New media is a word that is ever changing. Who knows? In the future, the idea of “new media” might be so far from what it is today, it might not have anything to do with the definition it is today. New media is dependent on the culture and society, and of course the technology that is “in” for that generation. Lev Manovich portrays this in one of his eight propositions, “New Media as the Mix Between Existing Cultural Conventions and the Conventions of Software.” This creates the definition of new media and what will count as new media for the future.
But for today and for the next few years, the Internet is our tool that will DISPLAY, ORGANIZE and ARCHIVE new media. Much of the new media today is nothing without the help of the Internet. With a tool that allows information to be so easily attainable, there is no way that the Internet is not a prime distribution tool. Manovich even explains in another one of his eight propositions that, “New Media as Computer Technology used as a Distribution Platform.” Further explanation entails that the Internet is considered “new media” and as a society, we thrive on the use of this new media to get information or even learn about new information. New media is the way of the Internet, and as the dominant source of new media, it will continue to thrive. Museum websites have new media tabs that feature new media on their website. The Walker Art Center has their own “Artistic Program” called “New Media Initiatives” and features ways that people are able to interact with art through a website, or through a mobile app. We are an Internet culture; there is no doubt about that. With the Internet, new media is able to reach far more people than ever before if it were just displayed in a museum. Organizing this new is as easy as pressing the “Google Search” button. In one click, information about your search term is available at the palm of your hand (or in this case, click of your mouse!). But, because of this ease of displaying and retrieving new media, anyone can call himself or herself an “art critic,” which is indeed not the case. Since the Internet is a place where people are easily able to get away with displaying artwork that is not theirs, or “taking ideas” from others, new media curators have to be aware of this and know what is real versus what is not, and this will entail. Archiving materials is so easy with new media that people often imitate great ideas and call it their own. One site, the Social Science Research Council has an entire webpage about media piracy. This to me SCREAMS a problem. There are posts about censorship, SOPA/PIPA, and about “copy cultures” as one post put it. Even though people were able to try to "match" previous artists works, they were never able to get the process down because of the secrecy behind it. But the Internet is so readily available with this information, it is hard NOT to come across previous methods of new media artists today. Manovich brings up an important point in “New Media From Borges to HTML,” about how easily manipulated new media is with the help with computer technology. “Paradoxically, at the same time as new media field has started to mature (the end of the 1990s), its very reason for existence came to be threatened. If all artists now, regardless of their preferred media, also routinely use digital computers to create, modify and produce works, do we need to have a special field of new media art?” As more people begin to use these technologies, would this “art” even be considered “art” anymore if ANYONE can learn to copy/manipulate art? In a sense, yes – new media is best suited for display, organizing, and archiving on the Internet in a way that this information is readily available to everyone, but also where does it cross the line into where it becomes TOO much available for people, and not enough “NEW” ideas are created?
