[Air-l] Internet as medium with different sub-media or channels?

[Bob Rehak]

Quoting "Denise N. Rall" <denrall at yahoo.com>:

> Thanks Christopher for stating the obvious. The
> internet IS the infrastructure and other things happen
> on it. The packet could care less. Its 'purpose in
> life' is to get from point A to point B, preferably
> without colliding with any other packet (if it does,
> ethernet constraints tell it what to do). It carries
> data not messages.  The messages, etc. are coded at
> one end and decoded at the other end. The internet is
> not a media! although I can see how it carries that
> burden today. People are still confounding the
> internet with the WWW. The web has expressive
> elements, the internet does not.

Er ... the internet had no "expressive elements" before the advent of 
the graphical browser? I know a few MUDders and ADVENT players who 
might disagree.

I understand that from a technological standpoint, it's easy (not to 
mention efficient) to make statements like "X is a medium, Y is not a 
medium." But from the perspective of remediation ("the content of a 
medium is always another medium"), isn't it much harder to defend such 
hard-and-fast definitions? I'd counter that a medium is that which is 
culturally and commercially recognized as such; whose identity is 
forged largely through the promulgation of formal behaviors in relation 
to / distinct from those of the media surrounding it; and whose 
"essence" is therefore continually open to redefinition.

Bob

---------------------------------------

Bob Rehak

Department of Communication and Culture
Mottier Hall, 1790 East Tenth St.
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN  47405-9700

Associate Editor, North America
Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal

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