New Media Characteristics

Networked Linkage - Vanishing of fixed place: The evolution of computer networks has meant that informational resources needn't reside on a single centralized machine; rather, it became possible to tie various machines together. Geographical separation was not a big problem.

Ubiquity: The availability of omnipresent computing, often passively in the background. Some ethical issues here.

Digital: New media are digital media are capable of

Space Binding and Distance Insensitivity: New media canvass large distances, "binding" them. We get web pages almost as easily from France as we do Seattle. But how do these pages last over time. Digital media present severe problems of archiving or long-term storage. Time binding is a serious problem. Rag paper books last millenia while floppy disk records are suspect after five years, even with careful storage. Magnetically-encoded records can be swiftly destroyed with any common magnet. See this brief diatribe on telecomms billing practices - where distance does count.

Geographical Insensitivity: Distance makes little difference in the time, cost or speed of getting information.

Personalized: New media commonly exist in smart (computing) devices and networks. As such, these systems can be instructed to customize, individualize information for each user. The idea of mass media is challenged in an environment where different messages are crafted for each member of an audience. See this section of Being Digital for its discussion of personalization. One major issue is that of "profiling" or categorizing consumers in terms of dominant characteristics of spending, lifestyle and beliefs. One frequently used profiming scheme is VALS (values and lifestyle) profiming. Here are some details and a questionnaire you can use to see which category best fits you. If this seems invasive, some firms have tried for industry standards that allow the individual some control over use of their profile, yet provide standardized, reliable information to marketing firms, advertisers. Firefly is one of these - partially owned by Microsoft.

Prothesis and Telepresence: Extension of the self to a machine representation or "prothesis." As well, the implication of this point is also the reverse - an incorporation of smart machines into our personal functioning in increasing ways.

Virtuality,  Virtual Community: Society without propinquity.

Hypertext: Providing linkage transparently within documents, creating highly varied paths through a body of information. Common, hypertext media are called non-linear media. Implications are that (a) one need not read documents in a prescribed order; (b) authors, styles and permissible rules of content may vary as one reads linked documents; (c) responsibility and control is diffused - as is ownership of the resulting content; (d) form and structure is easily changed, composed on demand for individuals.

Interactivity: Seeking user input, then performing functions based upon it.

Push v. Pull: New media contrast with older forms in that users/audiences request custom content and are not programmed to in the usual sense of television and the press. Instead, content is "pulled" by the consumer, not "pushed" by the media organization.  There have been strong efforts over the past few years to establish a TV-like "push" to web content. Tried originally by MSNBC and PointCast, the scheme did not prove as popular as originally thought. People like older media when they want to passively consume. New media, it seems, are preferred when consumers want more control or "pull."

Convergent: Merged Modal Capabilities, multimedia, multiple media. These terms denote that formerly separate technologies (and the industries behind them) are blending together with a digital common denominator. Here's one explanation. Look over Intercast, a blend of web pages and TV.

But there's another important implication here - an ability to cross with ease between or among these sensory forms as content dictates. Software now allows text to be "read" by a PC or spoken words to be interpreted as text (this conversion being at present less sure than the former). Here's one of several PC-based speech-to-text translation programs. To go the other way, there's other software.

"Smart" Server controlled functions, applications. "Appliance" terminals

Wired, Wireless, Terrestrial and Satellite-based: While not strictly characteristic of new media, the digital and smart character of new media make them more easily configured for a variety of transmission methods. For example, cellular telephones are far more efficiently run (and with better quality) as digital TDMA and CDMA devices than as the antique analogue AMPS phones. The rates charged for analogue phones are higher on a per minute basis. On the otherhand, the digital instruments themselves are more costly. That should change.

Electromagnetic v. Optical: Digitally-based new media are more readily converted to optical transmission (using pulses of light) which affords advantages over conventional electronic transmission (using magnetic pulses). In brief, electromagnetic systems are more fragile, are often bulkier for a given capacity, more subject to interference, and often can be more easily tapped. Optic fibres deliver gains in capacity, reliability and accuracy compared with traditional copper wire and microwave radio technologies. However, given the large installed base of copper wire in the world, it is often more economical to work with this existing technology rather than replace it with fibre. Here's some more on this topic.