular. It consists of numerous Web pages, each in its turn consisting of separate media elements. Every element can always be accessed on its own. The project I chose on Docubase is ‘Life in a Day’ has the similar principle with it. ‘Life in a Day’ can be seen as a finished film and published online. However, it is obvious that the film is made up of different clips, just as what I mentioned in the post, ‘The film received more than 80,000 videos from 192 countries around the world, all filmed on June 24, 2010.‘

 

• The Internet, which can be thought of as one huge distributed media database, also crystallized the basic condition of the new information society: the overabundance of information of all kinds, thus, it is necessary for some agents to act as filters that deliver small amounts of information given the user’s criteria. It is similar to our idea in assignment one, even could be connected to ‘Life in a Day’.  In assignment one, Nagini, Gigi and I chose to discuss ‘tag’ on Instagram, when you tag something to search, it is one way to filter information. The same situation, in the film ‘Life in a Day’, the director collect the clips with similar elements together to achieve a better sense of ornamental. This method allows users to find the information they are looking for more convenience and faster.

 

• This point gives me a sense of the small-scale work. As the reading mentioned, ‘Information about the user can be used by a computer program to customize automatically the media composition as well as to create elements themselves.’ For example, Web sites use information about the type of hardware and browser or user’s network address to customize automatically the site the user will see. Thus, maybe I can use this characteristic to combine the idea of ‘tag’ by using the new media as the platform. The users can communicate with others who might have the similar hobbies, feelings or problems by tagging and using the online media communication applications.

 

As can be seen, the principle of variability is useful in allowing us to connect many important characteristics of new media that on first sight may appear unrelated. Each part of media are related, the need for new technologies to store, organize, and efficiently access these materials are crucial.