ABSTRACT
The material revolution, for Lev Manovich new media are the result of the historical development and meeting of two trajectories mass media and computing. This chapter explains the old media forms of cinema, print, music, home video, photography, video, telephony, radio and television all became digital technologies. By the late 20th century the broadcast ecology was dominated by a small number of separate, mass media forms, with their own established economic models and competing providers, together with established relationships between different industries and with the regulatory authorities. In each case digital technologies were introduced into these industries either to improve their productive or distributive capacity or the quality of their products or services. The most important property of digital forms is instead their manipulability. Whereas analogue media are harder to manipulate, requiring physical intervention, digital manipulation is easier and requires less professional expertise.
