A Theory for New Media

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A Theory for New Media

• (Examining Janet Murrays Model)

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What Makes New Media New?

• Timeall mediums were new at first
• New is a non-descriptive term (like Modern)
• Mechanical Reproduction
• Walter Benjamin
• Computers (and Networks)
• Janet Murray
• Friedrich Kittler
• Jay Bolter
• Re-centralization of the body
• Mark Hansen

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Four Principal Propertiesof the Computer Medium
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Four Propertiesof the Computer Medium

• These separately and collectively make the
  computer a powerful vehicle for literary
  creation. Digital environments are procedural,
  participatory, spatial and encyclopedic.

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Interactive and Immersive

• Procedural, Participatory make up most of what we
  mean by the vaguely used word interactive
• Spatial, Encyclopedic help to make digital
  creations seem as explorable and extensive as the
  actual world, making up much of what we mean when
  we say that cyberspace is immersive.

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Procedurality

• The defining ability of the computer is to
  execute a series of rules.
• Embody complex contingent behaviors

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Procedurality

• The defining ability of the computer is to
  execute a series of rules.
• Embody complex contingent behaviors
• Widely considered the most important today (among
  this camp).

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Procedurality

• The defining ability of the computer is to
  execute a series of rules.
• Embody complex contingent behaviors
• Widely considered the most important today (among
  this camp).
• Was a hot topic 3 or 4 years ago in the videogame
  community, but much focus has shifted to
  user-generated content

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Participatory

• Responsive to input
• Users induce computer behavior
• Codified rendering of responsive behaviors

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Participatory

• Responsive to input
• Users induce computer behavior
• Codified rendering of responsive behaviors
• This has replaced some of the focus on
  procedurality in games
• Will Wright recognized this years ago with The
  Sims (2000)

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Participatory

• Responsive to input
• Users induce computer behavior
• Codified rendering of responsive behaviors
• This has replaced some of the focus on
  procedurality in games
• Will Wright recognized this 5 or 6 years ago with
  The Sims Online

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Google/Yahoo Groups

• 1 of the user population might start a group (or
  a thread within a group)
• 10 of the user population might participate
  actively, and actually author content whether
  starting a thread or responding to a
  thread-in-progress
• 100 of the user population benefits from the
  activities of the above groups (lurkers)

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Participatory

• Kodak Brownie Camera in 1888
• First rolled film
• Celebrate the moments of your life
• "You press the button and we do the rest.

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Participatory
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Participatory
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Participatory
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Spatial

• Represent navigable space we can move through
• The story of Windows operating system
• 2D mapping of links or files on a page
• Virtual reality

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Spatial

• Represent navigable space we can move through
• The story of Windows operating system
• 2D mapping of links or files on a page
• Virtual reality
• Chris Crawford sees space as a limiting factor
  for videogames screw graphics
• Spatial reasoning leads to contestations
• Social reasoning leads to negotiations

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Encyclopedic

• Most capacious medium ever invented
• Infinite resources
• Extending human memory
• oral to written to computational
• Accessible, immediate global information

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Encyclopedic
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Competing Principle Properties ofNew Media
(Terry Flew)

• Manipulable
• Networkable
• Dense
• Compressible
• Impartial

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Why are advancing these properties a good thing
to do?
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Why Advance these Properties?

• Become ourselves
• Identity-play
• Subculture-touring
• Gain Agency in Technoculture
• Model the contemporary world better
• Think non-linearly
• Correlate thought with action
• Multitask
• Collaborate

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Transparency and Truth

• Eventually all successful story-telling
  technologies become transparent we lose
  consciousness of the medium and see neither print
  nor film but only the power of the story itself.
  If digital art reaches the same level of
  expressiveness as these older media, we will no
  longer concern ourselves with how we are
  receiving the information. We will only think
  about what truth it has told us about our lives.
• Janet Murray

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Post-Medium Condition

• "The general digitization of channels and
  information erases the differences among
  individual media.... Inside the computers
  themselves everything becomes a number quantity
  without image, sound, or voice. And once optical
  fiber networks turn formerly distinct data flows
  into a standardized series of digitized numbers,
  any medium can be translated into any other.
• Friedrich Kittler

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