On the Expressions “Media” and “New Media”

This chapter examines Alexander Kluge's reflections on the distinctions between classical media and new media. Kluge ties the advent of new media to the advance of digital technologies, attendant reductive forms of programming, the acceleration of experience, and the acquisition of new forms of private property located in viewers' heads. The supposed advantage of new media lies in the fact that it mobilizes people more rapidly and more inclusively in a nonhuman way than humans could ever manage directly among one another. To all appearances, new media works differently. A television program shows, for instance, direct documentation; it is a transmission. This is, however, not at all unmediated, but is rather cut down from its original time. Kluge then determines what the classical public sphere has more of and the new media has less of.