new media

"Origins
New media can be seen to be a convergence between the history of two separate technologies: media and computing.


Old media and new media
Old media are, for example, typewriters, vinyl record albums and eight-track magnetic tapes.[16] These media involve analog processes - ones which directly sample a continuous recording onto a physical medium, as opposed to new media which sample media as a numerical representation in binary code.
The distinction between "new media" and old media is often indistinct due to the homogeneity of the term, which can conflate media where computers are the transmission medium and media where digitisation occurs to facilitate a new way of distributing a pre-existing medium. Whereas the Internet clearly marks a departure in terms of user experience and possibility, transferring a betamax tape onto DVD involves a far less dramatic change as the content of the media remains either identical, or slightly enhanced through digital manipulation of - for example - colour.

The term 'new media' gained popular currency in the mid 1990s as part of a marketing pitch for the proliferation of interactive educational and entertainment CD-ROMs. One of the key features of this early new media was the implication that corporations, not individual creators, would control copyright.[17]

The term then became far more widely used as the mass consumer internet began to emerge from 1995 onwards. The term 'new media' can be traced back to the 70s when it was described more as an impact on cultural studies of different aspects such as economic as well as social, it is only within the last 25 years that the term has taken on a more advanced meaning.


Some examples that usually fall within new media
What counts as new media is often debated, and is dependent on the definitions used. However, there are a few that have been widely accepted as forms of New Media. The following are fairly firmly established, or at least referenced by some companies that claim to deal in new media:

* Mashup
* Internet Art
* Video games and virtual worlds as they impact marketing and public relations.
* Multimedia CD-ROMs
* Software
* Web sites including brochureware
* blogs and wikis
* Email and attachments
* Electronic kiosks
* Interactive television
* Mobile devices
* Podcasting
* Hypertext fiction
* Graphical User Interfaces"

in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_media