This document summarizes theories about conceptualizing media change and the evolution of new media. It discusses Roger Fidler's theory of "mediamorphosis" which argues that new media emerge through the transformation and adaptation of old media. The document also outlines principles of mediamorphosis, theories of remediation and how new media languages are derived from old media. It discusses the concept of computer spaces and virtual realities, and debates about whether media evolution should be seen as progression or degeneration. Finally, it briefly introduces the field of ludology and game studies.

1. Theories and interpretation of
interactive media 4 /
Vuorovaikutteisen median
teoriat ja tulkinta 4
Frans Mäyrä
Professor of hypermedia,
esp. digital culture and game studies
University of Tampere, Hypermedia Laboratory
frans.mayra@uta.fi

2. Lecture 4:
Transformation / new media:
How to conceptualise the media
change?

3. Outline
• Fidler’s theory of ‘mediamorphosis’
• 30-Year-Rule, media co-development, resistance and failures
• Dead Media, media archaeology
• Language of new media derived from old media
• Remediation
• Computer spaces
• Historical virtual realities
• Media evolution and degeneration views
• Game studies and debates

4. The concept
• ‘New media’ is like ‘hypermedia’ (hyper: over-, superior-), it is
relational concept that is defined through difference to the
‘common’ or ‘old media’
• Studying the history and evolution of new media is
fundamentally faced with a paradox: when new media is
known and can be studied, it is already old, rather than ‘new’
• If ‘newness’ or novelty is the only decisive characteristics,
then there is no much room for analysis or critique
• New media appears just as the constant gesture to provide
tools of communication and areas for collaboration that are
somehow ‘different’ from what has been available earlier

5. Mediamorphosis
• Roger Fidler’s book Mediamorphosis:
Understanding New Media (1997) approaches
the new media ‘transformations’ from a mass media studies
perspective
• According to Fidler, undergoing is the “greatest transformation
of human communication since the emergence of written
language” (p. xvi)
• ‘Mediamorphosis’ means “the transformation of
communication media, usually brought about by the complex
interplay perceived needs, competitive and political pressures,
and social and technological innovation” (p. xv)
• Adopts Paul Saffo’s (1992) 30-Year Rule on how new cultural
ideas take root: first decade, little perceived need; second
decade, increasing penetration; third decade, final acceptance

6. Principles of mediamorphosis
1. Coevolution and coexistence: all communication
media coevolves as an adaptive system, influencing
all other forms of media
2. Metamorphosis: new media emerge through
metamorphosis from old media (which rather than
die, will adapt and continue to evolve)
3. Propagation: emerging media propagate dominant
traits from earlier media, spreading through
various communication codes/languages

7. Principles of mediamorphosis (2)
4. Survival: both media and media enterprises have to
adapt in changing environment
5. Opportunity and need: technology is not enough,
but there must be social, political and/or economic
reasons for new media to be developed
6. Delayed adoption: commercial success of new
media always takes longer than expected - usually
one human generation (20-30 years) to reach
widespread adoption

8. Predicting the contemporary
media change
• Fidler predicts increasing convergence for the third, final
acceptance phase of digital media
• Telephone, television and computers will fuse into
‘teleputers’; digital communication will be increasingly
intimate and interactive; email will combine nearly all forms
of digital media into it
• Since 1997, some convergence development is already
apparent (e.g. multipurpose phone-computers)
• At the same time, Fidler still relies on separation of broadcast,
document and interpersonal domains
• Unlikely that anyone would separately go off to purchase news
into one’s tablet PC/newsreader - media streams are already
mixed and socially filtered in multiple ways

9. Failed ‘new media’?
• E.g. British Videotex systems in 1960s-1980s:
commercial, centralised ‘online services’ failed to
attract homes (cf. France’s Minitel success, when
terminal was provided free)
• Interactive television services were expected to be
the ‘killer applications’ of digital television
• Fidler talks about the technomyopia associated with
such failures: short term impacts are overestimated,
then the dominant mood completely turns around
and underestimates the long term effect

10. Archaeology, dead media
• Within the field of media archaeology of media cultural
studies, particular attention has been put to the early
predecessors of electronic media
• See e.g. Dead Media Project (1995-2001):
http://www.deadmedia.org/notes/index-cat.html
• Erkki Huhtamo has theorised (and collected) particularly early
visual media
• Media archaeology opens up interesting parallels between
forgotten, obsolete forms of media culture and the ‘new’ or
emerging ones
• Often makes the claim that the apparent ‘novelty’ is actually
something that has already been an element in media decades
or centuries ago
Phenakistoscope simulation source: www.wikimedia.org.

11. Language of New Media
• Lev Manovich (2001) has developed media archaeology’s basic
approach into a broader theory of new media, and proposes
five key principles for new media:
1. Numerical Representation (makes data programmable)
2. Modularity (discrete samples as independent objects)
3. Automation (scripting, artificial life, AI agents)
4. Variability (media as personalised, differentiated in use)
5. Transcoding (translation into other media objects)
• Manovich’s theory is particularly helpful in identifying film
studies’ value for understanding visual new media, less for
capturing its communicative or web-like characteristics

12. Cinematic new media
• Screen, composition and montage can be seen as
key elements in cinematic art
• The modular collections of individual screens can be
arranged in multiple ways
• The experiments of Russian avant-garde cinema can
point towards understanding ‘database poetics’
better
• Contemporary (mobile) micro movies and clip
collections (e.g. YouTube) also follow the aesthetics
of early cinematic experimenters

13. Remediation
• An influential theory of new media and media transformation
presented by Bolter & Grusin in their Remediation (2000)
• New media tries to improve the old media, and simultaneously
is affected by old media forms in dialectical, anxious manner
• Apparent remediations of perspective painting, photography,
film, and television in contemporary new media
• Every attempt to appear as natural (media immediacy) is
easily also conventional, whereas trying to appear original,
media will play with our fascination with the medium itself
(hypermediacy)
– “Transparent digital applications seek to get to the real by
bravely denying the fact of mediation; digital hypermedia seek
the real by multiplying mediation so as to create a feeling of
fullness, a satiety of experience, which can be taken as reality.”
(p. 53)

14. Computer spaces
• Some theories position computer’s key ‘new media’ capacity in
its being able to provide an illusion of space behind its screen
• This is crucial particularly to computer games
• The first commercial computer game was named Computer
Space (1971) - based on Spacewar! game (Slug Russell & co,
MIT, 1961-62)
• The spatial perception was initially not based on three-
dimensional graphics, but rather on 2D spatial representation
being interactive: it was possible to experience consequences
from one’s actions within the constraints of spatial
representation

15. Spatial interactivity
• In addition to static spatial
representations (renaissance
perspective in paintings,
murals), there exists tradition of
interactive representation (e.g.
shadow play, puppetry)
• Graphical computer screen
provided new kind of dynamism
into “puppetry” in these new,
virtual spaces
Image sources: http://users.lmi.net/ione/ren.jpg &
www.wikimedia.org.

16. Twisty little passages
• Computer spaces do not need graphics to be highly evocative
• The first classic text based adventure game was ADVENT, or
“Colossal Cave Adventure” (Crowther, 1976; Crowther &
Woods, 1977)
• Nick Montfort (2003) provides an overview of how text based
dungeons developed into interactive fiction
• Famous commercial production from Infocom (1979-89)
• Text based interactive spaces and interactive fiction as an art
form has continued to live in the Web non-commercially

18. Historical virtual
realities
• Marie-Laure Ryan (2001) has described how
computer-based virtual realities can be approached in terms of
narratives, possible worlds theories and poetics
• When immersed in story, the fictional world acquires presence
as an autonomous reality (“mental simulation”)
• Narrative immersion may be 1) spatial (sense of place), 2)
temporal (caught by the flow of events), 3) emotional (lost
within emotion towards fictional characters)
• Ryan does not pay attention to immersion into (non-narrative)
action, which is arguably the most typical game-based form of
immersion today
• Cf. theory presented in Ermi & Mäyrä, 2005
See: http://www.uta.fi/~frans.mayra/gameplay_experience.pdf

19. Media Evolution
• Transformations in media can in evolutionary sense be
conceptualised as progression (towards more complex, or
“higher” media forms) or as degeneration
• Typically, positive progression is taken for granted
• Richness and complexity of converging digital media is taken as
a prime proof of its advanced character
• Technical improvement should be differentiated from the
social institutionalising of new media
• Significance, value and utility of media is entangled within
cultural, social, political, economic and technical debates and
processes

20. Degeneration view
• Critics of media culture include both politically conservative
and leftist-liberal thinkers
• Neil Postman’s critique was principally targeted to television
culture, and how everything is under its influence is
transformed into entertainment
• Postman also argues that ‘childhood’ will disappear in post-
literate culture since there is no longer similar restrictions for
underage access to information
• Rise of computers and particularly games has also been
associated with decline of literacy
• Computer and video games have also been attached due to
what has been considered their excessively
violent character

21. Computer & games
literacy
• Discussions on computers and games is often locked on
debating their ‘effects’
• Many, particularly US based academics have put forward
research that points out how games are actually based on
principles of problem solving and skill acquisition,
sometimes also on advanced team-work
• The cognitive principles apparent in the design of good
games are also the key principles for good learning
• Cognitive ethnography into virtual game worlds can reveal
complex learning processes and rich literary practices (See
Constance Steinkuehler, “MMO’s as Educational
Technology”*)
*Source link to a draft article:
http://website.education.wisc.edu/steinkuehler/papers/Steinkuehler_edtech.pdf

22. Ludology
• In contrast, ludology (humanities based game studies) is aiming
to understand the ontologies and structures of games as forms
of art and culture
• Ludology involves studying games “as games” (Frasca 1999)
• Key theories involve the discussion on cybertext by Espen
Aarseth (1997) and analysis of games’ dual character and the
classic game model by Jesper Juul (2005)
• Cybertext is an ergodic text that requires non-trivial effort
from the reader (player)
• Juul’s theory balances players’ “real”, rule-bound interactions
with the “fictional” reality constructed in game world
• Key classic theorists: Johan Huizinga (Homo Ludens, 1938),
Roger Caillios (Man, Play and Games, 1958)