Manovich Language of New Media

1. Numerical Representation- New media no matter if the were made from scratch or by computers they are converted into what is called analog media sources. These are composed of digital code. There are two consequences when having these analog media sources, new media objects are described formally mathematically and and can be subject to algorithmic manipulation. For example, editing a photo. We can also call this converting media "digitization". Digitization has two steps sampling and quantization. A good example used to describe this discrete coding is language. "We speak in sentences: a sentence is made up of words; a word consists from morphemes, and so on". He believes that media has these levels because it originated During the Industrial Revolution. 

2. Modularity- New media has the same modular structure throughout. Even larger scale objects keep their own identity. For example when a clip is inserted in a word document it keeps its independent identity and can always be changed be the program that created it. The web as a whole is a complete module. It contains numerous web pages and the pages consisting from separate media elements.

3. Automation- Numerical coding and modular structure of media allow to automate many operations involved in new media creation.  Examples of low-level automation would be image editing, 3D graphics, word processing, and graphic layout. High-level automation requires a computer to understand the meanings embedded in the object. Computer games (AI engine) and the internet are the common automation hubs. 

4. Variability- New media objects are something that can be exist different and in potentially infinite versions. Some cases of variability principles are 1) media elements stored in a media database. 2) separating the levels of content and interface. 3) Information about users can be used by a computer program to customize the media composition. 

5. Transcoding- The is the basic "material" principles of new media. We have moved to more "deep" and far reaching codes. New media has two layers called "cultural layer" and "computer layer". Examples of the cultural layer would be the encyclopedia and a short story, story and plot, composition and point of view, comedy and tragedy. Examples of the computer layer are process and packet, sorting and matching, function and variable, computer language and a data structure. We expect over time that the computer layer will affect the cultural layer. We also see that the computer layer itself is not fixed we constantly see it changing. These two layers are constantly enhancing each other.