The Branches of My New Media

To me, new media is a very strange, complex term that can be simplified when

symbolized as a tree. Many might say to look at it as a tree and to focus on the branches, but this

is not about looking at new media or trees the way we have always looked at it. Just like

branches, the roots grow in all different directions, they intertwine or avoid the roots of other

nearby trees, or they stem and multiply. It can be very easy to get the two confused if you were to

look at a tree as a whole, or how it is just as confusing talking about “new” media and “new”

new media. Let us have the roots represent “old” new media and the branches represent “new”

media, for new media is derived by what exists in “old” new media and the branches of a tree

only grow for as long as the roots instruct them to.

This is not a bad thing; in fact, it is a great thing. While not everyone cares to dig up the

roots of a tree to see how long or brittle they are, they love to see the leaves or flowers grow on

the branches. Some might enjoy the roots that grow above the surface, which may trip someone

walking by or provide a nice seat to rest. Some people love to watch TikTok for the latest trends

or news, but they may not necessarily care on what device they are watching it on or how the app

was made. People don't care about the past; they only care about the present and what it offers,

but the one thing they all fail to realize is that we would not be where we are in the present if it

weren't for the past. Instagram would not have stories if it were not for Snapchat, Facebook

would not exist if it weren't for MySpace, and phones would not have existed if it weren't for the

telegraph. New media is the process of evolving and growing the media that exists to fulfill the

needs of society now based on what we already have from the future, and it comes with many

benefits as long as we are able to control the direction in which new media is growing.
 One might ask why bother comparing the conflict on the meaning of new media to the

way a tree grows, and the answer is quite simple; new media is not what we think it is, and we

have to start identifying that by differentiating what it is and what it isn’t. A tree is not just

branches, leaves, or roots; it is all those elements as a whole. New media is not just the Internet,

digital electronics and technology, or a device with means of communication. New media is all

of those elements and more, and it should not be singled out by one of the elements to represent

it forever. Benjamin Peters is one of the few people highlighted in the topic of this discussion for

his opinion on how the term should be looked at, writing an entire manifesto on “new media”.

Aside from deep diving into the origins of the term and illustrating the term's ancient history,

which does strengthen his stance considerably in context, Peters focuses mainly on the argument

that the ‘new’ in new media needs to be modified as “renewable” since media is pliable–easily

influenced and adaptable–to the times in which media is “new”, just like a tree.

What the general public believes is the definition of new media is flawed in the aspect of

what they falsely determine as “new”. One primary example of falsely claiming something is

new when it isn’t is from Peters’ work when he draws attention to the Anglophone student's

definition of the term on page 16, who claim that new media happens to be digital. Before

reading Peters’ piece, I would have agreed with the students on their version of new media. As

would Manovich, who writes in his work that the definition is,“the cultural objects which use

digital computer technology for distribution and exhibition”, which also includes the word

“digital”. There is nothing newer than digital, and I cannot possibly perceive anything beyond

the digital age. However, is digital really new? Digital existed for our parents in their teen or

early adult years in the form of phones built into our cars or big, bulky computers that didn’t

even have the Internet, but digital for us today is really just phones that fit in our pocket that do
have the Internet. That is where the flaw of “new” in new media kicks in. Overall, digital cannot

be new because it existed thirty years ago, but we cannot say digital is not new since the digital

technology then is not the digital technology we have now. But let's step back for a moment and

consider what Peters’ definition of new media is, and that is that new media is actually

“renewable” media. Digital is not new, but it is renewable. The MacBook I am currently writing

this paper on is just a renewed version of the big, bulky computers my twenty year old mom

dreamed of having in 1999. The iPhone 14 my younger sister has is the renewed version of my

older sister’s LG Rumor Touch in 2010. Sometimes I’ll see a hilarious TikTok that will remind

me of Vine, which only makes sense since TikTok is Vine, just redeveloped. But it is not like I

am going through my everyday life comparing a device or an app to something I used or wanted

to have ten or so years ago, and it is not common for all of us to notice or recall those changes.

Peters discusses this as evidence for his claim when he states that “a medium may fade from

obviousness to obsolescence, and sometimes disappearing entirely from social memory,” (Peters,

18). We consider digital “new” because we–society–have merely forgotten that digital existed

earlier in our lives or even before our lives started due to its rapid development; we simply

consider the media we use in our lives “new” because we do not necessarily recall the media that

came before it.

Peters does not spend his entire manifesto declaring what makes new media “new” or the

evolution and history of new media, for he spends a good portion of his piece discussing the

benefits and consequences that come from new media. The consequences are what I had just

stated in the previous paragraph prior, where some new media will be forgotten entirely by

society as time goes on and the mischaracterization of the term by a large group of people. The

benefits, however, outweigh the consequences. Without renewable media, thousands of jobs
would not exist, couples and best friends may have never met, millions of ideas and beliefs

would never have been heard, and the lines of communication would not be as fast and reliable

as they are today. Moreover, we may not be as inclined to interact with new media if it was never

renewed. Take a second and look up the first television and what was broadcasted on them at the

time. Awful, right? Now imagine that those TVs and programs were never enhanced, changed, or

modified; do you think you’d be motivated to turn the television on everyday to watch one

channel on a tiny screen without color or audible sound? Probably not, but that is why

developers have spent the last ninety years improving the television so it can channel hundreds

of channels, broadcasts, and streaming services on a screen so large you might as well never go

to the movie theaters again. Wait, but do we go anymore? Do we go to the orchards or the parks

that we urgently usher others to plant trees in? Is renewable media truly as beneficial as Peters

made it sound?

I want to say yes, but when looking at my generation–Generation Z–in comparison to the

swiftness of new media developments have shown to bring great harm on various levels. I was in

sixth grade when I was handed an iPad to do all of my schoolwork. It became a part of my

everyday life, and I felt a little cooler than my friends in other districts who only had class

laptops and did everything on paper. I never had to buy books for English class because there

was always a free, e-book version online; my science teachers did not have to set up labs because

there were Gizmos; and I rarely worried about having my classwork done by class time because I

had until 11:59 at night to electronically submit it on Canvas. The coolness I felt lasted until

about my junior year when the pandemic hit, and then everyone in the nation was forced into

online learning. Looking back, it was simple, but now I find it difficult to read the paperback

textbook I bought for my Cultural Pluralism class, to sit through a lecture without doodling and
scrolling through my notes on my devices, or to not finish my forum posts as I am walking into

the class it’s due in. I was in sixth grade when I got my first smartphone, and I spent hours

texting my friends in group chats or playing online games with them. I did that all the time until I

got my license sophomore year, where I still spent a lot of time talking to my friends on my

phone, but now I could drive to them and hangout by sitting on our phones, laughing at a meme

every once in a while or taking selfies to post on Snapchat. Now, I can probably spend hours

texting you about anything, but do not ask to meet me in person; I can’t hold a conversation with

someone for more than maybe five minutes, and I do not have the courage to approach them to

even say hi. I might reference a meme or a video while we’re talking, and it will be really

embarrassing if you don’t catch the reference. Also during my sophomore year was when I first

downloaded TikTok. I see beautiful places to visit, fun projects to make, or delicious recipes to

try, but I can never find time when I’m spending so much of it scrolling through the app for

“another” idea. What I am trying to get at is that new media, in all its forms, have taken over my

life to the extent in which I don't know how to live without it, and I am not the only person to

think that. My step-sister, who is nine years younger than me, is completely engrossed into her

social life online. After starting her digital cleanse my older sister, who is four years older than

me, told me how much more she felt in control with her life and the greatness in not being

connected all the time.

This thought reminds me of Donna Haraway’s piece, “Cyborg Manifesto,” where she

claims that we are slowly becoming–or already have become–cyborgs. Her term of a cyborg is a

“hybrid of machine and organism” (Haraway, 31). Our dependency on the machine–technology,

media, the Internet–is proof of the hybridity. We are unable to live comfortably with media at our

disposable, but we would do anything to prevent it from disappearing from us completely since
we do not know life without it. This may not be a concern to someone who thinks that we could

survive indefinitely this way, but what are we to do when we are unable to improve new media

anymore or when it begins to improve faster than we are able to keep up? What are we to do

when the trees grow too large for us to cut down, with branches too long for us to trim and roots

too deep to uproot? Unless we learn to maintain the tree, maintain the definition in which new

media should have, we will never figure out how to care for it, and it seems as though we are

currently in a time where we are realizing we do not have the means to comfortably maintain it.
 Works Cited

Haraway, Donna. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the

Late Twentieth Century." Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature

(New York; Routledge, 1991): pp. 149-181.

Manovich, Lev. “What is New Media?: Eight Propositions.” The New Media Reader, 2002.

Peters, Benjamin. “And Lead Us Not Into Thinking the New is New: a Bibliographic Case for

New Media History.” New Media and Society, vol. 11, 2009, pp. 13-30.