This question has plagued me (and most likely my classmates) since the first day of Freshmen year. When I walked into my first class (NMD100) , the first thing my professor did after introducing himself was ask the class what New Media is, and no one had an answer. For homework that night we were given the task of writing a paragraph of what we thought (through research and personal opinion) New Media was exactly and while I got credit for the assignment I still to this day am not 100% sure what it is. I know it’s dealing with technology and using it to change the world, but what does that really mean? Every class I have taken has been something completely different from the next. Every professor teaching a different (New Media) lesson and even after taking multiple classes with the same professor the outcome is the same. In engineering classes you learn math and physics, those are the basic components of what Engineering classes are. In New Media I have written papers on old technologies (analog vs. Digital) and how this affects the world today, I’ve made pictures, both from scratch using Adobe Illustrator and using photos in Photoshop, I’ve made movies both real life actors and animation, I’ve taken photos and learned what makes a good picture, and now I am talking relentlessly about how to take old things and reinvent them and what types of projects can I do that will shake the very foundation that we live on today. All these classes have no true rhyme or reason or for the most part any bridge that connects one to the next.

Maybe I’m just trying to figure everything out right away so I know exactly where I’ll be when I graduate in 2 years but the more time I spend thinking about New Media and the classes I’m taking, the more I’m starting to believe it can be anything I want it to be while also being anything available. Maybe by throwing New Media students into the world of technology and having them touch upon every single work of art and project possible in the first few years, the professors and creators of New Media are trying to give us a solid and very broad base to continue our lives as students because it seems we are going to have to constantly be learning if we are going to be able to stay in this field. Technology is always changing, improving, becoming obsolete, and then being brought back as something new or the same thing with a slight twist and if we want to secure a job and be able to sustain an existence in the world of technology we need to stay up to date with it. Maybe our professors are trying to show us how we need to be able to sort through hours and hours of Bullshit to find the important “diamond in the rough.”

When I say diamond, I say it with a lot of hesitation because what I may see as a priceless diamond, one of my classmates could see as just another piece of shit. Each bit of information isn’t going to be perfectly sorted for us to read and allow to sink in and it is up to us to find what we need and allow the rest to pass by.

So after reading all this you see why I am still unable to answer the question: What is New Media. It is always changing and there is no answer that I have come across that I give and not feel like I’m leaving a large part out. I know I am in the right field because I love technology with a passion and my ideas of what I can do with it and where it can take mankind are beginning to form with more force and stronger possibilities of making them a reality then ever before. I’m not longer thinking in the what if, and trying to create ideas that  might never be possible but instead I’m beginning to see where we are today and take the next possible step which I could make a reality. Only time will tell what New Media truly is, and I’m alright with that because it’s just like you can’t say where technology will going and everyone is comfortable with that.