New Media and Web Production

Today I was assigned the reading The Internet: The Basics by Jason Whitaker. This reading consists of various components of digital production on the Web known as "New media." Whitaker states many processes that these new media have taken in order to make our present day Internet.

The first component of digital production on the web is known as hypertext. Whitaker states the importance of hypertext by mentioning that "Without a standard protocol for transmitting documents, the Web would not exist." (p.58) He continues by explaining the importance of hyperlinks, stating its usefulness through its ability to connect to various amounts of information, videos, and images from web pages. Whitaker spoke about how the computer has changed early photography from an alchemical process of capturing images to a digitized procedure. This new process of capturing still images has decreased the earlier methods of photography. This then leads to the presence of moveable images and audio formats such as MPEG's and MP3's. This emergence of new media has led to the availability for music albums and DVD's on the Internet, allowing piracy to take place. Millions of MP3 files over the past 10 years have been available through many peer-to-peer networks such as Napster and Kazaa. Whitaker states that producers are worried that video could spread as easily as MP3 files have. I believe this is true or has already happened because I know of many people who download hundreds of movies and burn them to DVDs in an easy fashion. There are also various underground businesses that sell bootlegged movies that have not even left the theaters yet. These new media on the Internet have both affected businesses, artists and customers. They have hurt businesses in sales because of less CDs and DVDs being purchased, left the customer without proper profit, and they have encouraged customers to engage in illegal activity.

This reading, I believe was very different than the previous readings. I would have to disagree that this reading consisted of "The Basics." Whitaker went deep into explaining how certain processes work, such as capturing a digital image with the use of sampling and quantisation. He also gave an in depth explanation on how to create a web page. He gave examples and explanations of various tags in order to format pages, add color, create a lay out, and add images on the web. But what was most important in this reading was the presence of these new media not their in depth operations.