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Informationalism

Related: computer - information - internet - new media - Information Age - random access - digital

1980s to 2000s: Bob Stein (CD-Rom pioneer) - Lev Manovich

Information Age

According to Manuel Castells, the Information Age (or Informationalism, in contrast with Industrialism) started in the technological divide of 1970s, with inventions like the microprocessor, microcomputer, optical fiber, and TCP/IP protocol -- the basis of the technological system in which we are full immersed today. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Age

Personal Computer [...]

The IBM PC (Personal Computer), is a trade mark of IBM. It is the predecessor of the current personal computers first introduced in 1981.

The phrase "personal computer" was common currency before 1981, and was used as early as 1972 to characterize the Xerox PARC Alto. However, due to the success of the IBM PC, what had been a generic term came to mean specifically a microcomputer compatible with IBM's specification (see IBM PC compatible). (The term "personal computer" is still occasionally used to the wider generic sense). --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC [Mar 2004]

Microprocessor

The world's first commercial microprocessor was the 4-bit 4004, released on November 15, 1971, invented by Marcian Ted Hoff. [wikipedia.org, Mar 2004]

New media [...]

New Media Aesthetics Is the information age creating its own new aesthetic, or merely grafting a shiny Photoshopped surface onto an old one? Media art theorist and practitioner Lev Manovich argues that informationalism is creating a new kind of beauty based on flows of information rather than form, while design critic Aaron Betsky believes that the digital era is just the latest phase of Modernism. They recently met up at V2 in Rotterdam to discuss their differences. --Jane Szita, http://www.doorsofperception.com/Features/details/7/ [October 2001]

New media in the 1990s to 2000s

Since the 1990s New Media is a field of study that has developed around cultural practices with the computer playing a central role as the medium for production, storage and distribution.

In the late 1990s, new media referred to the rise of the Internet and the use of interactive digital technology for news and entertainment content, signifying a major shift from highly concentrated, television-oriented media organizations to more grass-roots, personalized and customized content. This has seen ebbs and flows, with different trends taking hold along the way:

--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Media, Feb 2004

Storytelling

Pioneers and innovators such as Steven Hoffman, George Shaw, Nicholas De Wolf, Shawn Johnson, and Vito Montone have been leading the way for new ways to use technology in support of storytelling.

Organizations like the Producers Guild of America are also diving into the new media arena, with the recent inauguration of their New Media Council. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Media, Feb 2004

Remediation: Understanding New Media - Jay David Bolter, Richard Grusin

  • Remediation: Understanding New Media - Jay David Bolter (Author), Richard Grusin (Author) [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]
    About the Author
    Jay David Bolter is Wesley Professor of New Media Studies, and Richard Grusin is Professor and Chair, both in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture at Georgia Institute of Technology.

    "The authors do a splendid job of showing precisely how technologies like computer games, digital photography, film television, the Web, and virtual reality all turn on the mutually constructive strategies of generating immediacy and making users hyperaware of the media themselves. . . . The authors lay out a provocative theory of contemporary selfhood, one that draws on and modifies current notions of the `virtual' and `networked' human subject. Clearly written and not overly technical, this book will interest general readers, students, and scholars engaged with current trends in technology." -- M. Uebel, Choice

    Media critics remain captivated by the modernist myth of the new: they assume that digital technologies such as the World Wide Web, virtual reality, and computer graphics must divorce themselves from earlier media for a new set of aesthetic and cultural principles. In this richly illustrated study, Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin offer a theory of mediation for our digital age that challenges this assumption. They argue that new visual media achieve their cultural significance precisely by paying homage to, rivaling, and refashioning such earlier media as perspective painting, photography, film, and television. They call this process of refashioning "remediation," and they note that earlier media have also refashioned one another: photography remediated painting, film remediated stage production and photography, and television remediated film, vaudeville, and radio. --via amazon.com

    Further reading

    1. The Language of New Media (2002) - Lev Manovich [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]
      In this book Lev Manovich offers the first systematic and rigorous theory of new media. He places new media within the histories of visual and media cultures of the last few centuries. He discusses new media's reliance on conventions of old media, such as the rectangular frame and mobile camera, and shows how new media works create the illusion of reality, address the viewer, and represent space. He also analyzes categories and forms unique to new media, such as interface and database. Manovich uses concepts from film theory, art history, literary theory, and computer science and also develops new theoretical constructs, such as cultural interface, spatial montage, and cinegratography. The theory and history of cinema play a particularly important role in the book. Among other topics, Manovich discusses parallels between the histories of cinema and of new media, digital cinema, screen and montage in cinema and in new media, and historical ties between avant-garde film and new media.

    2. The New Media Reader - Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Nick Montfort [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
      Manual includes a collection of texts, videos, and computer programs chronicling the history and forming the foundation of a still-emerging field: new media. Material includes Foundational Writings, Functioning Programs, and Digitized Video. For new media professionals, students, and readers seeking to understand new media. Illustrated. DLC: Telecommunication. --Book Info This reader collects the texts, videos, and computer programs--many of them now almost impossible to find--that chronicle the history and form the foundation of the still-emerging field of new media. General introductions by Janet Murray and Lev Manovich, along with short introductions to each of the texts, place the works in their historical context and explain their significance. The texts were originally published between World War II--when digital computing, cybernetic feedback, and early notions of hypertext and the Internet first appeared--and the emergence of the World Wide Web--when they entered the mainstream of public life. The texts are by computer scientists, artists, architects, literary writers, interface designers, cultural critics, and individuals working across disciplines. The contributors include (chronologically) Jorge Luis Borges, Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, Ivan Sutherland, William S. Burroughs, Ted Nelson, Italo Calvino, Marshall McLuhan, Billy Kl?Jean Baudrillard, Nicholas Negroponte, Alan Kay, Bill Viola, Sherry Turkle, Richard Stallman, Brenda Laurel, Langdon Winner, Robert Coover, and Tim Berners-Lee. The CD accompanying the book contains examples of early games, digital art, independent literary efforts, software created at universities, and home-computer commercial software. Also on the CD is digitized video, documenting new media programs and artwork for which no operational version exists. One example is a video record of Douglas Engelbart's first presentation of the mouse, word processor, hyperlink, computer-supported cooperative work, video conferencing, and the dividing up of the screen we now call non-overlapping windows; another is documentation of Lynn Hershman's Lorna, the first interactive video art installation.--Product Description, Amazon.com

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