Manovich, The language of new media: transcoding

Manovich says in The language of new media that there are five principles of new media numerical, Modularity, Automation, variability and Transcoding. it seems that the most important principle is Transcoding.

Transcoding refers to the way the human 'cultural layer' is interpreted in computerized processes and the 'computer layer' in human cultural terms.(Manovich, 2002, p. 63) Manovich believes that each layer influences the development of one another so that they can't be considered as separate entities.

Manovich explains that to "transcode something is to translate it into another format" (Manovich, 2002 : 64) a good example of this would be taking a song that is in a WAV format and changing it into an mp3 format, it may be the same to the user but it becomes a different shape or object Manovich has suggested to think about new media in a different way by looking at it in two layers the "culture layer" and the "computer layer" 

"The computer layer and the media/culture layer influence each other. To use another concept from new media, we can say that they are being composited together. The result of this composite is the new computer culture: a blend of human and computer meanings, of traditional ways human culture modeled the world and the computer's own ways to represent it." (Manovich, 2002, p. 64)

This is important because as we get older and as technology is evolving and upgrading constantly so computers are being used for a lot of new things and carry out new functions for example now you can download many things at once and can watch movies, stream videos, get apps and stream music at any time provided that you have an internet connection and you can also use more than one screen at once. 

The culture layer is what we recognize and are familiar with whereas the computer layer is the digital coding used by the computer to translate it into objects or a language that we are familiar with. A good example of this is the web because without machines transcoding the machine language into our language we wouldn't have any idea what would be communicated to us. 

The culture and computer layer influence the development of each other because the culture layer would be considered as for example an encyclopedia and the computer layer is the digital coding that translates into objects. In conclusion i think that transcoding is the most important principle.

Bibliography

 Manovich, L.(2001),The Language of New Media’ Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
pg.63, pg.64