The first thing that I’ve really noticed about this text is that Manovich loves film, especially old film.  His enthusiasm makes me want to go watch some old, silent films.  He makes me feel like my knowledge of this essential part of our cultural evolution is several lacking.  And yet, while many of his points about the relation of new media to that of it’s cinematic predecessor (and co-evolutionary form) are no doubt valid, I do wonder if he may on occasion stretch his ideas to fit in with cinematic themes.

Manovich certainly has his own sense of drama.  For example, on p. 22 he suggests that computers and photography have both been necessary to the evolution of modern mass culture as a means of “assuring the same ideological beliefs.”  This idea seems like a possibility to me in some ways.  After all, I think a convincing argument can be made for visual media as a catalyst for public opinion in a multitude of situations.  Manovich goes on, though, to say that movie theaters during the early twentieth century were necessary as “routine survival technique[s]” as people of the day were overwhelmed by the “dense information environment outside the theatre.”  (p. 23)  I have to ask, was life really just too much to handle without movies?

I think my favorite example thus far of Manovich’s tendency toward drama was his description and the conclusions he drew from the use of discarded 35mm film as an early computer punchcard on p. 25.  His description of this event as an “Oedipal complex” seemed thorough hyperbole.

This being said, I found that even in the seven years since this text was published several of Manovich’s ideas have played out in a way similar to that which he envisioned.  The non-hierarchical architecture of the web has been reinforced by the current best practice techniques of separating content and markup (html) from style (CSS) and function (ajax, javascript, etc.).  The current proliferation of Google-styled advertisements that target the user based on search queries again reinforces the ideas Manovich suggests on p. 42.  There are other technologies that I’m less certain about the current state of, though.  Do lossy forms of file compression still dominate?

On p. 42 Manovich suggests that new media which allows for multiple approaches and an experience designed by the user is “trying to convince us that we are all unique.”  I wonder, though, if the new media is pushing this drive toward unique experiences, or if our own desire to be unique is the driving force behind the development of this type of media experience.

There were two other parts to this first chapter that I found compelling and interesting to consider.  On p. 49 and then pp. 52-54 Manovich discusses the common discomfort with the transition from analog to digital technologies and the loss of data this entails.  Manovich concludes that “in reality this difference does not matter” due to the inability of humans to perceive the difference.  Although probably true, I am still left with a feeling of unease that we will, in this process, lose something important.  Perhaps the problem is more of a philosophical one–no matter how small the units are, the overall technique still involves sampling and reinterpreting rather than a holistic assessment.

Finally, I found Manovich’s conclusion to chapter 1 to be a fascinating idea that I had never previously considered.  As he says on p. 61, “Interactive media asks us to identify with someone else’s mental structure.”  As a previous designer of interactive systems, I can testify that the goal is to try and make the system as intuitive to others as possible, so maybe a more accurate description would be that it asks us to identify with someone else’s mental structure tempered by the attempt to understand the mental process of others.  Some food for thought.

Well, I doubt that anyone will actually read this much babbling, and if you do please leave a comment and let me know what you think about some of these ideas!  For now, I’m off to chapter 2.