My project focuses on the emergence of new types of "screens" - computer screens, iPod, PDA, cell phone screens, and other new media monitors - that might change how we approach, digest, and consume media every day. The sources I have chosen for this project reflect my desire to compare these new physical screens with older screens such as TV monitors and those in movie theaters. I also chose sources that provided background information on digital and New Media, as well as on theories of spectatorship and screen consumption, since I was not well-versed on the topic before beginning this project.

Sonia Livingstone’s chapter on the development of media literacy charts the development of the consumer from passive viewer of mass media to smart organizer of personal technology. But existing patterns of social interaction may slow down the process of individualized user-developed programming; in other words, you have to consider the plural audience and their significance before determining individual scenarios. People draw on their social and cultural experiences to decipher new (and old) forms of media, which puts direct emphasis on a multi-receiver audience. This also complicates the idea of mass media as the sender to a singular passive audience receiver. With multiple receivers that interact with one another, the exact impact of the media can be hard to determine. Thus, ethnographic audience studies began to examine the use of media goods within exact locations in the home – the Walkman in the kitchen, the TV in the living room, etc. This led researchers to conclude that people are always consumers as well as interpreters of media, as they consume while interacting with one another and creating new contexts and social definitions for these technologies. She goes on to examine past studies of audience behavior in order to sketch out a pattern of media consumption that could perhaps be used to predict future audience behavior with new media. In the end, she’s hesitant to discuss the singular “user,” since collectivity has marked consumption throughout media’s history.

    I found this article interesting and potentially useful because it provided me with a new way of looking at consumers of new media. Most new media theorists consider consumption through the Internet and other digital technologies to be more personal; but the social context does still exist, and Livingstone does a good job in highlighting this in her article. Her hesitancy to discuss individuals, however, seems short-sighted in the face of what’s developed in the years since this was written. Personal computers and Internet interaction is essentially a single-person activity – how can you leave the individual out of that? But, her argument is worth considering if only to prod me to consider the larger social context of digesting and learning new media.

In her 2004 article on emerging digital technologies, Anna Everett discusses the contradiction inherent in the simultaneous ascendancy of both “big” technologies (widescreen TV, IMAX, etc.) and “small” technologies (iPod, cell phones that can do what a computer can do). Within the context of this discrepancy, Everett also discusses the need to formulate new theories on spectatorship and interaction with these new portable small devices. Co-presence and contact with others remain two big ideas posited by theorist Mizuko Ito that Everett supports. Ultimately, however, she argues that new media content remains largely unchanged in terms of social structure; the content mostly caters to popular ideologies that repress fringe theories.

    Though this article presents “bits and pieces” thinking on Everett’s part, it has a fair amount of nice ideas regarding where new media is and where it could go within the next few years. I especially like her argument on contradictions inherent within technological developments – we want both a big screen TV and an iPod for similar purposes (though in arguably different environments). The point is in the simultaneous longing for both, which seems to link up with the desire for multiple and simultaneous interactions with media, whether within the same device or among several devices at once. I do wish she had fleshed out her thoughts on emerging theories of interaction with new media. If she thinks we need to formulate brand new ideas on how to interact with these rising technologies, then what are those theories? And how do they change modern media theory?

 John Andrew Berton, Jr., writes in this article about the application of older film theories to digital cinema. He argues that theories created when cinema first appeared (in the late 1800s-early 1900s) hold some relevance to the technologies currently emerging. The sense of novelty and the display of technicality over creativity can be found in the emergence of both traditional cinema and digital cinema; because the two technologies have found such common ground here, the same theories about the transparency of the technical achievement of the images can be applied to both eras of cinema. The theories he utilizes focus on moving both “new” technologies’ emphases away from technical achievement and towards a more artistic approach and appreciation. Concepts by Melies, Kuleshov, and a few others – which came about a few years after cinema and first arrived, and once its novelty began to wear off – pointed to the need to add artistry and direction to this new technology. Berton wants to apply these concepts to digital cinema, with the reasoning that “history repeats itself”: the emergence of new technologies (at least media ones) tend to follow this similar pattern of awe with the technical nature of the creation that lasts until prodded to turn towards a more content-driven approach.

    Berton’s ideas here hold a lot of relevance to my paper because he somewhat suggests that old media and new media perhaps faced similar beginnings. Since we’re more or less now still in the beginning of the new media phase, we’ve been able to experience firsthand if Berton is correct. I think that there was a time when digital media was so new and cool, that anything it created was met with awe and glee. This has worn off now, but I believe this has transferred to a certain extent to new media technologies like the iPod and the cell phone. Pretty much anything you put on an iPod (at least to the younger generation) is cool not because of what you’re watching, but because you’re using the technology. We’re still starting to figure out what movies and clips work best on a 2” portable screen; it’s likely we won’t discover a good answer for awhile. In the meantime, we’re in the pre-theory phase. Melies and Kuleshov don’t yet apply to the iPod (but do, perhaps arguably, to the computer, which is an interesting separation). Thus, Berton’s overall concept can be applied to my paper in a unique and unexpected way.