Old media involved a human creator who manually assembled textual, vi-sual, and/or audio elements into a particular composition or sequence. This sequence was stored in some material, its order determined once and for all.

Numerous copies could be run off from the master, and, in perfect correspondence with the logic of an industrial society, they were all identical.

New media, in contrast, is characterized by variability. (Other terms that are often used in relation to new media and chat might serve as appropriate synonyms of variable are mutable and ligwid) Instead of identical copies, a new media object typically gives rise to many different versions. And rather than being created completely by a human author, these versions are often in part automatically assembled by a computer. (The example of Web pages automatically generated from databases using templates created by Web designers can be invoked here as well.) Thus the principle of variability is closely connected to automation. (Pg 36)

This passage stood out to me because it emphasized a lot of what I already recognized when it comes to comparing new and old media. I think variability is the perfect word to describe it. The transition from old to new media represents a drastic shift in how content is distributed, consumed, and so much more. Old media emphasizes uniformity. Whether that be newspapers, television, radio, or books, it was all unchangeable and finalized before distribution. There was not much that varied when it came down to it. Once a composition was finalized, there was not much that could change with it, ensuring that everyone who consumed it was sharing the exact same experience. New media was able to benefit off of variability. This was huge for the media. Digital content enables the ability to be dynamically generated, modified, or personalized. For example, social media feeds are catered towards each user. This creates certain bubbles that exist in media so each audience member is only consuming content catered to themselves. This can be considered both good and bad but we do not need to get into that discussion. This new age of media created an interactive and personalized addition to media consumption overall. Variability created and shaped a whole new form of media. Instead of old media, where the content was solely in the hands of the author, we now have more freedom in the ways we choose to engage. There was not much varying in content when it came to old media, everything mostly being on paper made it hard for things to be interchangeable. New media brought ways for things to be edited and also new ways for everything to be consumed. The shift between the two reflects broader societal changes and overall definitely reflects how we evolve as a society.