Are tools and toys and Film nd Telivision new media's closest living relations

BA/BSC(H) Design For Interactive Media (Top Up) Summer Essay By Raymond O’Brien Student Number: 05002100

“Are tools and toys or film and television new media’s closest living relations?”
We need to begin by deciding what is media. Media is defined as “the various means of mass communication thought of as a whole, including television, radio, magazines, and newspapers, together with the people involved in their production” (Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation).
The dawn of media began with newspapers and books. Informative and entertaining stories and articles distributed by paper. Later came radio, which gave a different approach. Instead of reading information, a newsreader or “DJ” reads out the information to you across the airwaves. This in turn was adapted to the later invention of Television, where the receiver of the information is not only a listener, but now a viewer as well. Television, I think is an exploit of the cinema film screen. Film was said to be the most amazing invention of the before the computer. People were now able to record and play animated stories and events. How could people not exploit this? It opened up a whole medium to cast news and with later developments in technology, broadcast them to anywhere in the world from anywhere in the world. For example, the famous Olympic games, which take place at different locations around the globe every four years.


So this is where media has come from. Now, where is media at present? Where is media going? What instruments are we using to access it? What will we use in the future? What wont we use?!


I think we are all aware that the newest and not surprisingly most popular source of media is the Internet.


Currently, the Internet is available to users through a mass of different mediums. People can access digital information through their Computer, PDA or Mobile Phone by either WAP or SMS. People can also access the Internet through their television sets by using an Internet Box.


Today, almost anything informative or entertaining can be accessed through the Internet. Radio, Television programs, games, movies, etc can be downloaded or viewed using the Internet. In the last number of years, the most popular pastime for people of the information age was illegally downloading music from the Internet. Everybody remembers Napster don’t they! Today, unfortunately for big media corporations this has become more widespread and people can now download anything they want, “For Free”!


The Internet is indeed the most powerful tool anyone can hold. Before, people would have to go to a library to find tutorials, or documents, which could take hours to locate and then they have to be returned to their proper place. With the Internet, you can download your own personal copy of a document and not have to worry about the fine for returning it late!


In Nicolas Negroponte’s book, Being digital, he talks about the death of television sets and computers taking their place as the entertainment centre of a household. He also says this will become and advantage because we will no longer have to flick through channels upon channels of adverts and shopping programs waiting for something worth while to come on. We will be able to select exactly what we want to watch, when we want to watch it. Viewing adverts and “rubbish” will become personal choice rather than being forced to.

I mentioned games being accessible through the Internet. It is amazing that nowadays games consoles such as Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s new Playstation comes with broadband modems built in. This allows gamers to play with other games across the globe and by using broadband, it is like as if they are sitting side-by-side using the same console. These machines, simple games toys originally intended for children are now more powerful than a home PC. They have bigger hard drives, more processing power and memory than Dell’s mid range Computers. Sorry, but I find this funny! Games however are becoming more demanding in terms of visuals and audio. Gone are the days of the old five-megabyte cartridge for the Super Mario Brothers. Today, games barely fit on a DVD. This again demonstrates the power and superiority of the Internet to be able to handle the games.

Up until the explosion that is the Internet, Television, Radio, newspapers and magazines drove media. I believe these instruments of media will all stay with us forever, but they are slowly becoming less preferable to the Internet. If you take a news article, the same article can be found, viewed or heard on all of the for-mentioned mediums.

The main advantage of the Internet though is that the article can be accessed at anytime where as, a television or radio may only feature it once. This would personally make the Internet a preferred medium for me to access media. Also, presenters of this digital media are becoming more creative. Information is becoming interactive. People can manipulate the information they receive. People can view video clips instead of looking at static images. People can guide themselves around 3D worlds. People can listen to things instead of view them or both. People can decide want they want to receive as information becomes more interactive and flexible. This seems great but I think I have a flaw. If someone can choose what he or she wants to receive, they are also choosing how much of the information they receive. This could be bad! People might only choose to receive half of an article, possible leaving the most important part behind…

So, are tools and toys, or film and television new media’s closest living relations? It is certainly easy to trace back where modern day media came from. Where it’s going though is a mystery and only tomorrow will lets us know the answer. Media is all around us and will continue to be. Using the transition of paper to radio to television to Internet as a model, it would appear to be me that it is only a matter of time before sometime new comes about and I find it safe to say that it is a certainty that it will be based on what has come before.

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