'A Kind of Thing That Might Be': Toward A Poetics of New Media

Abstract

This dissertation examines new media by taking as its starting point the definition offered by Lev Manovich, "the shift of all culture to computer culture"--new media are new not so much because they have not existed before but because they must adhere to the conventions of a computer. Media, according to Manovich, become programmable, and in their new programmability, along with a host of other implications and repercussions of that programmability, we human beings experience something new. Articulating that something remains no easy chore, and Manovich continually makes his case that "the language of new media" much resembles the language of that older medium, cinema.However, to nod in agreement with Manovich is not the present task; instead, I take Manovich and place his notion of new media in direct dialogue with rhetorical theorists Aristotle, Plato, Kenneth Burke, Barry Brummett, Jeffery Walker, Michel Foucault, and other writers and thinkers in order to pursue a portion of that "shift of all culture": I ask, "If new media has a language, what is the poetics of that language?" In order to pursue an answer to this question, I take individual new media objects--the film Saving Private Ryan; the video game Medal of Honor: Frontline; the computer worm MyDoom; the media coverage of the 1996 presidential campaign trail, including the "Dean Scream"; the SanDisk's cooperation with the Alzheimer's Association's "Take Action against Alzheimer's" campaign; the film The Manchurian Candidate; and the modern database--and analyze how they make meaning. In order to do this, I frequently reach back into antiquity, specifically into the early and predisciplinary areas of philosophy, rhetoric, and poetics.