New Media used as a Distribution Platform

Few days ago, I read a couple of pages from a book named The Language of New Media through the internet. The author Lev Manovich gave definition and discussed New Media as Computer Technology used as a Distribution Platform. What are these new cultural objects? Digital computing is now used in most areas of cultural production, from publishing and advertising to filmmaking and architecture. New media are the cultural objects which use digital computer technology for distribution and exhibition. Thus, Internet, Web sites, computer multimedia, computer games, CD-ROMs and DVD, Virtual Reality, and computer-generated special effects all fall under new media. ‘Other cultural objects which use computing for production and storage but not for final distribution -- television programs, feature films, magazines, books and other paper-based publications, etc. - are not new media.’

Manovich mentioned three-fold problems with this definition. Firstly, it has to be modified every few years, so far another part of culture comes to rely on computing technology for distribution. For instance, the shift from analog to digital television; the shift from film-based to digital projection of feature films in movie theatres; e-books, and so on. Secondly, we may suspect that most forms of culture will use computer distribution, eventually, and therefore the term "new media" defined in this way will not such specific. Thirdly, this definition does not tell us anything about the computer-based distribution has possible effects on the aesthetics of what is being distributed. In other words, do Web sites, computer multimedia, computer games, CD-ROMs and Virtual Reality all have something in common because they are delivered to the user via a computer? Even if the answer is only partial yes, it makes sense to think about new media as a useful theoretical category.
--XiaoFei H