When did New Media emerge? And what is its precise definition? In attempts to answer these questions, as well as others, Lev Manovich investigates the terms and the placing and origins of such terms of their definitions, in regards to the world of new and old media. Images and textual images, such as photographs, illustrations, layouts and ads, find their way in the pool of possible new media. According to Manovich, “The popular understanding of new media identifies it with the use of a computer for distribution and exhibition rather than production. … Similarly, photographs that are put on a CD-ROM are considered new media….” However, also told by Manovich, “If we want to understand the effects of computerization on [the] culture as a whole, I think it is too limiting.”
The definition, in essence, of new media is not as one or two dimensional as some scholars would deem it to be. There exists a three dimensional element to it- a realm that cannot trap its capabilities and characteristics in the lines of a flat definition. Computers are no longer viewed as the stale use of calculations and formulas; it is, however, merely the mark of a new device, a new form of communication, just as linear texts as always been.
Unique characteristics of new media, do separate it from old methods of communication. A mode of hyper-linking, and the ability to do so places the ‘wiring’ of particular objects to others within the text or lexia. “Hyper-linking creates a connection between two elements, for example, between two words in two different pages or a sentence on one page and an image in another, or tow different places within the same page.” This element of interactivity distinguishes new media form the old, holding it characteristics in a level that is neither one nor two dimensional- but rather, in a level of three.
“New media is interactive. In contrast to old media where the order of presentation is fixed, the user can now interact with a media object. In the process of interaction the user can choose which elements to display or which paths to follow, thus genereating a unique work. In this way the user becomes the co-author of the work.”