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Media Frameworks
CS 445/656 Computer & New Media
Defining New Media
• “New media” suggests something less
settled, known, identified
• Changing set of formal and
technological experiments
• Complex set of interactions between
new technologies and established
media forms
Kinds of New Media
• New textual experiences
• New ways of representing the world
• New relationships between subjects and
media technologies
• New experiences of the relationship between
embodiment, identity, and community
• New conceptions of the biological body’s
relationship to the technological media
• New patterns of organization and production
Characteristics of New Media
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Digitality
Interactivity
Hypertextuality
Dispersal
Virtuality
Digitality
• Digital signals and objects deal in the realm of
the discrete or finite, meaning there is a limited set of
values they can be.
• We live in an analog world. The common theme
among all of these analog signals is their infinite
possibilities
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There are an infinite amount of colors to paint an object (even if the
difference is indiscernible to our eye),
There are an infinite number of tones we can hear, and
There are an infinite number of smells we can smell..
• Data input converted to numbers
• Can be output to both online sources or “hard copy”
• Analog - all input data is converted to another
physical object
Interactivity
• Instrumental - users’ ability to directly
intervene in and change the images and texts
that they access.
• Hypertextual navigation
• Immersive navigation - visual and sensory
spatial exploration
• Registration interactivity - users’ ability to
register their own messages; bulletin bds,
MUDs, MOOs
• Interactive Communication - ability of
communication to emulate face-to-face
Hypertext
• Discrete units of material in which each
one carries a number of pathways to
other units.
• A Web of connections in which the user
controls the navigation
• Vannevar Bush - As We May Think
• Ted Nelson - A New Home for the Mind
• Marshall McLuhan – Understanding
Media: Extensions of Man
Dispersal
• Consumption - large number of highly
differentiated texts; no longer simultaneity
and uniformity of messages received by mass
audience
• Production - craft skills of production
becoming more dispersed, less specialized
• Media production processes become closer
to habits of everyday life - PowerPoint,
desktop publishing, Web design, photo
manipulation, etc.
• Concept of prosumer
Virtuality
• Immersion - environment of computer
graphics and digital video in which user has
some degree of interaction
• Visual, tactile experiences felt to be in one
place, while the body is in physical space
• Space - way of imagining the invisible space
of communication networks
• Adopt different identities; new associations
and communities
• Cyberspace - questions of embodiment
Generalizing New Media:
Frameworks for Discussion and
Comparison
Exploring the Design Space for
Interactive Scholarly Communication
• Motivation for a community developed
framework for interactive scholarly
communication
• Seven dimensions of interactive communication
• Previous work in the context of the seven
dimensions
• Open research questions
• Conclusions/Goals
Brief timeline for improved scholarly
communication
• 1940’s Vannevar Bush
• 1960’s & 1970’s Nelson, Engelbart,
Licklider, van Dam
• 1980’s Hypertext research field coalesces
– Authoring and accessing hypertextual writing
and literary studies of hypertextual structures
• 1990’s Digital libraries and interactive digital
storytelling research fields coalesce
– Creation, maintenance, preservation, access
Vannevar Bush (1890 – 1974)
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Vannevar Bush is the pivotal figure in hypertext research. His
conception of the Memex introduced the idea of an easily
accessible, individually configurable storehouse of knowledge.
Douglas Engelbart and Ted Nelson were directly inspired by his
work, and, in particular, his article, "As We May Think."
In 1919, he joined MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering,
where he stayed for twenty-five years. In 1932, he was appointed
vice-president and dean. At this time, Bush worked on optical and
photocomposition devices, as well as a machine for rapid
selection from banks of microfilm. Further positions followed:
president of the Carnegie Institute in Washington, DC (1939);
chair of National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (1939);
director of Office of Scientific Research and Development.
During World War II, Bush worked on radar antenna profiles and
the calculation of artillery firing tables. The mathematics involved
was complicated and repetitive. Bush proposed the development
of an analogue computer; this became the Rockefeller Differential
Analyser. Unfortunately, his research was rendered obsolete by
1950 with the invention of the digital computer.
Bush is most famous for his Memex, publicized in the aforementioned article in Atlantic Monthly
(1945) and most readily available in Nyce and Kahn. Yet this same article also contained descriptions
of devices rarely cited. These include the Cyclops Camera: "worn on forehead, it would photograph
anything you see and want to record. Film would be developed at once by dry photography;"
advances in microfilm; a thinking machine (actually a mathematical calculator); and a vocoder, "a
machine which could type when talked to".
“What Dr. Bush Foresees”
Cyclops Camera
Worn on forehead, it would photograph anything you see and want to
record. Film would be developed at once by dry photography.
Microfilm
It could reduce Encyclopaedia Britannica to volume of a matchbox. Material
cost: 5¢. Thus a whole library could be kept in a desk.
Vocoder
A machine which could type when talked to. But you might have to talk a
special phonetic language to this mechanical supersecretary.
Thinking machine
A development of the mathematical calculator. Give it premises and it
would pass out conclusions, all in accordance with logic.
Memex
An aid to memory. Like the brain, Memex would file material by association.
Press a key and it would run through a “trail” of facts.
Memex
Cyclops Camera
Current practices of scholarly
communication
• Focus on text and continuance of existing
methods of writing the scientific record
• Restructuring old media via point-to-point
conversions from the static physical world
to a part of the digital world that is also
static
• The way we make the record is essentially
unchanged from Vannevar Bush’s time
A new approach to scholarly
communication
• A wide-open exploration of the design space
created by new media for writing the scientific
record
• Focus on interactive authoring tools and
systems that will help scholars record the record
of their ideas and scientific contributions
• Authoring tools for the digital libraries of
tomorrow
Why new forms of scholarly
communication are needed
• Infrastructure is available:
– Internet for dissemination
– Digital Libraries for archival storage
• Interactive faction is not keeping up with results
from interactive fiction
• Scholarly communication is already broken
• Existing forms may not be the most efficient
• New media may be more immersive and
engaging
Research agenda
• Design new systems for making and consulting
the scientific record
• Evaluate and disseminate the results of
interactive media studies on scholarly
communication
• Generate and distribute new interactive media,
authoring tools, and storytelling engines
• Improve the general framework for interactive
scholarly communication
Initial framework
• Interactive media tend to change the
relationship between the reader and the
author
• A simple model will suffice to discuss the
design space of interactive scholarly
communication
active digital libary
automatic change
author’s
interface
computation
converting to
stored form
stored
artifacts
computation
converting to
presented form
reader’s
interface
implicit or explicit
requests
• Consider the ACM DL
• Consider a personalized news reader
• Consider a MMORPG
Dimensions of Interest
• Roles – are there separate author/reader
(creator/consumer) roles or are they
merged?
• Voices – how many voices are normal in
the medium?
• Interaction – do users get to interact with
the content?
• Indirection – does the reader see what the
author created?
Dimensions of Interest (cont.)
• History – does the medium preserve the
authoring process or interaction?
• Narrative – do normal examples bind the
contents into a single (or multiple)
narrative?
• Media – does the medium build on top of a
variety of component media?
Seven dimensions of interactive
communication
• Roles
• Voices
• Interaction
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Indirection
History
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Narrative
Media
active digital libary
automatic change
author’s
interface
computation
converting to
stored form
stored
artifacts
computation
converting to
presented form
reader’s
interface
implicit or explicit
requests
Prior systems
• Spatial hypertext (VKB)
• Digital Scholarship and Publishing
(Synchrony)
• Metadocuments (Walden’s Paths)
• For each system:
– Brief review
– Locate in design space provided by the seven
dimensions
VKB Spaces as media for interactive
scholarly communication
• Publishing unit is an evolutionary space
• Authors construct the space over time through
direct manipulation of visual representations
• Readers explore the space to understand its
story
• Existing media types: text, images, music files,
internal and external links
• Constructed media types: classes, lists,
collections
VKB Spaces in the design space
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Multiple roles
Multiple voices
Moderate level of interaction
Low level of indirection
High level of support for history
VKB spaces are most often non-narrative
Low to moderate level of media use
Synchrony PADLs as media for
interactive scholarly communication
• Publishing units: structured presentations of
streaming video segments and text
(transcripts, original writing, annotations)
• Authoring through direct manipulation
• Readers watch streaming video and read text
• Existing media types: streaming video, text
• Constructed media types: presentations
Synchrony PADLs in the design
space
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Multiple roles
One voice
Low level of interaction
Low level of indirection
No history
Highly narrative
Moderate level of media use
Walden’s Paths as media for interactive
scholarly communication
• Publishing unit: annotated paths
• Authoring via a path authoring tool
• Readers browse paths linearly, jump
between pages of a path, or navigate off
the path
• Existing and constructed media are those
offered by the web
Walden’s Paths in the design space
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Separate author and user roles
Multiple voices due to component pages
Medium level of interaction
Medium level of indirection
No history
Medium level of narrative
Moderate level of media use
Roles
Voices
Interaction
traditional
1
low
merged
many
VKB
high
PADL
Indirection
low
high
History
low
high
Narrative
low
high
Media
low
high
WP
ACM DL
Characteristics of communication
supported by ends of spectrum
Roles
Authority
Discussion
Voices
Consistent presentation
Many perspectives
Interaction
Immersion
Engagement
Indirection
Author control
Applicability to diverse
situations
History
Privacy
Understanding authoring
process
Narrative
Facts, maps, emergent
relations
Comprehension of complex
reasoning
Media
Easy distribution
Multiple comprehension
strategies