Showing posts with label New Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Media. Show all posts

Monday, February 15, 2010

Old Media vs. New Media


Today, people get information in new ways. The internet is now the global source of information. From news to research to videos, information is not only limited to text in the internet. Media consumption habits have changed. Anything that has been transformed is now what we call Old Media. A sample listing of Old Media transformed into New Media is as follows:




The telephone now evolved into cellphones. Not only are they portable devices but they are also capable of sending messages via texting. In contrary to times when the telephone can only be used at home, we can bring cellphones everywhere and we can be reached anytime where there is service from telephone service providers. We can now also access the internet using our cellphones. And now for cheaper rates for calls and text messaging, the Voice Over Internet Protocol service is now available. It means you can call and text as long as you are connected to the internet.



Every morning, hard copies of newspapers are delivered to our home. However, besides watching the television, news can now be obtained from various websites. And not only they are exact articles written on the physical newspaper, articles posted on the website are updated every hour so we could get live important news that the public needs to know.




Physical holdings of books are traditionally what students follow. But now, e-books (the digital version of the physical book) are available for downloads from publishers' websites at costs lower than the hard copies. E-book readers are now the devices used to read electronic books. They are portable and convenient because you can access the specific chapters of the book you need to read instead of bringing the whole book with all the chapters.



Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Principles of New Media Course at Baruch College



Technological advances has evolved nowadays. From typewriters to computers, we can now browse the internet so easily. New media are no longer paper-based but rather computer-based. There are several new media technologies from the internet that are now available for use by the public. Examples of new media are Facebook, Twitter and blogging. So the easiest way to define New Media are these three words.

This course is about getting acquainted with the different new media. And that's why I am currently taking this course. This is an opportunity for me to learn more and be literate on using these technologies; and maybe use them someday for a purpose.


What is New Media?

The easiest way to define New Media is Facebook, Twitter and Blogs.

However, New Media encompasses a simple list of technologies such as:

  • HTML
  • CD-ROMS and DVD-ROMS
  • Streaming Media (Music and Videos),
  • Web Applications,
  • Social Networking Sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Friendster,
  • blogs and wikis
  • online chatting
  • Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
  • Media Sharing
  • Internet Searching Tools
  • Podcasting
  • E-Commerce and Online Shopping
The development of the internet paved way to the evolution of New Media. If the internet were still nonexistent, we would never experience the global advantages of using New Media. If we realize from the above examples of New Media, most of them, if not all, use the internet to function. Because of the internet, it does not matter wherever you are located in the world. You can chat with your relatives online even if they are right in the other side of the world; you can even listen to internet radios and share media. The Internet remains a space of opportunity to everybody through the use of New Media.

What we call now as Old Media was also once new. But as developments occur, so does the transformation of New Media from Old Media. New Media is the improved and digitized version of Old Media. How did they transform? Here are some examples of Old Media and their respective equivalents in New Media today:


  • From Books, we now have e-books, online encyclopedias and wikis.
  • From Journals, online blogs are now available for writers and those love writing
  • Nowadays, we use texting and Voice Over Internet Protocols replacing our telephones
  • We can now listen to music of our preference through podcasts. They now replace our radio stations
  • Instead of televisions, we can now watch episodes on the internet through Video Sharing and Video Streaming sites.
An article from the New York Times entitled "Who Needs a TV? I’m Watching on a Laptop," discusses about one of the trend that people do nowadays, watching shows on a laptop instead of the television. It cites some sites that offers free online viewing of shows. It's amazing how we are able to save more time watching the shows that we only want to see rather than flipping through channels to see what's on.