“There are no Old Media” by Simone Natale is such a great reading. Through learning about this week topic which is Old and New Media, I got to understand the true meaning of it. By doing the activities that was given in week 2, me and my class tables got to think deeply and expanded our minds about the “old media” that we used back in our days. Such as film camera that is described as an “old media” that is now shifted to digital camera. With that simple activity, it flashes back my mind or what they would called it as nostalgia.
The shifted of social changes in technology viewed different perspectives and opinion to people. Some might say, old media is better so we can focused more of the real world but other may say new media is better because it is gives easier solutions, time and access. With this debate that people might say or how people feel of a certain timeline of media, there is certainly no right or wrong answer. Through the readings of “There are no Old Media”, Simone Natale addressed that “there are no such thing as “old media but media after all is a cultural construction that shape our everyday life” thus both kinds of media have their own advantages and disadvantages depending on the media environment of certain moments and places.
In the individual activities that were given, we have to find one picture from any social media older than the past two years and describing it. I chose a picture that goes way back in 2018. It was a school camp. Looking back on those picture gives me a weird feeling of nostalgic where I felt happy but sad longing of that memory to revive. A feeling where I felt that I no longer or will in fact revive the same memories back to life. This feeling of nostalgic can bring a negative impact to how I will continue on my daily life. It can gives out an effect of meaningless in life and loneliness stated by researchers; David Newman and Matthew Sachs. However, on the other hand Simone Natale wrote the “nostalgic relationships to past media experiences are activated by the remembrance of media habits connected to earlier life phases of one’s own. Others have noted how the emergence of melancholic feelings and nostalgia characterizes moments of technological and social change.” It is indeed a natural feeling that people feel once in a while and it also helps people to “move on” and slowly accepting the social changes.
Natale, Simone 2016, ‘There Are No Old Media’, Journal of Communication, Vol 66 (4): 585-603
Newman, David B., and Matthew E. Sachs. “The Negative Interactive Effects of Nostalgia and Loneliness on Affect in Daily Life.” Frontiers in psychology 11 (2020): 2185–2185. Web.