Lev is already outdated. If I found the correct source for this, he’s writing in 2002, and it doesn’t take much effort to find how incredibly outdated his conception of technology is. There was no iPhone. His statement that human to computer interfaces are looking and more and more like old media sources is completely exploded. But weirdly, this doesn’t invalidate what he’s saying. At all. As I worked through his five aspects of new media, I found myself swinging on the pendulum again - new media has discrete components some of which are difficult to conceptualize; new media works on scales and is nearly infinitely buildable and therefore re-buildable; some portions of the creation of new media can be automated and so there is a challenge to the concept of “authorship” and “creativity”; new media is always changing and always rebuilt and re-experienced; and new media has the ability to translate and transform old media.
So what? Is this truly that much different from old media? I kept thinking of ways to translate those components of new media back into the components of old media.
But then I started analyzing how I was reading. Let me break it down:
I read the first paragraph, and when he mentioned “CD-ROMs” I stopped. Seriously? CD-ROMs are new media? What year was this written? So I opened a new tab on my browser and googled the text. It took a couple of tries, but I think I found the book it came from (I’m assuming this is an excerpt for a different text). 2002. A lot has changed since 2002, but no worries, I’ll keep reading. Surely it can’t be that different.
I read along and find myself daunted by the text. Not sure what he’s talking about, so I spend some time really staring at the screen. I’m tempted by the fact that when i googled the author’s name and the title at the top of the page, google auto-completed with “summary.” I could click that and easily pull up a shorter, plainer version of the text. Tempting, and I’ve certainly succumbed to that siren song before, but no, I can’t trust that that summary will be accurate, and this a pretty dense text, so why would I leave it to some rando on the internet? Back to reading…
A thought drifts past: I really want to highlight… But that’s not possible without about 5 clicks and I just don’t have the perseverance to wade through that click jungle. Then I realize what I really want to do is copy/paste sections out of it into a document so I can play with them, but I try twice to do that in two different ways. Then I give up and decide to just write quotes on paper. I’m showing true grit here.
As I’m reading the section on automation and AI I suddenly remember a podcast I listened to yesterday as I mowed the lawn. It’s about a twitter account called Olivia Taters which is an imaginary teenager. It’s not that it’s a grown-up impersonating a teenager; it’s an algorithm attached to a twitter account that makes the account seem so much like a real teenager that other teenagers have full discussions with it. The short piece made me really think about how automatic and algorithmic human beings really are. I often (once a week, maybe) leave my house to drive somewhere and end up at school not really knowing how I got there. It’s usually when I’m really thinking about something else. So much of education might need to really focus on mindfulness, thoughtfulness. Does new media address that in any distinctly different way? It might depending on what we’re defining as “new media”. Not CD-ROMs, certainly.
I email a link to that podcast to Katie and Shawn because it’s so darn interesting and might be something we all could listen to together and talk about and then head back to my reading. More strain. Writing things down. Realizing that I didn’t actually know what the word “fractal” meant until it was defined in this text. Quick rabbit hole of thinking about the song “Let It Go” from Frozen. “...spiralling in frozen fractals all around…” Now I can explain that line way better to my 6 year old daughter. Back to reading.
I’m back to thinking about the out-dated-ness of this. I’m wondering how this reflects smart phone technology. Human/technology interface has been rapidly evolving. I wonder what a phone looked like in 2002. Back to google. “What did a cell phone look like in 2002?” Boom. Gizmodo site. Boom. Wow, great reminder of how far we’ve come. Wow. Back to reading...
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