In week two of Real-World Media, we explored media technologies in relation to time, and how we use media to link ourselves to a point in time through nostalgia.
In the face of corporations like Apple releasing a new $500+ iPhone almost yearly to the integration of iPads, laptops, and other smart technologies into our classrooms, we ask ourselves ‘what really qualifies as ‘old media’?’ and the validity of the term. Through creating a timeline in groups, we listed any media we can remember. I listed game consoles, yet a group member listed record players and radios in the 2010s, what I saw as ‘old media’. Simone Natale explores my error in thinking in her article ‘There Are No Old Media’ where she emphasizes that ‘the social use of a medium can never be examined in isolation from the use of other media’ as a medium like radio, which began as clunky speaker boxes, transformed, and integrated with technologies like cars, computers, smartphones, and TV, renegotiating its place as ‘new media’ (pg.589).
Likewise, the way we renegotiate with ourselves also determines a media’s place in our lives as contemporary or obsolete. In class, I created a timeline of function for a constant piece of media in my lifetime, the ever-evolving Nintendo 3DS/2DS/DS family. Through my childhood and teenage years, I’d buy the latest DS to keep up with the latest games, yet now I modify my 3DS to play and archive older Gameboy and DS games. Through nostalgia, I use my new media to interact with old media, acting as ‘symbols of a simpler, more carefree time, and, in some cases, a time when people were beginning to develop their own values and understanding of themselves’ (Knorr 2019). Nostalgia destroys the concept of ‘old media’ as it gives value to media that is demoted as old media because of their interpreted lack of value socially.
Reference List
- Natale S (2016) ‘There Are No Old Media’, Journal of Communication, 66(4):585–603
- Knorr A (08 February 2019) ‘Why Nostalgia For Video Games Is Uniquely Powerful’, Kotaku, accessed 09 March 2023. https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/02/why-nostalgia-for-video-games-is-uniquely-powerful/#:~:text=The%20word%20“nostalgia”%20comes%20from,frustration%2C%20joy%2C%20and%20pride.