Post 3:What is New Media?

In chapter 1 of Lev Manovich's book, The Language of New Media, he discusses the definition of new media as well as what makes it different from old media.  He states that it is an assumption that "any form of communication requires a discrete representation."  His example uses the english language and sentence structure.  Each conversation is made of sentences, sentences are made of words, words are made of letters, etc.  According to Manovich, photographs do not have any "units".  

Digital photographs do however, have units.  Each image is made up of pixels, each of which has a color and a brightness value.  Digital photography is one of the newest forms of new media.  In the past decade, digital imaging has made a huge impact on the world of photography.  The article I found this week is about the "death" of Kodachrome.  Kodachrome is a portion of Kodak Imaging, the company that makes film for photographers and videographers.  They now only make film in one format.  A spokesman for Kodak states in the article that the film sales are down and that they might stop making it all together.  

As Manovich says, "modern media contain levels of discrete representation" but the sample is never quantified.  Does this mean that digital is in some way better than film?  I don't think so.  Both have their own benefits and set-backs.  On the surface, it can appear that new media is better simply because it is new, and old media is outdated.  When you really look into it, both are valid forms of media.  This makes me wonder why old media is dying out.  Do people not have the respect for it that I do?  As the article from CNN states, the niche of people who buy Kodachrome products is consistently shrinking and eventually the profit will not be enough to keep the production lines running.