In the 20th century, something called "New Media" cropped up. We experience it pretty much every day of our lives. Most of us just don't term it as 'new media'. Maybe because it's not so new anymore. Far from it. For my generation, it's been there practically all our lives. The bits of it that we remember, anyway.
So what is 'new media'? Wikipedia defines it as "a term meant to encompass the emergence of digital, computerized, or network information and communication technologies in the later part of the 20th century. Most technologies described as "new media" are digital, often having characteristics of being manipulated, networkable, dense, compressible, interactive and impartial. Some examples may be the Internet, websites, computer multimedia, computer games, CD-ROMS, and DVDs." Everything we are so used to in this age probably comes under new media. It's a never ending revolution.
Media is a constant source of influence among people. If the news tells us there was a gorilla carrying around a gun, we believe it without a moment of hesitation. It's human nature. So everything associated with new media undoubtedly had an influence on everybody. Let's take this era of new language as an example. New media has people talking in all kinds of slang. The whole "lol" (laugh out loud) thing seems never ending. Then of course there's lmao, rofl, roflmao, brb, tc, ttyl and a whole list of ridiculous abbreviations. 'Roflmao' is possibly the most amusing. They actually strung two of those things together!
Let's look two generations back for a second. Have you realised how beautiful their english is? My grandmother lectures on music and her lectures are so beautifully structured and so well written. Our spoken english seems pretty trash compared to theirs. We've forgotten normal words. I've even heard people say "lol". Actually say it. If you bring someone born in the 20s to the future , he's going to feel so alien it's not even funny.
Don't get me wrong. Thank God for human intelligence. Thank God for new media. Where would we be without the internet and computer multimedia? Well, somewhere, but all of that has become a vital part of our lives. The only drawback I would say is this whole process of everyone becoming slightly less intelligent. Not too many people think all the time. At this rate, I'm scared we're turning into robots. I mean, we're already creating our own world of machines, it's only natural we become a part of it.
