Tuesday, September 16, 2008

New Media and Web Production

Our reading on new media and web production offers a great deal of explanation to the various components that make up digital production and digital convergence. The technological process of digitizing, text, sound, and still and moving images is process that brought the state of the World Wide Web to where it is today. There is a great deal of explaining and teaching going on in this reading than there is in our previous ones from the coarse packet. Here, we are walked through all the different components of digitizing technology on the web, from early photography, to digital imaging. From initial webcasting and broadcasting of video and audio, to completely fluent and streaming media, the breakthrough and up-rise of DVD’s and MPS’s in the late 90’s, and a brief but confusing lesson in Web design, XML, and other textual language.

So what is there intellectually and philosophically to take away from this reading? I feel that any and all theory to come out of Jason Whitakers chapter 3 of The Internet: The basics lies in the first few pages. On page 61, referencing Roland Barthes argument that “The author is dead”, is an idea that can apply to much more than just the world of hypertext, and inter-textuality. The quote is a thesis to the idea that the internet had decentred the book if two readers will never end up in the same place. But the author being dead works for many of the themes of this reading

For instance, when they talk about how photography, the alchemical process of capturing images which transformed the way we look at art and society in the last century. Now, through digital imaging, the process of photo retouching is standard, corrupting truly re-creating time and space. The breakthroughs of DVD’s and MP3’s were quickly matched by copyright infringement digital programs such as Napster and WinDVD. The author is dead, The musician is dead, The film-maker is deal, The Studio or Label is dead, When there are so many different unwanted sources for obtaining their work and creations.

However, this is the very nature of digital convergence, and the WEB. The linking of all the different forums of media into one larger mega-median creates the most important thing for the web-user, convenience. The Web user does not take into consideration other factors, like the fact that the whole world has not yet broken itself from the classical 20th century from of commerce, going to the store and paying for something.

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