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Showing posts from July, 2012

Old media New Media 2 - The one's that changed the game

The Balance of Payment crisis in the 80's forced the Indian government to introduce several reforms opening up the economy and placing the country on the 'globalization' map. The 'Licence Raj' partly ended and several industries got a boost. The Information Technology and the Communication Technology got a further boost with the appointment of Mr. Sam Pitroda. The yellow coloured STD PCO's that dot every corner of the roadside around the country are because of Mr. Pitroda's vision. Apart from the parallel evolution of technologies in computers, Internet, cameras and mobile phones which converted the audiences into producers, three major 'events' are also responsible for the way we distribute digital content and communicate with each other in India. The first one was in 1990-91 when Gulshan Kumar, through his T-Series produced and sold audio cassettes at a fraction of the price at which they were generally sold. If I remember right, music cassettes

Old Media New Media 1

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This is in continuation with my earlier post on new and emerging media technologies. New and emerging technologies have changed the way we consume and produce content. The technology has become advanced, cheaper and accesible to us, the common public. This has to be looked at from several angles.   I bought my first computer in 1992 for Rs.35000/-. Many will be surprised by the configuration. It was a 40386 processor, meaning it had a processing power of 386 MHz, much lesser than many mobile phones available today. The computer had a whopping 120MB (Yes, no typo here. Its MB and not GB) and 4 MB of RAM! On that computer I could easily use CorelDraw and PageMaker for my DTP work. It was the best PC in the neighbourhood.   I also remember making my first video using a PC with a 533 MHz processor and 512 MB RAM. I can vouch for the fact that the video can hold its own against any video I have made recently. The only real difference is that it took very long to render the video the. It

New Media = Digital Media = 'Social' Media?

Is 'New Media' always digital? Is it really 'social'? Well, in contemporary times, probably yes. But then, wasn't print a new medium when it was invented?  And radio, and then television? With every 'new' medium, there have been social, political and economic changes, because we have been exposed to different thoughts, ideas and challenges with each of them. With every new medium, there have been changes in how we receive, use and disseminate information. The difference between the 'older' new media and the newer ones is that the content is now stored in a binary form. It is now digital, rather than analogue. Instead of storing data on tapes and records, we now store data in microchips. Instead of data being 'fixed' it is now in a state of flux. This enables content to be converted from one form to another easily and equally easily distributed allowing trans-mediality. Apart from the way content is stored, even the way in which it is p