[-empyre-] new media's name - who cares?

[Andy Polaine <a.polaine@unsw.edu.au>]

It has been interesting trying to unravel the recent discussion, not 
only in terms of the ideas but also in terms of the language, which has 
become rather opaque and arcane to say the least. There have been times 
when I have felt I had accidentally into a mid-90s hacker forum.

The term "new media" is obviously problematic, but mostly because of 
its lack of agreed upon meaning than anything else. It has been a 
collective phrase for all sorts of diverse media, modes and 
combinations of technologies. Trying to have a sensible conversation 
about anything in the world without some agreed meanings to words is, 
to say the least, difficult. New Media is a term more widely used in 
Europe and the U.S. than in Australia in my experience. I have 
constantly found difficulties talking about what I do here in 
Australia, far more so than I have in Europe.

So my question is, does it really matter what new media means as long 
as everyone has a rough idea what you are saying when you say it?

Using a inexact phrase is still easier than describing the object or 
work in question in complete detail or saying "you know, that thing 
over there."

The term will resolve into a set of more discreet terms as time 
progresses (and of course it already is starting to - we have words 
such as CD-ROMs, DVDs, and even the Web is beginning to coalesce into 
"genres" such as Blogs, Search Engines, etc.). The moniker "new" is 
almost as pointless as "digital", but not quite yet. It is still a 
useful term for want of anything else to describe something we're 
trying to describe. Of course, a generation from now it will be 
redundant for the media that we now consider new. So what's new?

The danger with taking this obsession too far is that we risk arguing 
about a name whilst the world as moved on. If we were to apply this to 
cinema, we would be debating the words "film", "projector" or "cinema" 
whilst standing outside the auditorium and missing the experience 
inside.

Cheers,

Andy

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Andy Polaine
Senior Lecturer

School of Media Arts
College of Fine Arts (COFA)
The University of New South Wales
Cnr Oxford Street and Greens Road
Paddington
Sydney, NSW 2010
Australia
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