Numerical Representation
The major difference between new and old media is that new media is digitised. That is the continuous analog media (like a scene, a sound or a frame) is sampled and then digitised. Once media is converted to this form then, to store, to transfer and to manipulate the data becomes easy.
A photograph is a new media object, is a collection of pixels. Each pixel has the data of the primary colours which make up the colour in that pixel. Thus an entire image but a large numerically represented data.
The fractal structure of new media - Modularity
New media, unlike the old media is represented as a collection of discrete and independent elements. It has a fractal structure, meaning each object is divided into smaller independent parts and down like this to the smallest parts that make the object.
Modularity is very evident in World wide web and HTML pages that embed independent objects into them.
Music composed using a software can be another example for modularity. Each instrument in the software is independent and within a track, how an instrument plays or how the notes are arranged is also independent.
Automation
Creation, manipulation and access of new media objects are made simple by automation.
Templates for 3D object creation, like a flock of birds, trees which are available as default.
also, filters in photoshop are examples of low level automation which is present.
User specific ads which pop up on websites are not manually put there. The AI engine on the internet makes a profile of you and “appropriately” displays the ads that you may want to see.
Variability
This is characteristic of new media object comes from numerical coding and modularity. Old media involved a certain rigid structure, a master copy was made and those subsequently made are identical copies of the same. However, a new media gives rise to different versions instead of identical versions. Other words which can be seen as synonymous to variable are liquid and mutable.
Watching the a movie on the TV screen, laptop and smartphone is an example of variability. The same content is been viewed on different mediums.
The website of the New York times for instance, has a different content everyday but the layout or the medium remains the same, its like on the same newspaper which has a different news everyday.
Transcoding
There are two layers in a new media object the ‘computer layer’ and the ‘cultural layer’. The computer layer may have categories like sorting and matching, function and variable, computer language and data structures. And the cultural layer has categories like composition and point of view, comedy and tragedy, story and plot.
New media makes a composite of both these layers, resulting in a new computer culture. For eg. words like memory, mouse and monitor may evoke a different meaning from it's conventional ones. Status, Post and Tweet the recent buzz words of social media are far from their original meaning and words like these have created a niche for themselves. This has been majorly attributed to the impact of the 'computer layer' on the human 'cultural layer'.
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