1.3.2 Measuring newness on Nov. 1

What dose the word 'new' means?
According to a dictionary, it means something "has been recently created, built, or invented or is in the process of being created, built, or invented." Then, what about to the new media? How can we define whether something belongs to the new media or not? This is the topic today.

First of all, some old media are still existing today. TV, for example, is one of the typical examples of the old media, but it's still being used by a lot of people. However, there's a big difference between TV in old days and these days. Although we also call these days TV as a television, actually it means the digital TV. In the old days, we just watched on TV just following the program schedules. Today, on the other hand, we also watch like that and can watch whatever and whenever we want to do because we use the digital technology on TV.

Moreover, some new media are just invented or being invented. Let's think about the immersive VR. In the old days, there was nothing about it, but only in some movies we were able to see it. However, it's a popular thing recently. It has been used at games or for experiments. Nobody thinks it's impossible now, but actually it looked like that only 10 years ago because there was nothing about it in reality.

To sum up, there are two methods to become new media: first one is that one of old media became the new media such as digital TV, and second way is that something is created for the first time as new media like immersive VR. To be honest, actually there's nothing created as new media suddenly. Someone might suggest a new idea, and after that some people tried to make it real. Finally somebody succeeded to invent it. Therefore, what we have to is to progress little by little, then someday we'll make something new.