Overview

Say goodbye to new media not the technologies or the industries that fall under this category. We're talking about the phrase.

Let's assume that the term "new media" came into use as a desperate attempt to define the breathless march of amazing and sometimes frustrating technologies that flooded our desktops in the late 1990s. Let's say that it stuck because no one could come up with something better before the term started filtering throughout the trades. The problem with the term, and the reason we will be avoiding it in this book, is that it implies from the outset that the technologies that fall under this heading will remain forever "new." Sure, the Web has only been with us since the mid-90s and digital television is just getting its start, but the fact is that CD-ROM technology is now more than 20 years old. If we consider the truism that high-tech time is equivalent to dog years, then we can more accurately state that the CD-ROM industry is already more than 100 years old.

In the wake of the AOL/Time Warner merger in 2000, Jim Nail of Forrester Research was quoted as saying that "There's no such thing as old media or new media anymore. It's all just media." We would take that further. As the age of multipurposed content continues to evolve, in the near future it might be safe to say there's no such thing as print media or Web media or television media anymore. It's...