Describe New Media

New Media encompasses many aspects of our lives especially for the general population that is consistently online.The first thought that came to mind when I read the words "New Media" was a correlation between the media such as the news and the internet. This assumption was only the tip of the iceberg as I have come to learn. New Media includes but not limited to blogs, forums,music, film,online radio stations even virtual worlds. In a nutshell, New Media is "a wide variety of web-related communication technologies" Examples of new media technologies for online videos include Netflix, Youtube, and Hulu. Social networking sites such as, Myspace, Facebook, and linkedin are examples.

The World Wide Web, otherwise known as the internet has been the catalyst in increasing the popularity of new media in the later half of the century. Technology has made our lives easier in the sense that we are connected through an invincible and omnipresent-like network. The Internet has come a long way from its predecessor created in 1969 by ARPANET with help from the prestigious MIT. The common factor that is shared by New Media is its reliance on the internet. How can we distinguish "new media" from "old media? I believe the answer to this question lies in the digitalization of the data and its availability. New Media compared to old media is like comparing the iTouch to the first generation iPod, same basic features with additional goodies added on. This however does not mean that old media is obsolete. For example, The New York Times provides an online version of its news paper for free, this may have taken a considerable amount of readers but there are still people who will prefer to read the actual physical copy. This same idea also goes for ebooks like the ones used on the Amazon Cradle, its a paper saving solution however,in a school context buying books is a more viable and cheaper solution for students. Its not always the case that its "Out with the old and in with the new"

Citation

Friedman, Linda Weiser and Friedman, Hershey H.,The New Media Technologies: Overview and Research Framework(April 2008). pages 9-24. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1116771, pp. 9-15.