The 'Relationship' in the Language of New Media

It was interesting getting Manovich’s rather scientific perspective on analyzing media. It’s worth noticing how despite the ‘different’ principles of analyzing new media and distinguishing it from old media, all the stated principles converge on a number of issues. It's bringing out this relationship by means of connecting the dots and forming a cyclical pattern that seems to repeat itself over and over again.

There exists a great synergy in the way principles of technology work.

Numeric Representation of media in forms of digital codes is connected heavily with the principles that follow. An essential part of this Numeric Representation is the ability to manipulate itself based on a defined ground or premise. (For the mathematically inclined, an algorithmic function is a procedure of sorts that will terminate itself after converting from the initial state to a defined end state.) What’s important here is that there needs to be a defined ground to assess change. All these set grounds for the second principle of Modularity. The single modular identity concept comes from the earlier principle where we have mathematically defined a new form of media. Each different module is a function of developing an algorithmic manipulation system, whereby maintaining the integral identity of the media object yet branching out into a different rendition of its earlier form.

Case in Point:
Windows 95 --> Windows 98 --> Windows 2000--> Windows ME--> Windows XP--> Windows Vista

All the different ‘versions’ of the operating system had undergone modifications in its operation yet maintaining a steady increase in the number of applications contained in the respective version of the unilateral operating systems. The base, conceptually however remained the same. These ‘manipulations’ in function were caused by numeric manipulation (code shifts, changes in pixels, development of voxels, characters, scripts etc).

Similarly, ‘Automation’ was a function of Principle 1 and Principle 2, aka Numeric Representation and Modularity. After establishing some basic relationship, we can see how then the ‘Variability’ principle and the eventual ‘Transcoding’ principle follow suit.

It will indeed be interesting getting perspectives on this relationship process between the five mentioned principles.