Two introductions

Inventing the Medium
Janet Murray

This introduction gave very detailed information of what is to come in the book. It sort of summarizes the chapters, but not really. Actually Murray kept referring to passages in the book and to me it felt I can only fully understand what she is talking about once I read the chapters. So I felt like her introduction would have been better as a sort of summary, because she reflected on the book and shared her thoughts with us in the chronological order of the development of New Media.

New Media from Borges to HTML
Lev Manovich

Well this article starts out much different. The author talks about my hometown right on the first page and the fact that he thinks my hometown Karlsruhe is this important just makes him sympathetic.
His approach to introducing the New Media to us, just seems much more interesting to me because he compares cultures and tries to give answers to the question why there was such a big difference between European and American New Media development and the Art involved. I am fascinated by cultures and just love to explore and understand the differences. I also am the generation that got to experience the development of this New Media first hand. And I can relate to what he tells us about paying for the internet by the minute. Though flat rates are becoming more common nowadays, that still wasn’t the case 2 years ago and there are still plenty of people who pay by the minute in Europe to this day.
Manovich gives us definitions of New Media, so his introduction complements Murrays introduction very well. They have such contrary ways of introducing the book which makes me even more interested in what there is to come.

Filed under Uncategorized |