First of all, this course has really been an eye-opening one for me. Before I came to college, I’d never imagine myself learning to code and make circuits at the same time. Neither did I know about what’s called “Computational Media”. But now it all starts to make more sense to me. Just as our guest from Istanbul said, people don’t know new media until it is introduced to them. From my own understanding, Computational Media is indeed future-oriented, but it is also tangible and easily accessible so that we could begin to get the sense of it after only 14 weeks of an intro class.
I have always felt the difference between the “old media” and the relatively new media. For a long time, the old media means newspapers, magazines, and later on television to me. Then the new media equals to web pages, email newsletters, that sort of internet-based thing. However, I did’t quite realize that new media can be more than journalism, that it can also be art, design, engineering, etc. So my previous definition of new media is pretty narrow, and one chief message I received from our class is that media should embody diversified pursuits and interests of people from all sorts of professions and industries.
For one thing, I do think computational media is important for all of us. It is interesting to see all kind of people, students and staff, coming in to the IM lab wishing to learn how to use the laser cutter and 3-D printer. The same applies to myself. Now I could use these machines to make my own stuff and potentially share with others what I have done. This mode of sharing becomes even easier when you post your code online, which is part of the charm of the internet as a whole and also benefits computational media.