“From broadcast to print to music, New York's old media companies stumbled in the face of the chaos brought about by new media in 2007,” declared reporter Joyce Hanson of Crain's New York. New media is slowly taking over the lives of people worldwide. More people are becoming familiar with the Kindle and Nook and turning away from brick-and-mortar bookstores. That is just one example of how "new media" has evolved to become a staple to the average person. So what is new media? New media is the term used to describe the emerging concept of digitizing conventional media, such as film and books, to make it more accessible and interactive.
Some examples of new media are facebook, friendster, wikipedia, and virtual worlds. All of these make interaction easier and achievable. Facebook and friendster makes people in other countries accessible with a single mouse-click which makes networking seem almost effortless. Wikipedia is the largest online encyclopedia that allows for collaboration on articles where anybody can edit content. It is part of the new Web 2.0 frenzy, along with virtual worlds. Virtual worlds provide a simulated environment where online communities are established, mainly for interaction with other people. It's almost like living a second life.
These types of new media technology are not far off from the "old media" but rather an offspring of it. According to journalist Andrew Sivikas of Forbes Magazine, "Books are a technology like any other; they are devices subject to innovation that has been both incremental (word spacing, punctuation, page numbering) and disruptive (the printing press). Books are no more natural than computers." What sets them apart is the lack of Web links to communicate and collaborate digitally.
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