Software takes command

Abstract

I called my earlier book-length account of the new cultural forms enabled by computerization The Language of New Media (completed in 1999, it came out in 2001). By that time, the process of adoption of software-based tools in all areas of professional media production was almost complete, and “new media art” was in its heroic and vibrant stage—offering many possibilities not yet touched by commercial software and consumer electronics.

Ten years later, most media became “new media.” The developments of the 1990s have been disseminated to the hundreds of millions of people who are writing blogs, uploading photos and videos to media sharing sites, and use free media authoring and editing software tools that ten years earlier would have cost tens of thousands of dollars.