Old Media New Media 1

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This is in continuation with my earlier post on new and emerging media technologies.

New and emerging technologies have changed the way we consume and produce content. The technology has become advanced, cheaper and accesible to us, the common public. This has to be looked at from several angles.  

I bought my first computer in 1992 for Rs.35000/-. Many will be surprised by the configuration. It was a 40386 processor, meaning it had a processing power of 386 MHz, much lesser than many mobile phones available today. The computer had a whopping 120MB (Yes, no typo here. Its MB and not GB) and 4 MB of RAM! On that computer I could easily use CorelDraw and PageMaker for my DTP work. It was the best PC in the neighbourhood.  

I also remember making my first video using a PC with a 533 MHz processor and 512 MB RAM. I can vouch for the fact that the video can hold its own against any video I have made recently. The only real difference is that it took very long to render the video the. It took about 24 hrs to render that 5 min video with all sorts of SFX. It could take 24 mins now.   Today too, a PC costs about the same if not lesser, but you could get a processing power of 3GHz, 500 GB HDD and 3GB RAM. You get advanced software to create fascinating images and videos.  

Why just computers, if you have a reasonably priced mobile phone, you still get more processing power than my first computer. Take for example this photograph I have clicked today as I was walking towards the Raj Bhavan's gate after a meeting. The sky was grey so there was very little colour. I clicked the photograph and then edited it with the inbuilt photo editor in my phone. I cropped it, increased the saturation and tweaked the contrast a bit. And viola! I have a superb photograph. This photo editor is a standard Android App. You also have the Photoshop App for Android available for free!

The point is, I would not have been able to do this so quickly on my older computer and probably would have taken longer even on my present one, because I would first have to start up Photoshop or some other picture editor, do the edit and then upload it. This one, I could do literally in a minute or two using my  mobile phone, barring the time taken to type this post. I am in a crowded train, travelling back home as I am typing this.

Ok, I reached Borivali while typing this and the battery is down to a few seconds, almost ridiculing my post on new technology. Will have to charge it to post this. See the irony of it all. But still.....

One for the new media technologies!



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