New Media Reader (Intro 2)

The second introduction of the New Media Reader by Lev Manovich begins with a more sociological history of new media compared to the more technological time-line of the first introduction. Manovich attempts to explain why the United States has been so far behind on the new media trend with it mainly coming down to the lack of government funding. The culture of commercialism in America has established that the new media being created in this country will be made mostly for commercial means, funded by advertisers. The problem with advertisers funding art pervades throughout American film, television, and new media and causes artists to work like robots in set formats and dumb down their content to appease their patrons. Because of this motivation behind most new media here it was easy to see how the "art world" took so long to recognize it as an equally creative and artistic medium. As Manovich explains, "This resistance is understandable given that the logic of the art world and the logic of new media are exact opposites." While the art world is based on individual authorship, the uniqueness of the piece, and control over how it is distributed, the new media realm praises work that goes "viral," for the work to exist in several forms, and a sense of collaborative-authorship (Manovich, 14).
New media called into question the entire idea of authorship and distribution; it worked on an entirely new set of principles that took advantage of the community network of the web looking to connect with one another. This is why Manovich argues that there needs to be a separate field of new media art apart from art made with the use of digital programs.
In addition to this cultural history, Manovich discusses the cultural importance of new media and computer science and attempts to define it in several ways. He explains how all of our culture today is being filtered through the computer in some way or another and deserves to be discussed as a historical phenomenon, which makes new media ever-harder to define. First it is separated from the idea of cyber-culture and the social aspects of the Internet, and then it is separated from any kind of finished products and instead describes new media as the digital data that is created to be used in multiple forms. New media is also, according to Manovich, "the aesthetics" of digital media and computer interfaces, as well as the "language" of the computer. It is clear that the definition of new media is ever-changing and extremely widespread.