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[[File:Innansicht Festplatte 512 MB von Quantum.jpg|thumb|[[Hard drive]]s store information in [[binary numeral system|binary]] form and so are considered a type of physical digital media.]]
[[File:Innansicht Festplatte 512 MB von Quantum.jpg|thumb|[[Hard drive]]s store information in [[binary numeral system|binary]] form and so are considered a type of physical digital media.]]
'''Digital media''' refers to any [[media (communication)| media]] that are encoded in a [[machine-readable data|machine-readable]] format.<ref>{{cite web|title=Digital Media|url=http://www.uoguelph.ca/tss/pdfs/TBDigMedia.pdf|work=Technology Brief|publisher=University of Guleph|accessdate=28 March 2014|date=September 2006}}</ref> Digital media can be composed, read, distributed, preserved, and modified on [[computer]]s or other electronic devices. It is frequently contrasted with analog, traditional, or [[print media]], such as printed books and periodicals. Combined with the rise of the Internet and the [[World Wide Web]], as well as the spread of [[personal computer]]s and [[smartphone]]s, digital media has caused disruption in publishing, journalism, entertainment, education, commerce and politics. Digital media has also posed new challenges to [[copyright]] and [[intellectual property]] laws, fostering an [[open content]] movement in which content creators voluntarily give up their intellectual property rights. The ubiquity of digital media and its effects on society suggest that we are at the start of a new era in industrial history, called the [[Information Age]], perhaps leading to a [[paperless society]] in which all media are produced and consumed on computers.<ref name=infoage>{{cite web|last=Dewar|first=James A.|title=The information age and the printing press: looking backward to see ahead|url=http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P8014/index2.html#fn0|publisher=RAND Corporation|accessdate=29 March 2014|date=1998}}</ref> However, challenges to a digital transition remain, including outdated copyright laws, [[censorship]], the [[digital divide]], and the specter of a [[digital dark age]], in which older media becomes inaccessible as it becomes outdated.<ref name=darkage>{{cite news|last=Koehl|first=Sean|title=We need to act now to prevent a digital 'dark age'|url=http://www.wired.com/insights/2013/05/we-need-to-act-to-prevent-a-digital-dark-age/|accessdate=29 March 2014|newspaper=Wired|date=15 May 2013}}</ref> Digital media has a significant, wide-ranging and complex impact on society and culture.
'''Digital media''' is any [[media (communication)| media]] that are encoded in a [[machine-readable data|machine-readable]] format.<ref>{{cite web|title=Digital Media|url=http://www.uoguelph.ca/tss/pdfs/TBDigMedia.pdf|work=Technology Brief|publisher=University of Guleph|accessdate=28 March 2014|date=September 2006}}</ref> Digital media can be composed, read, distributed, preserved, and modified on [[computer]]s or other electronic devices. [[Computer program]]s and [[software]], [[digital video]], web pages and websites, [[e-books]] and [[social media]] are examples of digital media. Digital media is frequently contrasted with [[print media]], such as printed books, newspapers and magazines, and other traditional or analog media, such as [[photographic film|film]] or [[manuscript]]s.
Combined with the rise of the Internet and [[personal computing]], digital media has caused disruption in publishing, journalism, entertainment, education, commerce and politics. Digital media has also posed new challenges to [[copyright]] and intellectual property laws, fostering an [[open content]] movement in which content creators voluntarily give up some or all of their legal rights to their work. The ubiquity of digital media and its effects on society suggest that we are at the start of a new era in industrial history, called the [[Information Age]], perhaps leading to a [[paperless society]] in which all media are produced and consumed on computers.<ref name=infoage>{{cite web|last=Dewar|first=James A.|title=The information age and the printing press: looking backward to see ahead|url=http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P8014/index2.html#fn0|publisher=RAND Corporation|accessdate=29 March 2014|date=1998}}</ref> However, challenges to a digital transition remain, including outdated copyright laws, [[censorship]], the [[digital divide]], and the specter of a [[digital dark age]], in which older media becomes inaccessible as it becomes outdated.<ref name=darkage>{{cite news|last=Koehl|first=Sean|title=We need to act now to prevent a digital 'dark age'|url=http://www.wired.com/insights/2013/05/we-need-to-act-to-prevent-a-digital-dark-age/|accessdate=29 March 2014|newspaper=Wired|date=15 May 2013}}</ref> Digital media has a significant, wide-ranging and complex impact on society and culture.


==History==
==History==

Revision as of 04:16, 30 March 2014

Hard drives store information in binary form and so are considered a type of physical digital media.

Digital media is any media that are encoded in a machine-readable format.[1] Digital media can be composed, read, distributed, preserved, and modified on computers or other electronic devices. Computer programs and software, digital video, web pages and websites, e-books and social media are examples of digital media. Digital media is frequently contrasted with print media, such as printed books, newspapers and magazines, and other traditional or analog media, such as film or manuscripts.

Combined with the rise of the Internet and personal computing, digital media has caused disruption in publishing, journalism, entertainment, education, commerce and politics. Digital media has also posed new challenges to copyright and intellectual property laws, fostering an open content movement in which content creators voluntarily give up some or all of their legal rights to their work. The ubiquity of digital media and its effects on society suggest that we are at the start of a new era in industrial history, called the Information Age, perhaps leading to a paperless society in which all media are produced and consumed on computers.[2] However, challenges to a digital transition remain, including outdated copyright laws, censorship, the digital divide, and the specter of a digital dark age, in which older media becomes inaccessible as it becomes outdated.[3] Digital media has a significant, wide-ranging and complex impact on society and culture.

History

See also: History of programming languages and History of computing hardware

Before electronics

A punch card computer. Though this machine used an early form of machine-readable media, it was still an analog machine.

Machine-readable media predates the Internet, modern computers and electronics. The concept for machine-readable codes and information was first developed by Charles Babbage in the early 1800s. Though he would not live to see them built, Babbage's Difference Engine and Analytical Engine concepts were designed to solve the problem of error in calculations.[4] Between 1822 and 1823, Ada Lovelace, a mathematician, wrote the the first instructions for calculating numbers on Babbage's engines.[4] Lovelace's instructions are now believed to be the first computer program.[4] Though the machines were designed for analytical tasks, Lovelace anticipated the potential and broader social impact of digital media, writing, "For, in so distributing and combining the truths and the formulae of analysis, that they may become most easily and rapidly amenable to the mechanical combinations of the engine, the relations and the nature of many subjects in that science are necessarily thrown into new lights, and more profoundly investigated... there are in all extensions of human power, or additions to human knowledge, various collateral influences, besides the main and primary object attained."[4] Other early machine-readable media include the instructions for player pianos and jacquard looms.

Digital computers

Though they used machine-readable media, Babbage's engines, player pianos, jacquard looms and many other early calculating machines were themselves analog computers, with physical, mechanical parts. The first truly digital media came into existence with the rise of digital computers. Digital computers use binary code and Boolean logic to store and process information, allowing one machine to perform many different tasks. The first modern, programmable, digital computers, the Manchester Mark 1 and the EDSAC, were independently invented between 1948 and 1949.[5] The programs these computers stored and ran were the first modern digital media.

"As We May Think"

While digital media came into common use in the early 1950s, the conceptual foundation of digital media is traced to the work of scientist and engineer Vannevar Bush and his celebrated essay "As We May Think," published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1945.[6] Bush envisioned a system of devices that could be used to help scientists, doctors, historians and others, store, analyze and communicate information.[6] Calling this then-imaginary device a "memex," Bush wrote:

The owner of the memex, let us say, is interested in the origin and properties of the bow and arrow. Specifically he is studying why the short Turkish bow was apparently superior to the English long bow in the skirmishes of the Crusades. He has dozens of possibly pertinent books and articles in his memex. First he runs through an encyclopedia, finds an interesting but sketchy article, leaves it projected. Next, in a history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the two together. Thus he goes, building a trail of many items. Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, either linking it into the main trail or joining it by a side trail to a particular item. When it becomes evident that the elastic properties of available materials had a great deal to do with the bow, he branches off on a side trail which takes him through textbooks on elasticity and tables of physical constants. He inserts a page of longhand analysis of his own. Thus he builds a trail of his interest through the maze of materials available to him.[7]

Bush hoped that the creation of this memex would be the work of scientists after World War II.[7] Though the essay predated digital computers by several years, "As We May Think," anticipated the potential social and intellectual benefits of digital media and provided the conceptual framework for digital scholarship, the World Wide Web and even social media.[6][8] It was recognized as a significant work even at the time of its publication.[7]

Impact

File:Augmented GeoTravel.jpg
Augmented reality, a form of digital media, playing on an iPhone

The digital revolution

In the years since the invention of the first digital computers, computers' computing power and storage capacity have increased exponentially. Personal computers and smartphones put the ability to access, modify, store and share digital media in the hands of hundreds of millions of people. Many electronic devices, from digital cameras to drones have the ability to create and view digital media. Combined with the World Wide Web and the Internet, digital media has transformed 21st century society in a way that is frequently compared to the impact of the cultural, economic and social impact of the printing press.[2] The change has been so rapid and so widespread that it has launched an economic transition from an industrial economy to an information-based economy, creating a new period in human history known as the Information Age or the digital revolution.[2] The transition has created some uncertainty about definitions. Digital media, new media, multimedia, and similar terms all have a relationship to both the engineering innovations and cultural impact of digital media.[9] The blending of digital media with other media, and with cultural and social factors, is sometimes known as new media or "the new media."[10] Similarly, digital media seems to demand a new set of communications skills, called transliteracy, media literacy, digital literacy.[11] These skills include not only the ability to read and write--traditional literacy--but the ability to navigate the Internet, evaluate sources, and create content.[12]

Disruption in industry

Compared with print media, the mass media, and other analog technologies, digital media are easy to modify, copy, store and share. This quality of digital media has led to significant changes in many media industries, especially journalism, publishing, education, entertainment, and the music business. The overall impact of these changes is so far-reaching that it is difficult to quantify. For example, in movie-making, the transition from analog film cameras to digital cameras is nearly complete.[13] The transition has economic benefits to Hollywood, making distribution easier and making it possible to add high-quality digital effects to films. At the same time, it has had an impact on the analog special effects, stunt, and animation industries in Hollywood, and it has imposed painful costs on small movie theaters, some of which did not survive the transition to digital.[13] The impact of digital media on other media industries is similarly complex. In journalism, digital media and citizen journalism have led to the loss of thousands of jobs in print media and the bankruptcy of many major newspapers.[14] But the rise of digital journalism has also created thousands of new jobs and specializations.[15] E-books and self-publishing are changing the book industry.[16] Digital textbooks and other media-inclusive curricula are changing education. In academia, digital media has led to a new form of scholarship, called digital scholarship, and new fields of study, such as digital humanities and digital history. The idea that we are moving toward a fully-digital, "paperless" society is accompanied by the fear that we may soon--or currently--be facing a digital dark age, in which outdated print and digital media are no longer accessible on modern devices or using modern methods of scholarship.[3] Every major media, communications and academic endeavor is facing a period of transition and uncertainty related to digital media.

Individual as content creator

Digital media has also allowed individuals to be much more active in content creation. Anyone with access to computers and the Internet can participate in social media and contribute their own writing, art, videos, photography and commentary, as well as conduct business online. Many media production tools that were once only available to a few are now free and easy to use. This has had a significant impact on political participation.[17] Digital media is seen by many scholars as having a role in Arab Spring, and crackdowns on the use of digital and social media by embattled governments are increasingly common.[18] Many governments restrict access to digital media in some way, either to prevent obscenity or in a broader form of political censorship.[19] User-generated content raises issues of privacy, credibility, civility and compensation for cultural and artistic contributions. The spread of digital media, and the wide range of literacy and communications skills necessary to use it effectively, have deepened the digital divide between those who have access to digital media and those that don't.[20]

See also: Copyright, Open content, Open data, Open access, and Open source

Digital media pose many challenges to current copyright and intellectual property laws.[21] The ease of creating, modifying and sharing digital media makes copyright enforcement a challenge, and copyright laws are widely seen as outdated.[22][23] For example, under current copyright law, common Internet memes are probably illegal to share in many countries.[24] Copyright, licensing and moral rights are at least unclear for many common Internet activities, such as posting a picture or graphic that belongs to someone else to a social media account, covering a popular song on a YouTube video, or writing fanfiction. To resolve some of these issues, content creators can voluntarily adopt open or copyleft licenses, giving up some of their legal rights, or they can release their work to the public domain. Among the most common open licenses are Creative Commons licenses and the GNU Free Documentation License, both of which are in use on Wikipedia. Open licenses are part of a broader open content movement that pushes for the reduction or removal of copyright restrictions from software, data and other digital media.[25]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Digital Media" (PDF). Technology Brief. University of Guleph. September 2006. Retrieved 28 March 2014.
  2. ^ a b c Dewar, James A. (1998). "The information age and the printing press: looking backward to see ahead". RAND Corporation. Retrieved 29 March 2014.
  3. ^ a b Koehl, Sean (15 May 2013). "We need to act now to prevent a digital 'dark age'". Wired. Retrieved 29 March 2014.
  4. ^ a b c d O'Carroll, Eoin (10 December 2012). "Ada Lovelace: what did the first computer program do?". Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 29 March 2014.
  5. ^ "Sci/tech pioneers recall computer creation". BBC. 15 April 1999. Retrieved 29 March 2014.
  6. ^ a b c Simpson, Rosemary; Allen Renear; Elli Mylonas; Andries van Dam (March 1996). "50 years after "As We May Think": the Brown/MIT Vannevar Bush symposium" (PDF). Interactions. pp. 47–67. Retrieved 29 March 2014.
  7. ^ a b c Bush, Vannevar (1 July 1945). "As We May Think". Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved 29 March 2014.
  8. ^ Mynatt, Elizabeth. "As we may think: the legacy of computing research and the power of human cognition". Computing Research Association. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
  9. ^ Lauer, Claire (2009). "Contending with Terms: "Multimodal" and "Multimedia" in the Academic and Public Spheres" (PDF). Computers and Composition. 26: 225–239.
  10. ^ Ito, Mizuko (November 2008). "Living and learning with the new media: summary of findings from the digital youth project" (PDF). Retrieved 29 March 2014. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  11. ^ "Digital literacy definition". ALA Connect. 14 September 2012. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
  12. ^ "What is digital literacy?". Cornell University Digital Literacy Resource. Cornell University. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
  13. ^ a b McCracken, Erin (5 May 2013). "Last reel: Movie industry's switch to digital hits theaters -- especially small ones -- in the wallet". York Daily Record. Retrieved 29 March 2014.
  14. ^ Kirchhoff, Suzanne M. (9 September 2010). "The U.S. newspaper industry in transition" (PDF). Congressional Research Service. Retrieved 29 March 2014.
  15. ^ Zara, Christopher (2 October 2012). "Job growth in digital journalism is bigger than anyone knows". International Business Times. Retrieved 29 March 2014.
  16. ^ "Publishing in the digital era" (PDF). Bain & Company. 2011. Retrieved 29 March 2014.
  17. ^ Cohen, Cathy J. (2012). "Participatory politics: new media and youth political action" (PDF). Retrieved 29 March 2014. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  18. ^ Kelley, Peter (13 June 2013). "Philip Howard's new book explores digital media role in Arab Spring". University of Washington. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
  19. ^ Rininsland, Andrew (16 April 2012). "Internet censorship listed: how does each country compare?". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
  20. ^ Crawford, Susan P. (3 December 2011). "Internet access and the new digital divide". The New York Times. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
  21. ^ "Copyright: an overview". Jisc Digital Media. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
  22. ^ Barnett, Emma (18 May 2011). "Outdated copyright laws hinder growth says Government". The Telegraph. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
  23. ^ Brunet, Maël (March 2014). "Outdated copyright laws must adapt to the new digital age". Policy Review. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
  24. ^ Kloc, Joe (12 November 2013). "Outdated copyright law makes memes illegal in Australia". Daily Dot. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
  25. ^ Trotter, Andrew (17 October 2008). "The open-content movement". Digital Directions. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
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