Week 7 // Analog to Digital

This weeks lectures and tutorials were based upon the idea of the transition from analog to digital technological uses. Specifically delving our focus into the reading of Lev Manovich’s , ‘The Language of New Media’. With the development of technology comes the development of our culture and an exploration of new influences upon our technology. This could be explained as a cultural interface, the ways in which our modern cultures uses, influences and transforms certain objects and ideas, in this case technology. This also relates to design as modern designers rely on technology to exhibit a wide range of designs with our modern world. 


Within the text, Manovich suggests that ‘If HCI is a general purpose tool which can be used to manipulate any kind of data, both the printed word and cinema are less general, and offer their own ways to organise particular types of data’ (Manovich) , and as all three of these systems are ‘reservoirs of metaphors and strategies for organising information which feed cultural interfaces’ (Manovich) , they are able to sit on the same conceptual plane as they are all interpreting the same information. 

Todays world of media is drastically different to the media of the past. Manovich claims that  media is being liberated from the traditional storage media, and personally I agree that this is a liberation. The media we see in todays world is able to encompass many aspects of the human experience. It has also opened up media to be seen as a source of knowledge and assistance in some cases due to the vast exposure and diverse range of topics media can now cover.