U N I T 1 DIGITAL COMMUNICATION AGE In this Unit we focus on digital communication, looking back at Web 1 and analyzing Web 2.0, as well as investigating Web 3 and considering the strengths and weaknesses of new media and their impact on digital natives, highlighting behavioural and physical changes on them. The aim of this Unit is to make students aware of how digital communication works. A. TRADITIONAL MEDIA AND NEW MEDIA The media are the main means of mass communication that reach or influence people widely. The word is a transformation of the term media of communication , referring to those organized means of dissemination of facts, opinions, entertainment and other information, such as newspapers, magazines, cinema films, radio, television, the World Wide Web, billboards, books, CDs, DVDs, videocassettes, computer games and other forms of publishing. Most technologies described as new media are digital. The term New Media also includes the traditional media such as press, photography, cinema, telephone, radio, TV that has undergone a digital transformation. The old definition of new media identifies it with the use of a computer for distribution and exhibition, rather than with production. Therefore, texts distributed on a computer, web sites and electronic tools are considered to be new media; texts distributed on paper are not. Similarly, photographs which are put on a CD-ROM and require a computer to be viewed, are considered new media; the same photographs printed as a book are not. We are in the middle of a new media revolution, where a computer is used as a tool for media production and as a media storage device. Our culture is shifting to a computer-mediated form of production, distribution and communication, manipulated, networkable, compressible, and interactive. Communication means the sharing of information ; each time we communicate we shift information, ideas and even feelings to other people. Any form of communication is not complete unless there is feedback. It means that whenever we talk to someone, or somebody reads what we have written, there must be a reply from the other person. New media is known for its 160