- Here goes - my first posting. I am responding to the third question which is really a statement - old media never die. I am a believer in the statement that what's old is new again, but will admit at first glance it would not seem there is very much 'old' about new media. The following may be a stretch, but here's one take.
- People have spent ages trying to communicate with one another ever since the community began to expand beyond the firepit, when eventually face to face interaction became more difficult and then almost impossible.
- The printing press enabled the printed word to be shared. The invention of the telegraph allowed people to communicate that printed word across compressed time and space. Moving forward, the telephone was able to transfer one's voice over space in compressed time. It no longer took the stage coach 3 months to take a letter from one destination to another.
- Today, skype adds video to the communication - across space and again in compressed time. Families that used to send a video tape to the grandparents can now skype and the grandchildren can interact face to face with their grandparents who live across the country or across the world. It isn't around the firepit, but maybe it isn't that far in other ways. The elders can still participate in the family dynamics. I recall one
story about a family that places their computer on the dinner table and
once a week they eat dinner 'together' with family who live far away.
- Thinking back to the firepit, when the whole community could see and comment on your actions, you had to watch how you behaved. With Facebook and other social media, the community is larger and not necessarily known but it is still watching. But we have not grown up with the community "in our face" so to speak. Some new rules need to be learned.
- Perhaps 'new' media is a way to return to the collaboration that existed when we lived face to face; while not face to face exactly, it does require a new way of thinking as it brings us together in ways that we have not been used to for a very long time.
Kim Denstedt
