26 April 2013

New Media: Opportunity Within its Flow

One could ask if one of the things which differentiates new media somewhat from old media is around a concept of personality. New media for certain has this, personality based prominence saturates it, yet is there something new in this, in new media. Firstly, one asks what is it that enables personality in media. Background, even looks all of this and more.

But in new media (I am not considering video based content here, rather textual speech and expression based media) it seems particularly what the person produces, to at least some significant extent. They can ground this in their persona in different ways, perhaps depending on the platform.

One sees that those who may have a prominence in other media, new or old, may not have same inherent prominence in a given new media. Their stature may force this, and perhaps this will overwhelm any subtlety in new media, but it may not (that may is important). It comes down to what the persona does, which then becomes a kind of personality, because new media tends to make what one does an expression of personality, like old media.

Thus we have a development of a persona on new media. What opportunity exists in this, what would thrive this development. Opportunity expands into freedom. One might say that old media is not necessarily about this kind of opportunity, it is about platforms with high barriers. New media is about platforms, but the opportunity may lie in the extent to which these personas can develop on these platforms. Ideally this would be opportunity for all concerned, including for old media.

Is new media really different, as media. One could say it can be very free, free flowing and somewhat occasionally inclusive like conversations in a garden party, or club. It flows, it can be highly forceful and astonishingly affective. One can look at possible signs of its effects - the way it seems so hard to pass laws which restrict it, it even seems like those laws are unstoppable until they stop, people perhaps don't protest from power but from edges of despair.

Why is it nonetheless forceful - is it numbers. One sees often enough this sense that the people will be swayed from the top down, but it seems that this sometimes these days may not happen. Has something changed because of new media.

It is democratic still, even in areas where it is less explicitly free. It can be hard to see where power lies within it, if it does, but it is usually easier to see this in society. Democracy may make a powerful few, from the people though. Capitalism, similarly, ideally from the people as well. But new media makes a powerful many, of the people. And so far it seems to be overwriting the effect of the powerful few, and not to their disadvantage either, for they are as well the people.

There is a voice to the people now, which there was not, a media voice. But is there a place for the individual, that is, is there a way an individual can add value, to their advantage and the advantage of others, as they can once they are over the barriers in old media. In the usual way in society there, it is called opportunity, as long as it is not restricted. Once restricted it tends to become something else.

Opportunity is not necessarily for all, to the possible disadvantage of society. New media is nonetheless for all to a very considerable extent, for now, that is partly what is being defended. Backstopping all this is the power of Madison's words, which are one assumes intentionally hard to get by, because as well one might assume nobody really wants to, especially once they experience what they give. Despair ends where those words begin. It is a kind of abstracted power and reassurance.

But what I mean to say, is there opportunity in new media. If there is something to individuality something with which the fact of capitalism can resonate, then it may be, for a time something new media can make. It is not what one does, but what one is, for a while. The reason is what one does, is dampened in the democracy of production based new media, to an extent, thus what one does may have to cohere with what one is or can be, which though is opportunity and is one source of that something change.

As new media expands out all this may get washed away in the power of the world outside. But it may not, and that 'may' could be because of what opportunity is. It is that spirit to make and succeed somehow, that is it is taken by people if it can be and even if it can't be it is made. New media may have a capacity to create enhancement from little, a kind of source of that which creates value.

I say this because of what it has done already in creating enormous value, those signs, but also because there may be something within that fluid occasional inclusion which makes for innovation, new orderings of configurations of structure that may endure or at least endure long enough to be reconfigured without decay of value, in a stable structure (such as a company or something like this).

New media itself comes from opportunity, born from machines of liberation in silicon valley (computers) and maybe it will endure and not collapse into media, or a form thereof, if it enables the expansion of opportunity in freedom. For new ways for new growth, that is an easy and powerful route. It has happened before, in new countries and new worlds, but can it be such in the content of this new world of increasing connective flow, resistant to stabilization.