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Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT P, 2001.

In The Language of New Media (2001), Lev Manovich draws on the history of cinema, photography, art, design, and telecommunications to theorize about new media. Primary to my concerns are his five "principles of new media," which he characterizes as what makes new media different from "old media":

1. Numerical representation: new media objects exist as data (27)
2. Modularity: the different elements of new media are discrete samples (30)
3. Automation: new media objects can be created and modified automatically; there is less human intentionality necessary for the creation and modification of media (32)
4. Variability: new media can be copied and created into a wide variety of versions (36)
5. Transcoding: new media can be converted into other formats (47). This he sees as "the most substantial consequence of the computerization of media" (45).

Lev Manovich's 'The Language of New Media' is one of 2 main texts we're using in The Dynamic Media Institute's coursework, research and discussion for Design Seminar 1. Fantastic read, great insight into the field and history of new media art. I have owned the book since 2004, read bits and pieces, but now I have a fantastic excuse to dig in and really live in the subject matter.

A great place to start. Well-written.

Amazing book.

What started out very, very tediously eventually built to an interesting discussion, then receded again into tedium only to stop suddenly without a rewarding or insightful conclusion.

The author's fixation on cinema was obsessive to the point of distraction: I often felt that the book's title should more appropriately have been "Manovich's New Language of Cinema"; however, this predication was out of necessity for his argument. Manovich suggests that the way we've viewed, analyzed, and critiqued film (and the creation/digestion/exhibition/reproduction thereof) is relevant to new media, as well.

With painstaking detail and thoroughness, this text catalogues the ways in which we can study and interpret new media, providing context, category, and connotation for the various terms used in discussing it.

While this was an extremely difficult (as in dull, tedious, and repetitive) read, it provides a foundation of vocabulary for a field of study. As such, I suppose it serves a purpose. Do I think that makes it good? :-) No, not really.

Using Vertov's silent documentary Man with a Movie Camera as his starting point Manovich draws a convincing history of the evolution of media.

The author's fixation on cinema was obsessive to the point of distraction: I often felt that the book's title should more appropriately have been "Manovich's New Language of Cinema"; however, this predication was out of necessity for his argument. Manovich suggests that the way we've viewed, analyzed, and critiqued film (and the creation/digestion/exhibition/reproduction thereof) is relevant to new media, as well.

With painstaking detail and thoroughness, this text catalogues the ways in which we can study and interpret new media, providing context, category, and connotation for the various terms used in discussing it.

i'm in the wrong field. i want to be thinking along with this man and making stuff.

A simultaneously inspiring and depressing read. This book is full of wonderful theoretical frameworks, as well as several near-misses that are still interesting and instructive, and a very few full misses that aren't any fun at all. (Also a few blind spots due to the author's fully disclosed visual media bias.)

The author spent the first five chapters building an argument as well as a useful theory of new media, piece by piece. A lot of it worked very well; even when I disagreed with the argument, I often found the theory sound.

It all completely fell apart for me in the final chapter, so it was quite a bummer to end on that note.

The author approaches the creation of a theory of new media from the angle of the visual arts in general, and film theory in particular. This produces many solid ideas with accessible examples. Still, one can't help thinking of the many other disciplines that could provide alternative theoretical models for some of the ideas with which the author engages.

In his defense, the author says as much several times in the text. He presents absolutely no illusion of the production of the definitive theoretical model for new media. He's very clear that he's presenting a single theoretical framework, and that others are very much possible.

And that is a major weakness of this book, if one can call it weakness: it is good enough, complete enough, and smart enough to give an inkling of how much better a more interdisciplinary framework might be. It reveals its limitations and shares them freely. It helps you form a clear articulation of what it lacks, leading you to want exactly that.

Warning: Liberal usage of, and references to: hypermedia, QuickTime, VR, and VRML. Also occasionally refers to computer games as "CD-ROMs". Gotta give him a break, it was ten years ago.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in media studies.

A bit dated in its examples, Manovich's descriptions and even conjecture about society's transition to a digital basis is prescient and persuasive for even contemporary readers. Some of his verbiage gets to be a bit much and things that he emphasizes turn out to be not as important today as he thinks they will be, but Manovich really can't be blamed for such shortcomings. What does become somewhat frustrating is his relatively consistent reference to works that few readers then and even fewer now will ever be able to access. Using these for examples may be quite accurate in illustrating his points, but I'll never know, unfortunately.

All around an excellent examination of some rather pressing topics regarding how the digital influences our thinking and our daily lives. While maybe not quite as applicable to today in some respects, there's still certainly a lot in here to chew on and think about: the problems he addresses and identifies aren't going away anytime soon.

It's the book that all media theory classes teach when it comes to new media. Its permanent status on syllabi is clearly deserved but in rereading this book a few times, it's way too cinema-biased, which I think is still an issue in contemporary media theory. Nevertheless, this is a serious book.

I have finally found it....the most painful theory reading I have ever been assigned in any class ever. While conceptually, the ideas about new media presented were interesting and give interesting lens of analysis this was...so just so inaccessibly dull.