Manovich, Principles of New Media Chapter one “What is New Media?” was a very interesting read and very relevant to our daily lives and this class. The one sentence that immediately stood out to me and grabbed my attention was under Principle One: Numerical Representation and the phrase is “In short, media becomes programmable.”
Media becomes programmable? This sentence really made me stop and think. I have never though of the media as programmable before but after analyzing the phrase it started to make a lot of sense and helped me see media in a different light. What is media? I asked myself. Hmmmm…. media is the news, the radio, magazines, social media, art, basically anything that serves as communication and has the power to influence. However can we program the media? Is the media programmable? Yes!
The media is very much so programmable. The mass message and common ideals had to come from somewhere. For example, the definition of beauty has changed dramatically throughout history and to this day each country has a different definition of beauty. Why? The media programs the population is reaches to think a certain way, to feel a certain way, and to do things a certain way. It’s actually quite scary how powerful media can be. It comes from different mediums but the ability to influence = power!
The concept that ability to influence signifies power can be seen through history such as Hitler’s ability to influence so many people that his cause has positive when in fact proved to be destructive. A persuasive voice can influence people either for better or worse and this proves that media is programmable and can make the public think what it wants the public to think by the messages it generates. With so much media surrounding us in our everyday lives, it is now up to us to filter out the good from the bad and to use our better judgment.