Until the 1980s media relied primarily upon print and analog broadcast models, such as those of television and radio. The last twenty-five years have seen the rapid transformation into media which are predicated upon the use of digital computers, such as the Internet and computer games. However, these examples are only a small representation of new media. The use of digital computers has transformed the remaining old media, as suggested by the advent of digital television and online publications. Even traditional media forms such as the printing press have been transformed through the application of technologies such as image manipulation software like Adobe Photoshop and desktop publishing tools.
New media rely on digital technologies, allowing for previously separate media to converge. Media convergence is defined as a phenomenon of new media and this can be explained as a digital media. The idea of new media captures both the development of unique forms of digital media, and the remaking of more traditional media forms to adopt and adapt to the new media technologies. Convergence captures development futures from old media to new media. For example, we can easily see that people watch movies in the home on DVD these days instead of videocassettes.
Also, it is true that people listen to music with their CD player and MP3 player instead of cassette player. The most prominent example of media convergence is the Internet, whereby the technology for video and audio streaming is rapidly evolving. The term convergence is disputed, with critics such as Lev Manovich pointing out that the ‘old’ medium of film could be seen as the convergence of written text (titles and credits), photography, animation and audio recording. Equally, Espen Aarseth has surveyed the ever increasing number of incompatible electronic appliances to critique the techno-utopian claims of convergence. The status of convergence is one of many such disputed claims regarding the revolutionary ‘newness’ of new media.
